This is Not Cool

Art of the Deal.

Financial Times:

Instead, the best immediate hope for emissions reduction is China, ironically a vast consumer of coal that has frequently resisted binding carbon targets. Its accidental co-conspirator is Trump, an outright climate change denier. For the past 15 or so years, China has poured trillions of dollars in spending and tax breaks — often buttressed by tariffs and regulations — into renewable energy and other green tech, particularly electric vehicles.
As a massive net oil importer, it was driven more by energy security and strategic industrial policy than global environmental stewardship. Still, the planet should take its wins where it can get them. The increase in oil prices from the Iran war has acted as the world’s most unexpected carbon pricing scheme, with Trump being China’s best salesman. As data from the think-tank Ember shows, sales of green tech have shot up, including in the US, to replace demand for oil. The art of the deal, indeed.

It’s not necessarily being done in a way economists would endorse. You might disapprove of Chinese solar panels flooding the world market as state-subsidised overcapacity, or approve of it as production for a market where rising demand will match supply. Or, like me, you might simply not care either way as long as massively cheap panels are available. The positive externalities of low-cost renewable energy surely exceed the inefficiency from distorting market signals. (More complex technology with security implications, such as electric vehicles, is a harder question.)

Continue reading “Trump is China’s Best Salesman”

California has been a punching bag for anti clean energy trolls, due to the high retail, residential prices of electricity. But those prices are due in large part not to the price of production, which is very competitive, but to the added costs of hardening the transmission and distribution system to increasing impacts from fires and extreme weather, volatility of natural gas prices, and the cost of recent natural gas leaks such as the Alliso Canyon disaster.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab:

Data from the EIA show that the states most dependent on natural gas experienced some of the greatest increases in retail electricity prices through 2022–2023 (see SI-9), followed by some of the largest price decreases. The relationship between state-level natural gas share and retail electricity price variability is illustrated (see bottom).

Continue reading “California Prices Showing Impact of Clean Energy”

More stories about unexpected synergies of Solar and wildlife.
We are in a biodiversity crisis as severe as our climate crisis, and there are a number of stories emerging about how solar fields, oftreplacing industrially farmed crops, are creating habitat for a diverse set of species, large and small.

Pulse:

A subtle revolution is happening deep in Colombia.

More than a quarter of a million solar panels at El Paso are quietly going about their job. But a secret process is unfolding underneath the arrays.
Prey species of wildlife are moving in, appreciating the “sanctuaries.”

But motion cameras recorded the remarkable moment one elusive predator decided to make the panels its home.
What rarely seen cat is covertly thriving inside Colombia’s largest solar farm?

Enel Green Power is the international energy powerhouse behind the El Paso Solar Park in Colombia’s picturesque César region. 

It’s the first large-scale solar endeavor of its kind in the country. The solar farm leaves a massive footprint with 250,000 photovoltaic panels and supporting infrastructure. 
Its installed capacity is 86.2 MW, supporting around 100,000 homes. This is an incredible figure for Colombia.

Yet, the El Paso farm has had an unexpected effect on wildlife. 

The fencing off of the solar farm has created a secure perimeter. The land is undisturbed by hunting and deforestation, and animals were quick to take advantage. Species that have never even seen such high-tech equipment before think it’s the perfect setup for living.

In fact, one of Earth’s most secretive and shy mammals was recorded moving in with her whole family.
What is it about an industrial power plant that could attract a creature ordinarily so reclusive?

Continue reading “Columbian Solar Field is Refuge for Rarely Seen Cat”

“I’ve never seen this before.”

New York Times March 22, 2024:

Golf balls, tennis balls, softballs. All sound like the stuff of fun games — except when they are used to describe the size of the hailstones that often accompany severe thunderstorms.

Those hailstones can cause significant damage to homes and cars, a growing worry as warming temperatures fuel more destructive storms. This month, baseball-size hail, sometimes called “gorilla hail” because of its heft, was reported in Kansas and Missouri.

The insurance industry reported $60 billion in losses from “severe convective storms” — a catchall name for thunderstorms that may spawn hail, heavy rain, lightning, high winds and tornadoes — last year, said Mark Friedlander, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group. In 2022, the industry reported $31 billion in losses.

Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center show 5,879 reports of hailstones of one inch or larger in 2022, up 17 percent from 5,020 in 2021. Preliminary data for 2023 show 6,962 reports, including a significant increase in reports of very large hailstones of two inches or more.

Continue reading “Monster Hail Killing Crops, Cratering Ground as Midwest Storm Damage Grows”

Fox Weather: Illinois “has really become the place to watch” for tornadoes.

Jim Cantore on X:

Illinois has ALREADY crushed their state record for the number of tornadoes in one year. The old record was 142 (2024) and this year we are approaching 200 tornadoes after this weekends spinners. Illinois has seen more tornadoes than any other state since 2015 according to an article from

@nbcchicago late last week. It’s the third time in the last four years Illinois has led the country in tornadoes. TX holds the record for the most tornadoes in a single year with 244 back in 2015. That data set goes back to 1950. Phones and a sprawling population certainly allow us to miss very little these days. No one knows where the rest of the year goes in IL After a very low tornado count in May, June has brought us back above average for 2026 nationally.

Below, phenomenal reporting and graphs from NBC Chicago station WMAQ.

Continue reading “Illinois Breaks Tornado Record – “the Place to Watch””

You elect the world’s most notorious and well documented liar to be President.
What could possibly go wrong?

Hormuz closed again despite “deal” announced this week.

Put yourself in the position of a shipper, or someone that insures shippers, and ask what’s going to happen.
Interview above with Oil markets expert Dan Dicker is a must watch.

New York Times:

Shipping numbers in the Strait of Hormuz have been on a slow climb since the United States and Iran agreed to a preliminary deal this week to end the war and reopen the vital waterway. But traffic was suddenly jeopardized on Saturday, when Iran’s military said it was shutting the strait once again.

The closure came as U.S. Central Command announced a milestone, saying 55 commercial ships transited the strait on Saturday. That would be the largest number of ships to cross in a day since Iran effectively closed the strait early in the war — though it’s still far below the 130 daily prewar average.

It was not clear whether traffic had changed after Iran announced the new closure.

The confusion compounded as the United States and Iran offered conflicting assessments. The naval arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said if ships approached the strait, their security would be at risk.

But Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, denied in a text message on Saturday that Iran had closed the waterway, saying, “The strait is open and the U.S. blockade against Iran has ceased.” He wrote that traffic was “continuing to flow” and U.S. forces were monitoring the situation to ensure that continues.

Continue reading “Memorandum of Misunderstanding: Must-Watch Oil Trader Interview”

Just finished doing a series of sessions educating Michigan Rural Democrats on data center facts and fictions. This news report just illustrates vividly one of the key points I made.

Fact: Some data centers make noise that drives neighbors nuts.

Clarification: These projects are those that have chosen to skip connecting to the power grid, and built their own “behind the meter” power supplies, generally with giant gas turbines.
These kinds of facilities are responsible for many of the horror stories that arise out of Data center development, and the concerns about blowing up climate goals.
Fortunately for us, this solution is one that is simply not going to work for a large number of locations, for reasons that are economic, social, and plain physics.

Below, Jigar Shah explains.

Continue reading ““Behind the Meter” Turbines are Data Center Disasters”

Dark surfaces absorb more light, and heat up faster.
In “improving” Washington DC’s fabled reflecting pond, Trump hired flunkies that painted the bottom a dark shade of blue, and covered it with a coating meant for pick up truck beds. I’m not joking.
It’s basic high school physics, but a key factor in climate science, especially related to “feedback” effects that amplify the warming influence of carbon dioxide.
It was the whole rationale behind the Dark Snow Project, the international science effort that brought me to Greenland the first time with Glaciologist Jason Box some 13 years ago this week. Jason’s idea was that, since darker surfaces absorb more heat – dark materials like soot from wildfires must be having an effect on the Greenland Ice sheet, where particles from far flung forest fires in the Northern Hemisphere gather in and darken large areas of otherwise dazzling white ice.
White ice reflects 90 percent of all incoming light.
Dark ice absorbs much more.

The same effect is a powerful factor as Arctic and Antarctic Sea Ice disappears, revealing dark sea water underneath, which absorbs heat rapidly.

Continue reading “How A Climate Scientist Could’ve Helped Save the Reflecting Pond”

This has to be one of the wildest time lapses I have ever filmed. The Effingham, Illinois-area EF3 tornado was as picturesque and textbook as it was deleterious.

Watch the parent thunderstorm's rotating updraft rapidly organize. At the cloud's base, a bowl-shaped lowering… pic.twitter.com/5gQnWsFmWh

— Matthew Cappucci (@MatthewCappucci) June 20, 2026

Is Illinois the new node of Tornado Alley?

Accuweather:

Illinois has led the nation in preliminary tornado reports for most of 2026, and after five were tallied during a severe weather outbreak on Wednesday, the state has surpassed its record for the most in a year. And it’s only June.

Continue reading “Effing Tornado Effs Up Effing Effingham”