This is Not Cool

New York Times:

China is quickly becoming the global leader in nuclear power, with nearly as many reactors under construction as the rest of the world combined. While its dominance of solar panels and electric vehicles is well known, China is also building nuclear plants at an extraordinary pace. By 2030, China’s nuclear capacity is set to surpass that of the United States, the first country to split atoms to make electricity.

Many of China’s reactors are derived from American and French designs, yet China has overcome the construction delays and cost overruns that have bogged down Western efforts to expand nuclear power.

At the same time, China is pushing the envelope, making breakthroughs in next-generation nuclear technologies that have eluded the West. The country is also investing heavily in fusion, a potentially limitless source of clean power if anyone can figure out how to tame it.

Beijing’s ultimate objective is to become a supplier of nuclear power to the world, joining the rare few nations — including the United States, Russia, France and South Korea — that can design and export some of the most sophisticated machines ever invented.

“The Chinese are moving very, very fast,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has written a book on China’s nuclear program. “They are very keen to show the world that their program is unstoppable.”

As the United States and China compete for global supremacy, energy has become a geopolitical battleground. The United States, particularly under President Trump, has positioned itself as the leading supplier of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. China, by contrast, dominates the manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, seeing renewable power as the multi-trillion-dollar market of the future.

Nuclear power is enjoying a resurgence of global interest, especially as concerns about climate change mount. That’s because nuclear reactors don’t spew planet-warming emissions, unlike coal and gas plants, and can produce electricity around the clock, unlike wind and solar power.

Utterly brilliant Epstein primer from Never Stop Asking on TikTok.

Sounds like European Law enforcement about to get “spicy” on Elon Musk’s sorry ass.

Euronews:

The formal investigation into X comes after outcry at the platform’s failure to prevent the creation of sexually explicit images of real people – including children.

The European Commission has launched a formal investigation into Grok, X’s chatbot, after the image-editing function of its built-in AI tool was widely used to virtually undress pictures of real women and underage girls without their consent.

As first reported by Handelsblatt, the probe will look at whether or not the social media platform did enough to mitigate the risk of the images being created and disseminated.

If X is found to have breached EU online platform rules under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the Commission could fine the company up to 6% of its global annual turnover.

Last December, the European Commission fined Elon Musk’s social network €120 million over its account verification tick marks and advertising practices.

The concerns emerged last summer after the platform’s built-in AI tool, Grok, was enhanced with a paid feature known as “Spicy Mode”, which allowed users to prompt it to create explicit content.

Elon Musk mocked the ensuing outcry in post on his X account.

Continue reading “In Europe: Elon Musk Must Answer for Grok’s “Spicy” Algorithm”

Euronews:

The (French) government is preparing to publish a key energy roadmap, aiming for 60% electricity consumption by 2030, with six new nuclear reactors and a mix of renewable energies.

After months of political deadlock in France over the budget, the government is preparing to move forward on one of its most sensitive policy areas: energy.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has confirmed that he will sign, “by the end of next week”, the decree publishing France’s long-awaited multi-year energy programme (PPE), which sets out the country’s energy roadmap through 2035.

In an interview with Ouest-France, Lecornu said the decision was driven by “urgency”, noting that the plan had been delayed for nearly three years due to deep political divisions over the balance between nuclear power and renewable energy.

At the heart of the strategy is a major objective: raising electricity’s share of France’s total energy consumption to 60% by 2030, up from around 30% today.

“Decarbonising the country requires reviving electricity production,” Lecornu said, underscoring the scale of the shift.

Fossil fuels still dominate key sectors such as transport and heavy industry in France. Electricity demand has also grown more slowly than expected, complicating efforts to cut emissions.

To address this, the government plans to accompany the PPE with a “major plan to electrify energy use”, targeting transport, buildings and industry. 

Lecornu said incentives would be needed “to speed things up” to ensure that “60% of our energy consumption in 2030 is electric”.

Continue reading “France Will Electrify with Renewables and New Nuclear”

Mark Z Jacobson on Facebook:

SuperBowlLX was the first Super Bowl with the stadium powered by 100% solar alone for the pre-game show (from 10 AM-3 PM PT), since the California ISO grid was powered by 100% solar during that time.

Sunday, February 8 was also the 22nd day of 2026 with 100% Wind-Water-Solar powering the grid for part of the day-and no blackouts

SB LVIII in Las Vegas was 100% RE but not solar alone

Our institutional understanding of climate science is feeling a little like a snowball in Hell right now.

Oligarchs readying massive environmental rug-pull that will reverberate for ages.

Wall Street Journal:

The Trump administration is planning this week to repeal the Obama-era scientific finding that serves as the legal basis for federal greenhouse-gas regulation, according to U.S. officials, in the most far-reaching rollback of U.S. climate policy to date. 

The reversal targets the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which concluded that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The finding provided the legal underpinning for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules, which limited emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act.

“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in an interview. 

The final rule, set to be made public later this week, removes the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions and reporting obligations for industries, according to administration officials.

It wouldn’t apply to rules governing emissions from power plants and other stationary sources such as oil-and-gas facilities, the officials said. But repealing the finding could open up the door to rolling back regulations that affect those facilities.

Continue reading “Snowball in Hell: Endangerment Finding Endangered”

Disclaimer: Not all climate deniers are pedophiles, but I bet most pedophiles are climate deniers.

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Sara Peach is Editor at Yale Climate Connections (via email):

As I’ve written, Epstein expressed doubt about mainstream climate change science.
In a typo-laden email that appears to have been sent to Woody Allen’s wife Soon Yi Previn, Epstein wrote, “I think you might consider the sources you guys rely on for info , are the same that write the bad articles about each of us.”

He added, “Your knowledge of the falsity of articles about each of us, is really no different than the ones on climate change etc.”

What an unintentionally revealing argument!

Continue reading “More Epstein Climate Denial”

AI unlikely to replace the cooks, carpenters, and other support workers at two Antarctic facilities run by the British Antarctic Survey.

The fossil fuel industry got what it wanted – a Presidency entirely pliable to their agenda, if only because he was only interested in pursuing his own robbery and selloff of America.
But the cost has been staggering. None of us would have believed it could happen so fast.
Trump has done what Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9-11, Iraq, and Covid failed to do – crush the American Brand, as a cultural touchstone, the aspirational ideal, the world’s best hope of a better life, rule of law, and the prospect of a rules based order.
A friend in Iceland once said to me, “We’re all Americans now, after all, aren’t we?”

Because the world looked to America as a gold standard for governance, for democracy, for the best science and universities, and for a system that, for all its flaws, would eventually find the right way – they gave us grace, and enough confidence to make our currency the global reserve standard, the refuge for capital that for decades underwrote our profligate national debt.
If you thought this was just politics of the moment, if you thought this was not going to have a long term effect, you’re in for a nasty surprise.
Good essay here, it’s long, so I am just excerpting the first part.

Gandalv on X:

There’s a moment many of us remember—standing in a Tokyo 7-Eleven at 2 AM, cracking open an ice-cold Coca-Cola. Or queuing outside an Apple Store in Berlin, giddy with anticipation. Or watching Friends reruns in a Melbourne apartment, laughing at jokes that felt universal. America wasn’t just a country then. It was a feeling. A promise. The place where anything was possible, where justice prevailed, where the underdog could win.

That America is dead.

And we need to talk about what killed it—because this isn’t about politics as usual. This isn’t about left versus right, red versus blue. This is about watching a nation that once exported hope now export shame. And the world is responding in the only language that truly matters: they’re walking away.

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Billions Lost, Trust Shattered

Let’s start with the cost, because Americans respect a balance sheet. They worship GDP and twerk for it.

Tesla’s European sales collapsed by over 40% in multiple quarters of 2025. Not because the cars got worse—because the CEO became synonymous with an administration that Europeans view with barely concealed horror. When Elon Musk stands beside Donald Trump, every Tesla on the Autobahn becomes a political statement people no longer want to make.

Starbucks lost more than $20 billion in market value in 2025. The green mermaid, once a symbol of cosmopolitan coffee culture, now carries the stain of association with American foreign policy decisions that much of the world finds morally bankrupt.

Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Nike—brands that once represented the pinnacle of global cool—are now actively avoided by consumers from Toronto to Tokyo. Not boycotted in angry protest, but quietly set aside. Replaced. Forgotten.

Continue reading “How MAGA Killed America’s Brand”

It was something a lot of folks might not have gotten, but Meteorologist Ryann Jones of KXAS Dallas Ft Worth made the right connection immediately during the Bad Bunny Super Bowl performance (below), when the set featured workers on power poles.
Bad Bunny’s home in Puerto Rico has been increasingly exposed to more and more extreme storms and hurricanes, like Maria in 2017, that have battered the island’s power system and highlighted the need for more resilient and distributed energy system.

Continue reading “Bad Bunny Highlights Puerto Rico Power Outages”