Month: December 2025

Reposting this from David Fenton, a long time progressive activist, PR pro, Communicator, author of The Activist’s Media Handbook.

Framelab:

Bill Gates was yelling and screaming at me. Turning beet red. Waving his arms. Bullying, condescending, mocking. In public, no less.

It was August, 2010 at the Techonomy Conference at Lake Tahoe. The month before, I watched Gates acknowledge the problem of climate change for the first time at the Aspen Ideas Festival. 

This was most welcome, yet, curiously, Gates claimed that climate change was mostly a problem for poor people in the tropics. It would not affect North America and Europe very much. New York and Miami under water—not a problem. Heat wave deaths, fires, wildfire smoke in the Pacific Northwest, stronger hurricanes, ocean acidification—not to worry.

At the Tahoe conference, I told the head of Gates’ private office that this could be embarrassing to Bill. He encouraged me to talk to Gates about it, introducing us in the hallway between workshops.

“Thank you for getting involved in the climate issue. We need you,” I said. “I wonder if I could introduce you to scientists who study North American impacts. They will be quite severe, including to Seattle and the Cascades.”

Gates turned red and started waving his arms at me. In a loud voice, he growled “Who the hell are you? I talk to the world’s top climate scientists.”

Continue reading “When Bill Gates Yelled at Me Over Climate Change”

Good update from one of our most fluent climate communicators, Daniel Swain, jointly of UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Stick a fork in the road.

US automakers, ensconced in their Fox News enabled bubble, have been asleep, while Chinese engineers burned the midnight oil to produce EVs that, if they ever come to our shores (and they will) – will
mean the end of our legacy auto industry

Below, a cut down version of “Who Killed the Electric Car?”.

Ooops.

India Today:

Calling out Donald Trump’s hypocrisy, Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted that the US continues to purchase uranium from Russia, key to producing nuclear reactor fuel, while pressuring India to stop energy imports from Moscow. In an exclusive interview with India Today, Putin, who arrived in New Delhi for a two-day visit, emphasised that India should enjoy the same privilege if the US had the right to purchase fuel from Russia.

The US continues to buy nuclear fuel from us for their nuclear power plants. That is also fuel. Energy. This is uranium for nuclear power plants that are functioning in the US,” Putin said in the interview ahead of his first visit to India in four years.

Russia is the second-largest supplier of enriched uranium to the US, accounting for about 25% of the sales. It is expected to pocket around $1.2 billion from uranium sales to America this year. In 2024, Russia earned approximately $800 million from uranium exports to the US.

US Department of Energy:

Russia has roughly 44% of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity and supplies approximately 35% of our imports for nuclear fuel. 

Continue reading “Putin Puts Finger on Key US Nuclear Fuel Dependency”

FORD CEO JIM FARLEY: “We believe that people should be able to make a choice, as you said, Mr. President."

"And we will invest more in affordable vehicles. This allows us to invest in affordable vehicles made in the U.S., which we will take the lead on." pic.twitter.com/LkR9gLGuXa

— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 3, 2025

Incredible. Cheering for their own demise.
US automakers had a workable EV in the mid 90s. If they had kept that program perking they would own this sector hands down, and have a future.
Now they are looking at extinction.

A few months ago, Ford CEO Jim Farley slipped up and told the truth. The clip above pretty much gutted whatever respect I had for his integrity.

Continue reading “US Automakers Racing Over Cliff”

FOAK. First Of A Kind.

Now Deeper. Hotter. Cheaper.
Look for Geothermal, with tech like this, to be a wildcard dark horse in the ongoing transition.
I like the Eavor system, which, once in place, offers a thermodynamically stable closed loop that just keeps delivering heat from depth. The more well known competitor, Fervo, has a system that relies on fracturing rocks, which seems to work, but just feels less elegant to me.

Think GeoEnergy:

Eavor Technologies Inc. expects its closed-loop geothermal pilot plant in Geretsried, southern Germany, to begin operations before the end of the year, subject to commissioning progress and regulatory approvals. Initially, as we reported in early 2025, initial plans were to launch it in the first half of 2025.

Two articles shared recently, provide a little bit more detail on the project and development, that we thought are worth sharing.

First loop nearing completion

The project comprises four planned subsurface loops. For the first loop, Eavor drilled two vertical wells to about 4.5 kilometres, supported by horizontal multilateral branches extending roughly 2.9 kilometres each. According to company statements, the drilling phase for this initial loop is close to completion, and surface facilities are being prepared for circulation tests.

Eavor reports that drilling times for the horizontal sections improved over the course of the campaign, with laterals completed in roughly half the time required for earlier wells. The company states that this could increase projected heat-extraction rates for each loop.

Planned output and operating targets

Once fully commissioned, the Geretsried facility is designed to supply 8.2 MWe and up to 64 MW thermal for the local district-heating network. Eavor maintains the goal of initiating first production before year-end, though this remains dependent on system testing and field performance. The company also plans start on drilling the second loop in March of 2026.

Continue reading “Geothermal “Radiator” Online Soon”

Associated Press:

If heat-trapping pollution from burning coal, oil and gas continues unchecked, thousands of hazardous sites across the United States risk being flooded from sea level rise by the turn of the century, posing serious health risks to nearby communities, according to a new study.

Researchers identified 5,500 sites that store, emit or handle sewage, trash, oil, gas and other hazards that could face coastal flooding by 2100, with much of the risk already locked in due to past emissions. But more than half the sites are projected to face flood risk much sooner — as soon as 2050. Low-income, communities of color and other marginalized groups are the most at risk.

With even moderate reductions to planet-warming emissions, researchers also determined that roughly 300 fewer sites would be at risk by the end of the century. 

“Our goal with this analysis was to try to get ahead of the problem by looking far out into the future,” said Lara J. Cushing, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles who co-authored the paper published in the science journal Nature Communications.

“We do have time to respond and try to mitigate the risks and also increase resilience,” she added, speaking at a media briefing Wednesday ahead of the study’s release. The study was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency and builds on previous research from California. 

Continue reading “Too Many People Sleeping on Sea Level Rise”

We’re shivering under temperatures about 12 F colder than usual, making the upper midwest feel like January rather than pre-Christmas.
Not that unusual to have snow on the ground at this time, (although we’ve not had it consistently in recent decades), but in recent years we have not had cold snaps long enough for the snow to persist, which it looks like it will for a while.

Not surprisingly, turning to the University of Maine’s Climate Re-Analyzer, we see the paradoxical “warm Arctic, cold continents” configuration, with a cold blob over North America, and warmer than average areas over the Arctic, Siberia, and Greenland.
Many scientists characterize this as a side effect of a warming planet.

Continue reading “Frigid Polar Vortex Over US, Warm Anomalies Over Arctic”

Yahoo:

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a bid to block President Donald Trump from unilaterally launching any attacks against Venezuela.

“The Constitution gives Congress — and only Congress — the power to declare war. Trump’s illegal boat strikes and threats of land invasion in Venezuela are a clear overreach of power. I filed a bipartisan War Powers Resolution to stop Trump from starting another forever war,” Kaine said in a post on X.

The Trump administration has conducted numerous lethal strikes against what it has alleged were drug-trafficking vessels of suspected narco-terrorists mostly in the Carribean.

Bloomberg:

The Trump administration is moving to fast-track the construction of power-hungry data centers as a matter of national security. At the same time, it’s adding roadblocks for new solar and wind farms. 

But the two policies could be at odds: Hindering renewable energy projects risks slowing the AI boom — and could exacerbate rising electricity prices, a slew of data suggests.

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment right now to get the power to supply this,” said Robert Whaley, director of North American power at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy. “In the next 10 years, there’s really nothing to replace renewables.”

The AI explosion — and its energy demands — is happening much faster than the pace at which utilities typically plan and build large power plants. In response, tech giants like Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have taken extreme measures to keep up, cobbling together data centers in tents and signing contracts for their own power plants.

Renewable energy so far remains the fastest and cheapest option to add power to the grid. Nearly 80% of the planned power plant capacity in the pipeline is tied to renewable sources, according to filings with federal regulators and grid operators compiled by Cleanview.co, an energy data company.

Continue reading “Trump’s Renewable Hate Sabotaging AI Push”