This is Not Cool

The United States, under Trump, MAGA, and the fossil fuel oligarchs, has chosen to separate from the energy transition that the rest of the world is pursuing, and which will be dominating in the new century. We are already seeing the sad results unfold, particularly in the US auto industry.

But what might be the world’s purest Petro-power, Russia, following its own vision of warlike “energy dominance” based on hydrocarbons, has put itself in position to fall, further, faster, than just about anyone else.
Watch this space.

Wall Street Journal:

Dozens of tankers filled with Russian oil are floating at sea without buyers. Western powers are seizing the aging ships the country relies upon. Buyers of Russian oil are demanding the steepest discount to global oil prices since the early months of the war in Ukraine.

It all spells crunchtime from Moscow’s most important economic engine. 

The West has tried to squeeze Russia’s oil industry since President Vladimir Putininvaded Ukraine in 2022. Russia successfully evaded sanctions, rebuilt its own shadow shipping fleet and found new buyers for its crude.

But a fresh wave of pressure, a combination of European sanctions against specific ships, dramatic military ship seizures on the high seas, and President Trump’s efforts to put a wedge between Russia and India, have left Moscow’s most important industry in a precarious state.

Russia’s main grade of crude, known as Urals, trades for around $45 a barrel, a record $27 below the international benchmark Brent, according to commodities-data firm Argus Media

Continue reading “Russia Will be the First Petro State to Crash. US Not Far Behind.”

Music: Selections from “The Whale”, celebrating the power and serenity of Water.

EDIT: Looks like NBC has disabled embedding. NO matter, follow the link and don’t miss this.

California Governor Gavin Newsom at the Security Conference in Munich this week gave a succinct answer to question about the impact of Trump’s anti environment initiatives on US autos and air quality.

Meanwhile, and I’m serious here, the White House official account published the bizarre and need I even say inaccurate video below, depicting blue haired Prius drivers suffering because, purportedly, their engine, and thus their air conditioning, have stopped while paused at a red light.

Atmospheric scientist here, again. Let's do the math.

Auto start-stop saves 3 billion gallons of fuel and prevents ~30 million tons of CO₂ annually. You just killed it.
Meanwhile, NOAA's own data shows U.S. climate disasters averaged $140 billion/year over the last decade. In… https://t.co/SFdUoO4jBG

— Chris Gloninger, CCM, CBM (@ChrisGloninger) February 13, 2026

There were multiple “Community Notes” on the post.
—–

Continue reading ““These Guys Aren’t Screwin’ around.” Gavin Newsom on Trump’s Sabotage of US Auto Industry”

CNN:

Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to US President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, according to newly released files from the US Department of Justice.

Messages sent between the pair in 2019, released in the massive document dump last month, reveal Bannon courted the late financier in his attempts to undermine the former pontiff after leaving the first Trump administration.

Bannon had been highly critical of Francis whom he saw as an opponent to his “sovereigntist” vision, a brand of nationalist populism which swept through Europe in 2018 and 2019. The released documents from the DOJ appear to show that Epstein had been helping Bannon to build his movement.

“Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”

Pope Francis was a significant obstacle to Bannon’s brand of nationalist populism. In 2018, the former Trump aide described Francis to The Spectator as “beneath contempt,” accusing him of siding with “globalist elites” and, according to “SourceMaterial,” urged Matteo Salvini, now Italy’s deputy prime minister, to “attack” the pontiff. For his part, Salvini has used Christian iconography and language when pursuing his anti-immigrant agenda.

Rome and the Vatican have been important for Bannon. He set up a Rome bureau when he ran Breitbart News and has been involved in trying to establish a political training “gladiator school” to defend Judaeo-Christian values not far from the Eternal City.

Continue reading “Why the Fossil Fueled Epstein Class Hated the Environmental Pope”

Get Coffee for this one. Climate wonk nirvana.

Last week at an event at the University of Texas, 3 leading climate deniers faced off against a single scientist.
The Deniers were authors of the Department of Energy’s Climate Working Group – a “Red Team” re-hash of settled climate science, designed to re-reinforce doubts and denial among the Republican faithful, and serve as a basis for revoking the “Endangerment Finding”, a principle on which US Government regulations of greenhouse gases is based.
Scientist Andy Dessler absolutely mopped the floor with Climate Denial’s leading lights, and added (hilariously) several insults to the injury.

Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Hilarious Slap Down of DOE Climate “Red Team””

Since the severe winter storm Fern swept across the heartland of North America in January, the Department of Energy has been on full blast messaging mode with the idea that it is only “baseload” fossil fuel power plants that allow for stability during times of grid stress.
Data is somewhat different. Gas power plants are particularly vulnerable to extreme cold snaps, and even coal facilities can, and do, fail when they are most needed.
Overall, the biggest bottleneck is not generation, but Transmission.

Niskanen Center:

After Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 and Winter Storm Elliott nearly two years later, policymakers and grid operators took steps to improve the ability of both power plants and fuel delivery infrastructure to withstand harsh weather. Yet despite those measures, Fern knocked out power to more than a million people and caused dozens of deaths, with most of the damage in the South. Nearly 300,000 customers are still without power.

Ice damaged local distribution networks, but power outages tied to mechanical and fuel-related failures exposed deeper vulnerabilities. Above all, Fern’s impact underscores that exclusive reliance on natural gas infrastructure leaves the grid ill-equipped to meet conditions during severe weather, let alone able to accommodate projected growth in demand over the next 10 years, including from the rapid expansion of AI. To make the grid as resilient as possible, it is essential that policymakers and grid operators couple near-term upgrades with longer-term interregional transfer capacity increases.

Post-Uri and Elliott grid fixes 

Fern wreaked so much havoc despite the warning signs from Uri and Elliott, which together claimed more than 300 lives as natural gas delivery failures left vulnerable customers without heat or electricity. Matters were made worse when many so-called black start generators, which are used to restart the grid after outages, failed to perform in two large grid networks, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the PJM Interconnection.

Operators took steps to strengthen both systems, tightening coordination with generators and fuel suppliers and hardening equipment against the elements. Yet without new major transmission lines, grid regions remain constrained in their ability to access lower-cost power from areas unaffected by winter weather.

Continue reading “Natural Gaslighting: “Baseload” Plants Vulnerable to Cold”

Video above is a slightly wonky but rewarding summary of the challenges of building AI at scale – something that is happening at a furious pace all over the planet, that none of us can opt out of, and we had better understand.
The challenge to the climate agenda at a moment where Epstein Class fossil fuel interests are choking clean energy development, is daunting.

Yahoo:

The data center gold rush continues to be mind-boggling.

Last week, my colleague Sharon Goldman learned that Meta has bought about 1,400 acres—an area almost twice the size of Central Park—next to its already massive 2,250-acre Hyperion AI data center site in Louisiana. It’s a reminder that the data center story is a real estate story: Sharon points out that the total site is now more than twice the size of the nearest international airport in New Orleans.

It’s a serious bet on Meta’s part, as Sharon writes:

The apparent expansion of Meta’s already enormous project offers a window into how the AI infrastructure boom is unfolding across the U.S. Hyperscalers—the Big Tech companies building out their AI infrastructure—are racing to lock up land, power, and financing for massive AI data-center campuses, often through debt-financed, politically sensitive expansions. Some, like the Louisiana project, are expanding so quickly that it may be difficult for local communities to spot or register concerns in real time.

In December 2024, Meta announced it was breaking ground on a $10 billion AI data center in Holly Ridge, an unincorporated community in Richland Parish, a rural county in northeast Louisiana. The facility was planned to span over 4 million square feet. To meet the energy demands, utility Entergy planned to construct three new natural gas plants near the site at a cost of $3 billion.

Continue reading “Meta DataCenter Louisiana Build is Boggling”

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Associated Press:

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that climate change is a danger to public health, an idea that President Donald Trump called “a scam.” But repeated scientific studies say it’s a documented and quantifiable harm.

Again and again, research has found increasing disease and deaths — thousands every year — in a warming world.

The Environmental Protection Agency finding in 2009, under the Obama administration, has been the legal underpinning of nearly all regulations fighting global warming. 

“It boggles the mind that the administration is rescinding the endangerment finding; it’s akin to insisting that the world is flat or denying that gravity is a thing,” said Dr. Howard Frumkin, a physician and professor emeritus of public health at the University of Washington. 

Thousands of scientific studies have looked at climate change and its effects on human health in the past five years and they predominantly show climate change is increasingly dangerous to people.

New York Times:

Clean energy technologies, including solar and electric vehicles, were responsible for more than a third of China’s economic growth last year, generating some $2.1 trillion in economic activity, according to an analysis by Carbon Brief.

To get a sense of how fast things are moving, I called my colleague Keith Bradsher, who is based in Beijing.

“China is way ahead of the rest of the world,” he told me. “Not just in installing a lot of renewable energy and new transportation technologies, but also in scoring research breakthroughs.”

Donald Trump’s actions will lead to the death of American car manufacturing. It’s horrendous and completely self-inflicted. pic.twitter.com/94jsGzJ7wD

— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) February 13, 2026

The U.S. turns back the clock
The contrast between Beijing and Washington is stark.

Continue reading “The Epstein Class Agenda: Back to the Past with MAGA, and Fossil Fuels”

Video from today by Helion Energy, a fusion startup that is aiming for an actual working reactor in this decade.
This morning, February 13, the company reached a new milestone in it’s development.

Reuters:

Helion Energy, a startup backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank’s venture capital arm, has started construction on a site for a planned nuclear fusion power plant that will supply power to Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab data centers by 2028, the company said on Wednesday.

The site in Malaga, Washington, is in the center of the state along the Columbia River, where Helion hopes to take advantage of grid infrastructure in place for the nearby Rock Island Dam hydroelectric plant.

Helion:

EVERETT, Wash. – Feb. 13, 2026 – Helion, a Washington-based fusion energy company, announced that its Polaris prototype has set new fusion industry benchmarks, becoming the first privately developed fusion energy machine to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion and achieve plasma temperatures of 150 million degrees Celsius (MºC). Both milestones mark significant breakthroughs in Helion’s vision to make commercially viable fusion energy a reality and are firsts for the private fusion industry.

“We believe the surest path to commercializing fusion is building, learning and iterating as quickly as possible,” said David Kirtley, co-founder and CEO of Helion. “We’ve built and operated seven prototypes, setting and exceeding more ambitious technical and engineering goals each time. The historic results from our deuterium-tritium testing campaign on Polaris validate our approach to developing high power fusion and the excellence of our engineering.”

Continue reading “Record Setting Fusion Landmark Set”