This is Not Cool

What Happens If US Diesel Stops Flowing? Crucial Explainer.

What happens when the world’s biggest exporter of one of the most important substances for modern civilisation decides to stop exporting it?
We might be about to find out.
Primer on US diesel and the coming fuel crunch, inc why it could be especially grisly for Britain.

Sky News Ed Conway has come forward with a series of some of the most valuable explainers since the outset of the Iran war and the global energy crisis.

No matter what this miserably incompetent and out of control administration does from here, every option just super charges the rush away from fossil dependence.

OilPrice.com:

Heavy trucks were supposed to be the place where batteries stopped working.

Electric cars could manage school runs and commuting, critics conceded. But long-distance freight needed range, rapid refueling and maximum payload. Batteries would be too large, too heavy and too slow to charge. Buses might electrify predictable urban routes, but serious trucking would require diesel, hydrogen or renewable liquid fuels.

The market is beginning to deliver a different verdict. Global sales of zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles rose 86% in 2025, exceeding 520,000 units, according to new data from the International Council on Clean Transportation. China accounted for nearly 90% of sales, but the European market also accelerated: zero-emission trucks rose from roughly 2.5% to 4.5% of new sales, while the battery-electric share of buses increased from 18.5% to 24.8%.

Extreme Weather Impacting Harvests Nationwide

AgroLatam:

Heavy rainfall is delaying corn and soybean harvest activity across parts of the U.S. Midwest on Tuesday, September 22, while persistent drought continues to pressure winter wheat planting and livestock pastures farther south and west, according to USDA agricultural weather data.The sharp regional contrast matters as U.S. farmers enter a critical fall window when field conditions can influence harvest speed, crop quality, input costs and ultimately expectations for commodity supplies and prices.

Across the Corn Belt, cool and mostly cloudy conditions are slowing evaporation after heavy rainfall left portions of the region unusually wet. Additional rain developed Tuesday across eastern Iowa, northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, further limiting opportunities for producers waiting to resume fieldwork. As of September 20, topsoil moisture was rated 38% surplus in Ohio and 28% surplus in Iowa, according to USDA data, underscoring how rapidly field conditions have shifted in some major corn and soybean areas.

Super Greenhouse Gas is Vital Part of Electrification

Experiments like these not recommended

Problem:
A gas commonly used in electric transformers is also one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
Solution:
See below.

Inside Climate News:

China’s electric grid has a dirty secret: Despite leading the world in renewable energy expansion, it is also the largest emitter of the planet’s most potent greenhouse gas.

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a synthetic chemical that plays a critical role as an electrical insulator in high-voltage equipment. The gas is odorless, invisible, non-toxic and non-flammable. But it is also a climate killer, 24,300 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide on a pound-for-pound basis. Once released, sulfur hexafluoride remains in the atmosphere for 1,000 years.

Emissions come primarily from the electric power sector, where the gas is used in circuit breakers and other high-voltage equipment to prevent electricity from arcing. Nearly indestructible, SF6 serves as a critical backstop for any modern electric grid, ensuring that electricity flows only when and where it is needed. However, when electrical equipment in China reaches the end of its useful life, much of the gas is likely vented into the atmosphere.

National Grid:

The use of SF₆ has served the electricity supply industry well from the 1970s onwards, due to its excellent electrical insulating properties and even better arc quenching abilities.

Prior to this, vastly complex circuit-breakers were used, which required a large amount of compressed air at high pressure as well as taking up a lot of space. The use of SF₆ in transmission switchgear allowed utilities to compact and miniaturise substations, meaning smaller footprints and less obtrusive designs. It has also driven down costs, both in switchgear capital investment and ongoing maintenance.

Berkeley Earth: 2026 Now Likely to Set Temp Record

In this morning’s monthly Global Temperature Briefing from Berkeley Earth, Zeke Hausfather and Robert Rohde predicted that, after a slow start, 2026 may end up as a record warm year, to be followed in all likelihood, by another record in 2027, pumped by the historically strong El Niño currently developing in the Pacific.

August was the hottest August in the historical record, the graph below shows a sobbing extent of global areas where temperatures were warmer than normal, or record high.

Explainer: Why Banning Diesel Exports Won’t Work

Report above from WHAM Rochester New York.

Administration panicking about Diesel prices, but the reflexive remedy guaranteed to make things worse.
How come Democrats have to explain markets to Republicans?

Jared Bernstein on Substack:

Busy this AM, so will be quick, but a number of people (okay, three…) have asked me whether this idea of US export controls on our diesel exports, an idea that’s gaining traction, will help US diesel users with the historically high price of this pervasively important fuel. Mostly, no. Here’s why.

—The location problem. If we stop exporting diesel it will mostly be stuck where it is refined, around the US Gulf states. Why stuck? Because there are two ways to get refined product to where it’s needed: pipelines and ships. Well, the main pipeline (Colonial Pipeline) invariably runs at capacity and the Jones Act, which bans non-US commercial vessels from shipping goods between US ports, has meant that New England, where it’s about to get cold (diesel and heating oil are common distillates), directly imports diesel. Now, the Jones Act is currently waived, so that’s potentially helpful, but it’s been the law of the seas for decades and so far, US Gulf-to-east-coast waterborne shipments have gone up only slightly relative to pre-waiver.

In other words, shut in diesel might well sell at a discount on the Gulf Coast, while New England states pay more—possible a lot more—for imported product.

AI Researcher’s Passionate Address at UN

Yoshua Bengio is a Canadian computer scientist, and a pioneer of artificial neural networks and deep learning. Bengio received the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award, often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing”, with Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun for their foundational work on deep learning.

He is the most cited computer scientist worldwide, and the most-cited living scientist across all fields (by total citations).

Takeaway – “As with other world changing technologies, we can shape the outcome, I’m confident we can create AI that demonstrably remains under our control, and supports human joy and endeavor..It’s an urgent mission for humanity.

We must work together on technical solutions that make AI safe by design, guaranteed by International agreements.”

European Leadership Network:

One of the few institutions to survive the past decade’s erosion of international security agreements is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) – the agreement banning nuclear test explosions in all environments.

Arctic Ice Reaches 2026 Annual Minimum

NASA:

Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent on Sept. 12, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder. The ice covered an estimated 1.78 million square miles (4.6 million square kilometers), tying 2008, 2010, and 2025 for the 10th-lowest minimum in the satellite record.

The 2026 minimum is consistent with patterns observed in the satellite record. The past 20 years, from 2007 through 2026, have produced the 20 lowest annual Arctic sea ice minimum extents observed since continuous satellite measurements began in late 1978.

Arctic sea ice grows during the dark, cold autumn and winter and retreats as temperatures rise during spring and summer, typically reaching its lowest extent in September. Weather conditions can cause substantial differences in the amount of ice that melts from one summer to another.

Over the last decade, for example, increased cloud cover has prevented solar radiation from further accelerating the melt of sea ice, according to Linette Boisvert, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

That has contributed to relatively stable September sea ice extent in recent years. “We’ve plateaued, but we’re still low relative to the earlier part of the record,” said Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at NSIDC.

Michigan City Pioneers Solar/Battery Initiative

Detroit News station reporting on Ann Arbor’s (Go Blue) new initiative to provide solar panels and battery backup to residents, as a step toward creating a city owned utility, and cutting the cord to Utility DTE, which has been criticized for not maintaining reliability in the face of increasing weather extremes.

Energy Sec Says Diesel Export Ban Would Not Work. Deathwatch clock Starts Ticking

Above, Baton Rouge, Louisiana TV report say without exports, refineries will have to stop production on multiple streams of product, including jet fuel, heating oil, and gasoline.
Energy Secretary Wright, perhaps seeing this as his chance to bail, agrees.
Death watch clock now ticking.

Reuters:

NEW YORK, Sept 23 (Reuters) – US Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Wednesday said a US ban on diesel exports would ‌not work and could push up gasoline and jet fuel prices, a stance at odds with President Donald Trump, who is backing the idea.

Diesel prices have surged to record highs due to the US-Israeli war with Iran and the conflict in Ukraine, angering farmers and other users of the fuel ahead of the midterm elections in November that will decide control of Congress.

“The blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work,” Wright said at an event hosted by the Economist in New York.

CNBC reporting below, highlights Iowa farmers deeply unhappy with War-jacked Diesel prices, but calls Diesel export ban a “terrible idea that would only raise prices”.

Breaking Down Data Center’s Tax Breaks

Tax Policy Center:

States rethink data center tax breaks. States that once used generous tax incentives to attract data centers are facing growing costs, reports The Wall Street Journal. Ohio’s sales tax exemption for tech company purchases of computer servers and other equipment grew to over $1.5 billion last year, more than 10 times the state’s original estimate. Gov. Mike DeWine (R) paused new applications for the sales tax break in May. Lawmakers in at least 10 other states including Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington are ending similar tax breaks, and dozens of other states’ lawmakers are considering legislation to end them.

—
According to the Wall Street Journal, Governors in at least 10 states have “slammed the brakes” on Data Center tax breaks, including Illinois, New Jersey and Washington, thereby pushing developments into still-friendly states like West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Proponents are argue that the large local taxes they still pay could be massively beneficial to local communities, schools, roads, and services like Fire/Rescue.