Month: October 2025

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
– George Orwell , 1984

New York Times:

The Trump administration this year stopped updating a federal database that tracked the cost of extreme weather and informed an annual list of hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage.

But the cost of such catastrophes continues to escalate at a record pace. That’s according to a revived version of the database released Wednesday by the nonprofit group Climate Central.

Through the first six months of this year, disasters across the United States caused more than $100 billion in damage, the most expensive start to any year on record, it found. Fourteen disasters each caused at least $1 billion in damage through the first half of the year, the researchers found.

The tally comes as President Trump has said he wants to eventually shift the burden of disaster relief and recovery from the federal government onto states. And there are signs that is already happening. The administration has created a panel that is expected to recommend changes to the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency operates by the end of November.

Continue reading “Scientists Seek New Home to Preserve Disaster Data”

Sodium is cheap, widely available, and in newest configurations, matches or exceeds performance of current-standard Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries.
In particular, CATL’s recently ann0unced batteries have an energy density that exceeds standard LFPs, and blows away any Lithium based system for it’s performance at low, and high, temperatures.
Much, much safer from “thermal runaway” ie fires.

CarNewsChina:

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL) announced that its sodium-ion battery has achieved an energy density of 175 Wh/kg and can support more than 500 kilometres of pure electric driving range. The company said the technology will enter mass supply next year, depending on customer rollout schedules.

CATL explained that sodium-ion batteries have slightly lower energy density than lithium-ion batteries but provide distinct advantages in low-temperature performance, carbon footprint, and safety. These characteristics, the company said, make the technology well-suited to expanding new energy vehicle adoption in cold climate regions and broadening the geographical scope of electric mobility applications.

According to CATL, the sodium-ion battery could cover over 40 per cent of passenger vehicle demand in the domestic market, giving it vast potential for commercialisation. The company added that its sodium battery packs are designed for strong compatibility with No. 20 and No. 25 standard modules, including battery swap formats, enabling use across a broad range of vehicle platforms without requiring significant design changes from automakers.

Continue reading “Sodium Ion Batteries set to End Lithium Dominance”

We saw last week the huge thumbs down that markets are giving coal in the US, with the cancellation of a Department of Interior sale of coal reserves, after the best offer was for less than a penny a ton.
Dinosaur autocrats love coal, because it helps concentrate power in their inner circle of Oligarchs.
Clean, distributed energy disseminates power more broadly, and spreads economic gains to grassroots communities.
The fossil fuel era is collapsing right in front of us, as the discussion above clearly lays out.

Forbes:

Russia’s coal collapse marks the breaking point of the fossil era. With thermal-coal prices down nearly 80 percent from their 2022 peak and over half of Russia’s producers now losing money, Moscow’s lifeline industry is imploding — even as renewables, batteries, and storage become the fastest-growing assets in the world economy.

According to the Financial Times, the sector lost Rbs 225 billion (≈ US$2.8 billion) in the first seven months of 2025 — more than double 2024’s total losses — as exports vanished and subsidies fail. Twenty-three coal companies — about 13 percent of the national total — have already shut down, and another 53 are at risk of closing. Once Russia’s fourth-largest export, coal has become its worst-performing industry in more than 30 years.

Continue reading “Putin, Trump: Two Autocrats Bet Big on Coal. They Are Losing”

These two relatively short videos, taken together, will give you a pretty good picture of the black hole that Trump and his gang of fossil fueled oligarchs have taken the US economy into.
Shitstorm coming.

On an Atlantic Island, at last they could hear bird songs.
In Idaho, closing coal plants means lower rates.

New. York Times:

Block Island, a beloved summer destination off the coast of Rhode Island that’s home to about a thousand year-round residents, is known for unspoiled beaches, dramatic bluffs and charming Victorian inns.

And, more recently, for the nation’s first commercial offshore wind farm.

The turbines started delivering electricity in 2016, the year Donald J. Trump was first elected president. Since his re-election, offshore wind has come under siege in the United States. The Trump administration has attacked several projects under construction, including one that’s almost completed off the coast of Rhode Island, saying wind farms have no place in American waters.

But the Block Islanders have a different story to tell. Wind power has changed their lives in welcome and sometimes surprising ways.

“The benefits have been extraordinary,” said Keith Stover, head of the island’s Town Council.

Before the five turbines started spinning a few miles off the coast, this island ran on five big generators. Soot-spewing and earsplitting, the machines burned a million gallons of diesel a year, ferried in from the mainland on tanker trucks and stored underground. Energy costs, tied to the volatile oil market, seesawed so much that local businesses struggled to manage their budgets, residents said. Power surges and dips fried household appliances. Clocks wouldn’t keep time. Those who lived near the power company described scraping soot off their windows and having to wash their curtains every month.

Continue reading “Energy Transition’s Benefits Keep Adding Up”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has shown himself to be a complete sellout to Donald Trump, a man that Wright called “terrible and truly awful” in 2016.

Everything Trump touches dies.

Politico:

A series of political missteps and policy disputes has strained Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s relationship with the White House, 10 people familiar with the dynamic told POLITICO — causing some to question how much longer he can last in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

The friction, these people said, includes complaints that Wright was too slow to loop in the White House on his plans to kill tens of billions of dollars in Biden-era clean energy grants — and too willing to defend the interests of industries that want some of that funding preserved. Decisions on revoking those grants brought him into conflict with White House staff, POLITICO reported last week.

One industry executive and two other people familiar with the tensions also pointed to what they called a delay in DOE’s approval of natural gas export projects that Trump had campaigned on green-lighting. Meanwhile, rifts between factions in the Energy Department’s upper ranks have led to at least three senior staff members being removed from their posts in the past week, four people said.

The people who spoke to POLITICO include administration officials and others who interact closely with senior officials in the White House and DOE. POLITICO granted them anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Continue reading “I DOE Sec On the Way Out?”

Wall Street Journal:

To take off, simply hold the toggle switch forward. The props turn slowly in unison—calibrating, calibrating—then spool furiously, a squadron of lawn mowers on deck. The machine vaults into the air, nose-first, throwing you on your back, looking at the sky. It will just hang like that until you push the joystick forward. Remember to keep that thumb going up.

Around 100 feet, pilots transition to Cruise mode. Click the trigger and the BlackFly noses down, bringing the pilot to a position more like a gaming chair than an ejection seat. As the wings begin to generate lift, the rotors’ pace slackens. The droning drops an octave. You can let go of the joystick if you like. The BlackFly goes where it’s pointed. Feel free to move about the cabin.

In other words, it’s easy. What makes the BlackFly disruptively like an automobile isn’t the range (20 minutes) or top speed (55 knots, per FAA rules). It’s the accessibility. By virtue of its human-factors engineering and flight-control automation, the BlackFly can be mastered by almost anyone with a few days’ training, roughly comparable to the requirements for a driver’s license. Nor is age any barrier. The craft’s joystick controller is practically instinctive to game-trained teenagers. The oldest BlackFly-certified pilot is 88.

Continue reading “Flying Cars are Here. And they Are EVs.”

ABC News Meteorologist Ginger Zee looks at the reliability of Clean energy, solar and wind.

Below, a couple of revealing graphs on comparative reliability of US and German grids.

As you know Germany gets about half of its electricity from renewable sources.
Most recent data shows that, forthe average German electric customer the average electric outage per consumer was down from 12.8 minutes in 2023, to 11.7 minutes in 2024.

Continue reading “Can Renewables Be Reliable?”

The first climate catastrophe that will get Middle America’s attention won’t be a giant wave rolling into New York City – that’s just a movie.
But home insurance, that’s real.

A few years ago, a very conservative Republican insurance executive wrote this to me:

In my 30 years I have never seen anything like what is happening right now.  I sit on several different advisory boards and insurance companies are scared to death about the trends they are seeing.  You’re correct, it’s not just coastal areas either, which by the way are nearly impossible to insure right now.  I had two house last week in Hilton Head where the premium went from $12k to over $30K and they were lucky to get the $30K. There was nothing else on the market.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell underlined this to the US Senate earlier this year, in response to questioning by Minnesota Senator Tina Smith.

Continue reading “Will Insurance Protect Your Home Against Climate Change?”