Blair Willcox

reputable academic journals "go open access without charging Global South scholars years worth of wages to submit" challenge

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

We have to be purposeful about ending the use of fossil fuels because they’re not going to end themselves anytime soon. While wind and solar are cheaper, they are not as profitable. Therein lies the problem.

It’s kind of strange to me that so many people/outlets are still evaluating the department on whether it “saved money” and not its actual goal of dismantling government infrastructure and personnel!

Clearly an article written by a conch.

Someone forgot to take down this webpage:

www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/v...

Crime is the lowest it’s been in literally 30 years fascist fucks.

Kids in Pennsylvania Are Breathing (Much) Easier After a Coal Plant Shuttered - Inside Climate News Pediatric asthma ER visits dropped 40 percent after a coal processing plant near Pittsburgh closed down, researchers found.

Pediatric asthma ER visits have dropped 40% since the closure of the Shenango Coke Works coal plant—near Pittsburgh, PA—in 2016. Coke is a form of coal for steel manufacturing. An immediate 20% decrease in weekly respiratory ER visits was seen after the closure.
insideclimatenews.org/news/0508202...

This figure shared by @katemac.bsky.social lives rent free in my head ever since I saw it.

Tl;Dr Oil companies are spending their money on share buybacks *instead of investing in their own upstream capacity aka future production* - a window into what they really think about their long term future.

The student newspaper.
This fell. To the student. Newspaper.

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine...

Denver City Council abolishes parking minimum requirements for new development Developers can now build new housing and business complexes without including a set number of parking spots.

Denver abolished minimum parking requirements on Monday.

Once again, my fellow nerds, I am begging you to remember that giving into bullies only guarantees they'll be back.

You've got to punch Biff Tannen in the face, McFly, or he'll rule over you forever.

The Mystery of the Strong Economy Has Finally Been Solved Turns out it wasn’t actually that strong.

This feels normal to a lot of researchers, who work in areas where measuring even a single number can be difficult and require extensive methods and careful statistical analysis
www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

A lot of the technical assistance work I did at NREL - which provided analyses of different energy technologies’ generating capacity and impacts on jobs and tax revenue - was predicated on the availability of federal lands for siting… especially in rural coal regions. All blown up.

That's a data entry issue (as is the duct heat loss).

I'm unaware of a better option for units within multifamily building, but that's not my area of expertise.

You can run your own manual j fairly quickly if you want. www.coolcalc.com

Michigan coal plant cost $29 million over 5 weeks to keep running under Trump order Consumers Energy believes power customers across the Midwest should share the financial burden of keeping the J.H. Campbell coal plant open under an emergency federal order.

www.mlive.com/environment/...
Less? paywalled version

Reporting power phishing attempt

Bessent says new Trump child savings accounts are 'back door for privatizing Social Security' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the Trump administration was committted to protecting Social Security hours after he described a children's savings program in President Trump's recent tax p...

Can't make this up: Trump's billionaire Treasury Secretary admitted, on camera, that parts of their Big Ugly Betrayal of a bill are a ‘back door for privatizing Social Security.'
 
These people love to say the quiet part out loud: they are coming for Social Security.

ELCC had a bigger impact than load growth. Natural gas already has a fast pass through the queue, so curious what they’re actually asking for except to crap on renewables.

Fed up?

This is a great opportunity to take a break from reading retweets of the worst people in the world saying unconscionable things on various Sunday shows and instead apply for a job doing something fun and useful with an incredible team!

PJM's capacity market cleared - including almost 2.7 GW of new resources - at the price cap. insidelines.pjm.com/pjm-auction-...

This comes *after* USNA already jumped through all the hoops to comply with every “anti-woke” directive, so take what lesson you will from that.

Henry Hub to Average $4.30 in 2025, Move Higher in ‘26, Says EIA Get the latest insights on natural gas prices and demand trends from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) for 2025 and beyond. Discover how the cold weather impacted storage inventories and led...

‘natural gas prices in 2025 nearly double 2024 prices…average ~$4.30/MMBtu in 2025, up ~$2.10…expect annual average price to increase 30¢/MMBtu in 2026 to ~$4.60…demand growth forecast “led by an 18% increase in exports and a 9% increase in residential and commercial consumption for space heating”’

Why are we so mad that people are doing agricultural labor for us

The Methane Backdoor - "Is Europe Undermining It's Green Deal to appease Trump?"

Today at 12 noon eastern time in the US I will be part of this webinar to talk about all things methane related to the EU regulations and US LNG production.

Sign up at the zoom link in reply.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

We are dismantling American higher education & scientific research & health care & all the other things to fund concentration camps

By 2030, when China’s technological and economic dominance is no longer up for debate—and every news outlet and politician acts shocked—just pull up this chart from 2024. 📈 It shows what most missed: China didn’t just surpass the US in electricity generation. It doubled it. And not by burning more coal, but increasingly by leading the world in solar power deployment. ☀️⚡ This wasn’t a blip. It was the foundational shift. You can’t build EVs, AI clusters, chip fabs, electrolyzers, or maglev trains without massive and reliable electricity. And China saw this coming a decade ahead of everyone else. While the West debated ideology, China scaled terawatt-hours. Electricity is the master input of the 21st century. It’s the oxygen of the future economy—powering not just cars and computers, but entire industries, smart cities, and global trade. And while others coasted or politicized the energy transition, China built like the future depended on it—because it does. So when leaders and pundits ask in five years, “How did China get so far ahead?”, point them here. This chart isn’t just data—it’s prophecy in pixels. #Disruption #Solar #EnergyShift #EVs #AI #Geopolitics #TWh

When China’s tech & economic dominance is undeniable by 2030 & everyone acts shocked—show them this 2024 chart. 📈 China didn’t just double US electricity—it did it with solar leading. ☀️⚡ You can’t build EVs, Robots, AI, fabs, or maglevs without power. They scaled. We coasted. #Disruption #TWh #Solar