This is Not Cool

War for Oil Drives Costs for Energy, and Food

During the 2024 campaign Donald Trump promised to cut energy prices in half. He has, instead, presided over soaring prices at the pump, which have played an important role in his collapse in the polls.

Some might attribute this disaster to Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, ignoring what appear to have been near-unanimous warnings by experienced military and intelligence officials that such a war would, in addition to disrupting oil supplies, overstretch the U.S. military and dangerously deplete stocks of munitions — which is exactly what happened.

But Scott Bessent, Trump’s Treasury secretary, has found someone else to blame: Ukraine.

Yesterday Bessent went on “Fox & Friends,” where he pinned the blame for high energy prices largely on Kyiv:

We are going through an energy shock right now due to both the war in Ukraine, because Ukraine has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets and refined properties, so that is creating upward price pressure on a global basis, and the conflict in Iran.

Now, Bessent isn’t wrong to say that bottlenecks in refining capacity are playing a major role in the current energy shock. The chart at the top of this post shows changes in the price of crude oil and diesel, both measured in dollars per barrel, since the beginning of this year. Crude oil is up a lot, although off its peak in early April. But diesel is up much more (so is gasoline, although not quite as much.) And Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil facilities are certainly playing a role in reducing global refining capacity.

But note Bessent’s wording: Ukraine “has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets.” Gosh, why would the Ukrainians want to do such a thing? Might it have something to do with the fact that they are engaged in an existential struggle against Vladimir Putin’s regime, which is in its fifth year of a war aimed at destroying their nation, and they need to hit back at Putin’s military and economic base?

Notice, also, that Bessent didn’t point out that these attacks on Russian oil would end if Russia were to end its attempted war of conquest. But far from demanding an end to Russian aggression, the Trump administration infuriated the democratic nations of Europe by inviting Russia’s finance minister, for the first time since the Ukraine war began, to Monday’s meeting of the Group of 20 major economies.

Is Giant El Niño Evidence of a Climate Change Trend?

The current El Niño could become the strongest ever, according the World Meteorological Organization – but are El Niños in general getting stronger due to climate change? New evidence suggests.. maybe.

Recent strengthening of eastern Pacific ENSO in the last millennium paleorecord – Science 27 August 2026:

The Pacific El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) generates climate extremes that endanger ecosystems, infrastructure, and human well-being worldwide. The response of this system to climate warming is poorly constrained, due both to data scarcity and uncertainties in climate models. The geochemistry of Galápagos coral skeletons across the past millennium reveals a large recent increase in interannual variability of sea surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Pacific compared to existing paleorecords that exceeds simulated natural variability. This increase parallels rising global temperature and results from stronger El Niño events. Central Pacific coral data also show increased variability, although less distinctly than in the Galápagos. Our results provide long-term context for understanding ENSO variability trends, with troubling implications for climate extremes.

Science:

The vibrant biodiversity of the Galápagos Islands has helped biologists from Charles Darwin onward unlock the mysteries of evolution. Now, corals growing around the archipelago in the tropical Pacific Ocean are providing clues to another enduring puzzle: whether global warming is changing El Niño, the recurring Pacific climate cycle that drives extreme weather around the world.

Climate models have offered conflicting answers so far. Historical El Niño records are too short to reveal a clear trend. And El Niño’s own large natural swings have made it difficult to tease out any human influence.

But a 1000-year archive preserved in fossil corals from the Galápagos offers some of the strongest evidence yet that global warming is already making El Niño stronger. Reporting today online in Science, researchers found that temperature swings recorded in Galápagos corals—a place where the El Niño signal is strong—have intensified by 36% over the past 4 decades, far beyond anything seen in previous centuries. Along with other coral results elsewhere in the Pacific, the findings suggest “there’s something about this important source of climate extremes that has already changed in recent decades,” says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Brown University who was not part of the study.

As War Drags on, Winter Gas Shortages Loom in Europe

Hope is not a plan. The war continues even as natural gas prices do not reflect the prospect of winter shortages.
Traders cling, inexplicably, to confidence in Trump administration pronouncements about the end of hostilities, putting off gas purchases in hopes of lower prices. Winter is coming.

Wall Street Journal:

Europe has put off buying natural gas for the winter in a big, potentially risky bet that the Iran war will be over soon and prices will drop.

The European Union’s gas storage facilities are only 65% full, their lowest level toward the end of summer in at least 15 years. Companies have been reluctant to buy gas for storage because they anticipated that Qatar, the world’s second-largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, would be able to resume normal shipments through the Strait of Hormuz this year once the conflict dies down.

Now, prospects for a clear end to the war before winter are fading, driving up LNG prices to a 3½-year high this week. European buyers are being forced to accept more expensive natural gas as the Continent’s winter heating season approaches, when gas demand peaks. They are bidding against each other and Asian buyers who are now aggressively locking up supplies.

“Europe is heading into winter with its gas tank at a record low, and the market is priced as if that’s fine,” said Simone Turri, head of the Western Europe gas desk at MET Group, an energy trading firm based in Switzerland. “Something has to give.”

US Automakers Brace as China’s EV Breach North America

But is China’s EV tech un- Fathom-able?

Above, CBS News has a glowing report on the superiority of Chinese EVs and manufacturing.

Below, the pressure building for Chinese vehicles to become available to Americans.
China is executing a “pincers movement” with footholds in Canada, and Mexico -“It feels like the dam is going to break…”.

Meanwhile, Ford is prepping a Hail Mary strategy to catch up with Chinese carmakers on affordability, giving a veiled glimpse of its new sub-30k EV truck, dubbed “Fathom”.

Google’s Big Geothermal Bet

Is Google that confident in Geothermal? Or that desperate for power?
Probably both.
What strikes me is the fast timeline – generating for the grid in ’26-’27 time frame.
I’ve been saying for years that Geothermal is the dark horse, and it might be breaking from the pack right now.

Utility Dive:

Enhanced geothermal company Fervo Energy announced Tuesday that it has made a 396-MW power purchase agreement with Google, the largest-ever geothermal PPA, with Google planning to use that power as a “foundational building block” for a potential data center in Utah.
“As part of the PPA, Fervo will offer Google an option to expand its offtake by approximately 600 MW, for a total of nearly 1 GW, by June 2030,” Fervo said. “Final data center plans remain subject to a variety of factors including engineering feasibility, state and local approvals, and commercial conditions.”
In a Tuesday research note, financial services company William Blair said the PPA deal “increases contracted revenue across Fervo’s portfolio by about 65% and strengthens our belief that Fervo’s enhanced geothermal systems provide a critical solution to address our ‘baseload imperative’ thesis by delivering firm, dispatchable power to fuel AI data centers.”

Wall Street Journal:
The agreement for nearly 400 megawatts of electricity is enough to power a midsize city and would be Fervo’s largest-ever power deal. Fervo plans to begin selling power to Google in 2028 from its Cape Station project in southwestern Utah.

Google intends to buy the power for a data center in Utah—though it has yet to determine the location. The company still needs to work with local communities and go through state and local regulatory approvals before it can move forward with the plans.

Melting Mountains a Global Climate Impact

Climate deniers are furiously peddling the idea that Nepal’s disaster was perfectly normal – but research and experience shows that as mountain permafrost softens due to rising temperatures, collapses become more frequent.
Researchers have been documenting these changes for at least 20 years.

Journal of Geophysical Research June 2007:

Permafrost in steep bedrock is abundant in many cold-mountain areas, and its degradation can cause slope instability that is unexpected and unprecedented in location, magnitude, frequency, and timing. These phenomena bear consequences for the understanding of landscape evolution, natural hazards, and the safe and sustainable operation of high-mountain infrastructure. Permafrost in steep bedrock is an emerging field of research. Knowledge of rock temperatures, ice content, mechanisms of degradation, and the processes that link warming and destabilization is often fragmental.
In this article we provide a review and discussion of existing literature and pinpoint important questions. Ice-filled joints are common in bedrock permafrost and possibly actively widened by ice segregation. Broad evidence of destabilization by warming permafrost exists despite problems of attributing individual events to this phenomenon with certainty. Convex topography such as ridges, spurs, and peaks is often subject to faster and deeper thaw than other areas. Permafrost degradation in steep bedrock can be strongly affected by percolating water in fractures.

Wendell Berry 1934 – 2026

Poet Wendell Berry has died at age 92.

Manifest: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Hoover Dam in Deadpool Deathwatch

Climate change’s impact on the Hoover Dam, slowly, slowly, then all at once.

Gemini says:

Critical Threshold: When the water level falls below 1,035 feet, 12 of the dam’s 17 main turbines will lose enough water pressure to operate.
Power Loss: This drop will slash the dam’s electricity generation capacity by 70% to 80%.
Remaining Capacity: Only five specially modified wide-head turbines can function below 1,035 feet, down to a lower limit of 950 feet.

World Atlas:

“Dead pool” sounds like the end of the story, but it has a specific meaning. It is the point at which a reservoir drops so low that water can no longer flow out past the dam and continue downstream. The lake is not empty when this happens. There is still plenty of water in it. That water just sits there, stuck below the dam’s outlets, unable to reach the cities and farms that depend on it.

Formed by holding back the Colorado River with Hoover Dam, Lake Mead was designed to hold up to 28.9 million acre-feet (roughly 9.4 trillion gallons or 36 trillion liters) of water at full capacity. A multi-decade megadrought across the American Southwest, combined with heavy municipal and agricultural water demand, has severely depleted the reservoir. It now sits below 30% of capacity, and in August 2026 it fell to its lowest level since the lake first filled in the 1930s, leaving a deficit of roughly 20 million acre-feet.

That deficit raises an obvious question: how long would it take to refill Lake Mead to its designed capacity? In purely theoretical terms, cutting the outflow or boosting the inflow could do it in as few as two to three years. Under a more realistic scenario that depends on vastly improved water management and favorable weather, a refill could take 30 to 50 years, and even that may be optimistic. It is entirely possible that the reservoir never again reaches full capacity.

Phoenix Heat too Much for Rescue Choppers

Borneo Fires Impacting those Least Responsible

God I hate this.

Sarawak Tribune:

KETAPANG (West Kalimantan): An adult male orangutan believed to have been overcome by prolonged haze exposure was rescued after being found unconscious at an oil palm plantation in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan, highlighting the growing toll of forest and peatland fires on wildlife.

The orangutan, named Sampurna, was discovered by villagers in Desa Laman Satong, Matan Hilir Utara, on Sunday (Aug 30) before a joint rescue team from Indonesia’s Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) and the Foundation for International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI) responded to the scene.

BKSDA in a joint statement said Sampurna is believed to have left his forest habitat after fires swept through the surrounding area, with thick smoke blanketing the region for several days.

“Early that morning, we received information from the community about an orangutan near the plantation. We immediately went to the site and found it in a weakened condition,” said BKSDA Ketapang Conservation Section officer Sarbandi.

Veterinarians from YIARI sedated the orangutan before administering oxygen and intravenous fluids after it showed signs of respiratory distress. Initial examinations found no evidence of burns or external injuries.

YIARI veterinarian Dr Komara said smoke from forest and peatland fires can have severe consequences for orangutans, particularly when exposure is prolonged.

“Smoke contains particles and substances that can enter the respiratory tract and impair lung function. Heavy exposure over several days can cause breathing difficulties and oxygen deprivation,” he said.