Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
Feels like we’ve passed through The Handmaid’s Tale phase and are coming up on the Thoughtcrime legislation phase…
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Chris Nelder 🤘
@chrisnelder@mastodon.energy
mastodon 4.7.3Creator and Host of @TransitionShow@mastodon.energy, @transitiontimes@mastodon.energy and the Nelder Notes newsletter and podcast.
Energy futurist/analyst/writer/speaker. Peripatetic podcaster.
tfr
2274 Followers
1781 Following
50 Posts
Joined November 08, 2022
Transition Times newsletter:
Nelder Notes newsletter & podcast:
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@neurovagrant@masto.deoan.org @bluegreenandfree@mastodon.energy I've been watching this thing for a few minutes and I really don't get what the big deal is. It just sits there. People watch this for hours?
RE: @ludicity@mastodon.sprawl.club
This is why, in NN#3, I wrote: "We have not demanded proof that AI is, in fact, such a necessary technology that it qualifies as a must-win arms race. We just took the word of a few officials on that.
We have not been shown decisive evidence that the economic benefit of AI to society is worth the social cost of it. We have taken the word of a few billionaires with a technology to sell on that."
https://www.transitiontimes.net/nn-3-data-center-revolt/
Ah, those relaxing beach holidays in the south of France...
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/europe-wildfires-france-spain-evacuations-national-emergency-rcna589025
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@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Note the composer of that first cut - then look at what else he wrote: https://www.jimmywebb.com/songs
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It's obvious now that solar and batteries are going to be the cheapest, most reliable, and least volatile way to expand a power grid. Increasing dependence on fossil gas generation now—as many governments are contemplating—would be a terrible mistake, both economically and geopolitically.
Per new analysis by @emberclimate@mastodon.energy China's solar exports in March were a whopping 68 GW, DOUBLE the previous month, and equivalent to Spain’s entire solar capacity, surpassing the previous record set in August 2025 by 49%. Yow!
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/chinese-solar-exports-double-in-a-month-to-hit-record-high-amid-energy-crisis/
RE: @transitiontimes@mastodon.energy
If you're an energy and climate modeler, please read this critique and if you can, prove me wrong.
TIL that in the first ~2 weeks of the war, gasoline prices in Texas rose by over 25%--*more* than the price increases in oil-importing countries like the UK and France. via @emberclimate@mastodon.energy: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-energy-security-fall-out-from-fossil-fuel-fragility-to-electric-independence/
🤔 ‘Little Ice Age’ caused by death of 55-million Indigenous people after colonization: study
https://globalnews.ca/news/4924534/little-ice-age-death-55-million-indigenous-people-colonization-study/
If you're watching oil prices with trepidation as the Iran war heats up again and wondering what you can do to protect yourself from rising fuel prices and supply chain disruptions, I gotcha covered! https://www.transitiontimes.net/nn-1-protecting-yourself-from-the-global-energy-crisis/
RE: @cdarwin@c.im
To err is human; to really screw things up, you need a computer.
I mean, good on the Colorado Sun for including this note at the bottom of the article, but I can't help but despair that it's even necessary. This used to be assumed as a fundamental tenet of journalism. But in the brave new world of hallucinating AIs, I guess it's now necessary.
"Type of Story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources."
RE: @drsimevans@mastodon.energy
In which @drsimevans@mastodon.energy does the math and finds that opponents of phasing out standard dryers are all wet.
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@Daojoan@mastodon.social And if your retirement plan includes selling blood? You might be a journalist.
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@ai6yr @Sustainable2050 As @rahmstorf is well aware, this model is focused on SSP2-4.5, a climate scenario which represents a middle-of-the-road pathway with ~2.5 - 2.7°C of global warming by 2100. That's in line with the Paris NDCs and is more or less a BAU, "no-additional climate-policy" reference scenario. Importantly, an accelerating energy transition can do better than that! We're at ~1.4°C now with 74 years to go!
RE: @TransitionShow@mastodon.energy
By 350.org's count, the war in Iran has already cost ordinary households more than $150 billion, which goes to oil and gas companies opposing the #energytransition. The energy transition is the only way out of the fossil fuel trap, esp. for importers of oil & gas.
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@Sine_Nomine@mstdn.social That's awesome, esp. in England! Sounds like a pretty ideal array orientation. Have you run the numbers on the economics of your investment at all? I'm sure Farage, Badenoch & co. would be very interested in hearing them. 😉
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@factsentinel@mstdn.social That's all part of due diligence in good, trustworthy, reputable journalism. The reader should never have to trouble themselves with those details and should be able to assume it's all be done correctly. Any noteworthy details about the vetting should be in the text itself. AI slop has undercut that proud tradition and made this kind of attestation necessary but it's nothing to celebrate. Shouldn't need to be there at all.
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@yogthos@social.marxist.network @pinsk@freeradical.zone I don't have a subscription to that publication but I haven't found any evidence that the administration “seized” CPP Investments’ assets, nor that CPP Investments itself was specifically ordered to invest in fossil fuels. Do you have supporting evidence for those claims?
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@Raffnsoe@mountains.social Great thread! 👏 BTW I think auto-incorrect helped you out here with "electrostatics"
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@Maddogeco @emberclimate China has had more production capacity than it knows what to do with for some time. It just needed markets. It's also been the global leader in domestic installations by a massive margin for years, e.g., installing the equivalent of the entire US installed capacity in one year. See Ep. 271 https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-271-china-update-2026/
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@mhoye Yes, look at them! And then listen to our podcast that reviews all the data in that report: https://mastodon.energy/@TransitionShow/116449492490462412
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@BrKloeckner Cheers - more data for your perusal in IEA's latest report, helpfully summarized by @drsimevans here: https://mastodon.energy/@drsimevans/116435268758034850
Note: "Global energy-related CO2 emissions reached a new record high, but growth nearly ground to a halt (+0.5%)"
Also we're launching a podcast episode about the latest Global Electricity Review report from Ember on Wednesday that confirms/expands on this data.
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@BrKloeckner You can cherry-pick contrary evidence to your heart's content, but in my estimation none of the IPCC framework scenarios have done a particularly good job of imagining the actual progress of the energy transition globally. Look at *unsanctioned* deployments of distributed solar in Pakistan, India, sub-Saharan Africa, etc. None of those scenarios imagined any of that.
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@BrKloeckner Likewise for the UN pledges--they're out of synch with ground realities! At this point, I regard the US as really the one major country in the entire world that is pushing in the wrong direction. Everybody else is getting on with the energy transition. I see no evidence that global emissions are tracking worse than SSP2-4.5, and lots of evidence that we're very likely to undershoot that scenario significantly by 2050.
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@BrKloeckner It's true that US policy has been going the wrong way, but look beyond the US. Under SSP2-4.5, power sector emissions are not expected to peak and decline until the 2030s. But we're already there, globally.
China and India (the world's two most populous countries) are not following the FF pathways expected under SSP2-4.5, let alone higher emissions scenarios. Decarbonization is already running *ahead* of most scenarios including SSP2-4.5, esp. in power sector and road transport.
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@mattsheffield@mastodon.social You've got me a bit confused. You're only talking about podcasts, not blogs/newsletters? Because if so, Substack is a very basic platform and not an optimal one by any stretch. It's better suited to text. Transistor is far better for podcasts. (I started my podcast 10 years ago and we had to roll our own because the modern platforms didn't exist. I've been earning a full-time living at it for years, without Patreon or Substack.)
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@mattsheffield@mastodon.social OK now we're getting to the heart of it. What you are talking about isn't about the platform at all, but the business model--How to attract and keep an audience. Which is actually a totally platform agnostic question, though, as mentioned, Substack's algo can be a help for new/small creators. But it's still not the only way to do it. Platform wise, lots of creators who don't want to publish in a Nazi bar use Ghost + Transistor for blogs & podcasts.
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@mattsheffield@mastodon.social Important to disentangle the parts that Substack has all in one:
- the publishing platform (alternatives include Ghost and Beehiv)
- the recommendation algo (can be done other ways, including social media)
- the money collector (Patreon yes, but also Stripe etc)
Various combinations add up to 'earning a living' for numerous creators who are NOT using Substack, right now. Just because Substack makes it easy doesn't make it the only game in town.
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@andybrwn@sfba.social There are a few different ways to interpret "marginal" here, so perhaps you'd like to expand on that and clarify?
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@BrKloeckner And if you REALLY want to gain an understanding of global warming, beyond the shallow clickbaity press that can't wait to publish Yet Another Alarmist Headline About AMOC Collapse, listen to our entire climate science miniseries: https://xenetwork.org/ets/category/climate-science-miniseries/?view=guest_list&order=asc&orderby=air_date&display=list
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@BrKloeckner Now, regarding 1): Again, you can get lost in vague generalities here. Yes there are some goals not met, some carbon reduction policies being reversed...and other goals being met ahead of schedule, or progress made ahead of policy. The specifics matter! There's no identifiable general "direction" across 170+ countries.
2) Yes, but again, that's all chatter and narrative, not data!
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@BrKloeckner The point is: Doomerism is vogue and doomer clickbait always sells. The fact that you're hearing that chatter doesn't make it true--it only demonstrates that doomer clickbait is still vogue. Before you believe it, try to falsify it! Caveat lector! Climate scientists have also shown that we have likely NOT underestimated warming in the models. https://bsky.app/profile/micefearboggis.bsky.social/post/3mghqvp6trc2d
Here's a good source (and follow @hausfath and on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/hausfath.bsky.social) https://dashboard.theclimatebrink.com/#models
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@jonshell@mastodon.energy As I remarked in that episode, "just one seventh of projected spare manufacturing capacity in China by 2030 could provide basic electricity access to everyone still without power across 88 low income countries in Africa and other regions of the world. I mean, China is basically sitting there with a massive stockpile of solar manufacturing capacity sufficient to just literally light up the third world just with their own solar exports. It's just a remarkable situation."
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@BrKloeckner So... would you present any specific evidence at all to support your argument?
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@BrKloeckner These scenarios failed to imagine what is actually happening right now for basically the same reasons that the RCP8.5 ensemble failed to imagine what actually happened to coal (and oil): A lot of unimaginative thinking anchored to the past, guided by false theories, and ignorant of the emerging trends. See also Ep. 239 https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-239-making-sense-of-chaos/
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@BrKloeckner As I posted earlier, if you want to understand the realities of the data vs. the narratives, and why Doomerism is not a shortcut to actually understanding climate change, listen to my conversation with climate scientist @MichaelEMann. We go through it in great detail! https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-214-countering-climate-doomerism/
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@jaj@mastodon.social Not really. A whole lot of fossil fuel industry-sponsored chatter about it designed to cast doubt on the transition, but no significant constraints on actual production that I know of. See Ep. 194 https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-194-materials-requirements-of-the-transition/
![[Episode #194] – Materials Requirements of the Transition | The Energy Transition Show](https://cdn.xenetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/10/logo-energy-transition.png){kind=logo}
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@BrKloeckner I see you are a mathematician, so what specific data would you cite to support your claim that the current direction is worse than SSP2-4.5?
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@jonshell@mastodon.energy You're confusing what China has installed domestically and what they are manufacturing for domestic and export purposes.
From Ember's "China Energy Transition Review 2025" report, which we covered in @TransitionShow@mastodon.energy Ep. 260: https://xenetwork.org/ets/episodes/episode-260-china-energy-transition-review-2025/
"Already today, Chinese factories alone
can theoretically supply [enough solar to meet IEA's net zero roadmap], and China’s projected solar manufacturing capacity in 2030 (1,255 GW per year) is 65% higher than [that]."
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@pinsk@freeradical.zone @yogthos@social.marxist.network Thanks. The article is correct. The toot was not. Nothing was "seized" and the DOI did not demand that they invest in FF projects instead. As the article notes, Ocean Winds entered into the agreement voluntarily, for a payoff.
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@jonshell@mastodon.energy Yep. It hasn't been widely reported, but China's PV manufacturing business has been absolutely cutthroat with massive plants being built to replace "obsolete" plants that are less than 2 years old. It's a horrible business to be in. But they have had a ton of excess capacity for some years now.