For the @wired.com Big Interview this week, I interviewed California gubernatorial hopeful and billionaire Tom Steyer. It was a tough hang for many reasons, but particularly because he didn't know who he was talking to.

This is the most Bay Area real estate thing I have ever read

xAI has expanded unpermitted behind-the-meter gas capacity at its Colossus 2 site to roughly 1 gigawatt. Wild stuff from @mollytaft.com

part of me believes that if every American could have a gap year in which they experience functional mass transit, including high speed trains, it would transform the way we get around in this country inside a generation

NEW: i took a look at a chevron power plant designed to power a data center that is asking for a school district tax break in texas — the plant's probable client is microsoft, which made a series of promises around tax breaks in january my dive into tax breaks for data center power:

some (belated) personal news: wrapping up my first week @wired.com where I'm overseeing science coverage. I'm still working on climate but so excited to cover everything science at a time when so many fields are both under attack and churning out amazing discoveries

California's ambitious climate goals are bumping against the reality that nobody — particularly people living in increasingly fireprone areas — wants utility-scale batteries in their backyard. @toddwoody.bsky.social dove into the growing wave of battery NIMBYs in the state and beyond

Hello, I wrote about Pete Hegseth’s anti-climate stance vs. the very real climate risks faced by the USM, which it is not ignoring, and how these things are in tension. Please check it out!

News to me and the 8 billion people who live on land

The Endangered Species Committee, a little-used panel of US senior federal agency leaders, on Tuesday exempted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico from sweeping endangered species protections, citing reasons of national security. Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

New: Around the world people are turning to low-carbon EVs, solar panels, induction stoves and heat pumps as the Iran war upends oil and gas markets. Bloomberg journalists, including yours truly, filed dispatches from San Francisco to Lagos for this story. Free link www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

My interview with @zackpolanski.bsky.social is now live. We touch on wealth tax, Iran, North Sea, community energy and so much more. youtu.be/STXgaWdfWKs

What stands out perhaps most here is how much oil demand electric two- and three-wheelers have avoided. Most talk in developed countries is about passenger cars, but the transition to electric among these smaller vehicles in developing countries has been huge. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

EVs already avoid 2.3 million barrels of oil demand per day, an amount roughly on par with UAE production

there's a lot going on right now but did you know a massive amount of the world's fertilizer flows through the middle east, and did you know that that fertilizer needs to be shipped to the us *right now* for planting season, and uh did you know we are at war with iran

Chat is it bad when its 106 degrees in February? weather.com/news/weather...

The Trump administration literally canceled $450 million in grid resilience grants to Puerto Rico last month but sure the halftime show was absolutely apolitical

Compared with the 1st year of previous admins, including Trump’s 1st term, the current admin has taken fewer polluters to court & settled fewer existing court cases, per a new review of federal court records by the nonprofit EIP. Story @bloomberg.com w/gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

i was actually shocked to see the numbers on new research from Global Energy Monitor on new gas projects in the US: nearly 100 gigawatts of power—enough to power tens of millions of homes—are currently in development explicitly to power data centers. At the end of 2023 that number was 4 gigawatts

Data center energy and water use have gotten a lot of (rightful) attention. But there's another issue that's getting less attention than it should: The immense amount of carbon-intensive concrete needed to build them 🎁🔗

Jennifer Granholm's advice for Democrats: Implement their agenda as aggressively as Trump and tie building renewables to lowering energy bills. Oh, and don't mention climate: “On Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, climate does not rise as much as how much I'm paying for my electricity bill" 🎁🔗

Not the just White House. Also extremely unclear what penguins and MAHA have to do with each other

Local news remains undefeated in creating new weather metrics

The fossil fuel industry has a long history of mascots. One of my favs is Captain Coal, who is featured in coloring books and other materials the Lignite Council gives out for free to teachers

Shot: The Trump administration is pushing the biggest US grid operator to hold an emergency wholesale electricity auction later this year to accelerate new power coming on the grid and bring down costs 🎁🔗

The US rare earth industry saw record venture funding in 2025 as the US looks to build out a supply chain of elements crucial to the defense and energy sectors. My latest for @bloomberg.com w/ Emily Forgash www.bloomberg.com/news/article... #rareearths #climatetech #investment

Heat and greenhouse gas pollution rise in lock-step — until 2023, when the thermostat goes bonkers. 🎁🔗 The 2025 climate numbers are in. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

the world’s saddest man cave

Safe from a nuclear bomb, but unsafe from fossil fuels.

The offshore wind farm Trump paused because of national security concerns can continue after a judge said "I'm not persuaded any emergency exists in this case" to stop work on a project that is 90% complete

Scoop: The EPA will no longer estimate the lives saved by reducing air pollution when writing clean-air regulations, according to documents reviewed by @nytimes.com. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/c...

Trump: "All you have to do is say to China, how many windmill areas do you have in China? So far they're not able to find any." China:

Another, underreported problem with Venezuela's dirty oil? The industry's methane emissions are the worst in the world and 10 times higher than the global average due to busted (or in some cases nonexistent) infrastructure 🎁🔗

Nothing says freedom in a foreign country like huge US flags, chain stores and endless parking spaces filled with SUVs

“You had to look hard and almost knowingly to find any hint of plant protein source in that graphic." RFK Jr's new food pyramid is a secret carbon time bomb by overemphasizing meat 🎁🔗

After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up. Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes. More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...

People are already in the streets after an ICE agent shot a woman in her vehicle in Minneapolis today. Here are some @wired.com tips for protecting yourself from your government. www.wired.com/story/how-to...

We're the only country on earth to not sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The climate stuff is all really notable but also don't want it to get lost that these are some of the other institutions that were deemed "contrary to the interests of the United States"

Department of Interior says if you put a sticker over Trump's face on your national park entrance pass, the pass will be invalidated. Meanwhile Trump's decision to put his face on the passes is being challenged in court

I'm starting to get the emails. Reporters: please see my comments below.

AI slop has come for the weather warnings (this is actually really bad for both conveying information and maintaining trust in the official US government forecast!)

One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.

This type of demand to give fringe people equal weight is how climate denialists muddied the waters for so long. Absolutely toxic for public opinion

The National Climate Assessment is the US gold standard report that takes years and hundreds of researchers to put together. The next version will be brought to you by a handful of people who downplay climate change and Grok www.eenews.net/articles/its...

EXCLUSIVE: the Working Families Party is putting out a recruitment call for people opposed to data centers in their communities to run for local office the recruitment effort comes just 2 days after Bernie Sanders called for a moratorium on data center construction

Most important thing to know about the Trump Media-TAE fusion deal: "No company has been able to produce fusion energy at a commercial scale" 🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

we’re just doing stock market madlibs at this point i guess