Kelly Hereid

This was the first book of hers that I read, so don't have a basis for comparison, but found this book lovely and thoughtful.

Meanwhile as a renter I choose an energy provider that is 100% renewable - but am pinned to PG&E rates + an extra load, so I get to pay for those gas peakers anyway.

Hope y'all are enjoying your solar panels.

This story has everything, a focus on desal that led to overlooking other water sources, a city manager making $400K/yr saying don’t panic, a former water system manager saying residents should absolutely panic, and magical thinking: “The last hope to avert disaster was a 20- to 30-inch rainfall.”

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Jumped from the last read that was basically a fluffed up blog post to some proper literature.

Some aspects are a product of their time (although the manic pixie dream girl still shows up nowadays).

But the rest... woof. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.

17/

Actually super useful for getting a gut feel for how different regions make energy.

Lots of oil? Good chance it's an island
Hydro? Think topography, dominates several grids in South America
Mostly geothermal? Instant Iceland tell

Growth of N(t) ( by model modality, 2019–2025, on a log scale. Text-only variants remain the largest class, but multimodal models exhibit the steepest relative growth, signaling imminent attribution challenges in image+text domains.

If GenAI, such as a large language model, is used in a cyberattack or disinformation campaigns, can it be specifically identified? Can we tell which one was it?
The alarming answer is: probably not (and it's likely to get worse). 🧪

Link: journals.plos.org/complexsyste...

GloMarGridding: A Python Toolkit for Flexible Spatial Interpolation in Climate Applications Global surface climate datasets contain structural uncertainty that is difficult to attribute to individual processing steps. We present GloMarGridding, a Python package that isolates the spatial int....

And now the paper describing the open source software used to create DCENT-I is published too.

rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Its kinda dark that international women's day is the day that is 23/24 the length of a typical day

Screenshot of Griddle, aka Wordle for energy mix

If that's how you pub quiz, that means you've definitely seen @jmelville.science's Griddle, right??

(Wordle for electricity grid energy mix)

jmelville.science/griddle/

Goodbye Things: The New Japanese Minimalism, Fumio Sasaki

Goodbye Things: The New Japanese Minimalism, Fumio Sasaki

Anyone who's seen my house in a zoom knows that I'm *far* from a minimalist, but I still enjoy (lying to myself?) - lots of humans in a small apartment will do that to you

This is... not my favorite writing in the genre.

16/

(your article really needed the pictures to do it justice)

Everyone loves new transit 🙃

Iran war threatens global helium supply Attacks on Qatar and the Strait of Hormuz remove one-third of the world’s helium from the market

The war in Iran has taken one-third of the world’s helium supply off the market. And if the conflict continues for more than 2 weeks, disruption for helium users could take months to resolve.

#chemsky 🧪

happy Saturday! My first piece of academic work is out. What can tidal flexure tell us about ice in grounding zones? www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

US domestic corn use from 1980 to 2022. See if you can spot when the Renewable Fuels Standard was established in 2005. Source: USDA NASS.

US transportation energy sources, 2022. Gasoline more than half. Biofuels 6%. Source: EIA.

Today the US uses about 30-40% of our corn supply and 40-50% of our soybean oil supply to produce biofuels that account for…

…about 6% of our total transportation fuel.

Lots of land & food/feed, small amount of energy.

Solar is 100x more efficient per acre at producing energy.

End of 🧵 for now.

The Iran war: Potential food security impacts Problems in the Strait of Hormuz reverberate globally.

Worried about global energy markets, but even more worried about agrifood trade — hoping to publish something soon on this. But really happy that colleagues @ifpri.org published this great piece on the topic — please read!! www.ifpri.org/blog/the-ira...

I am slowly working on a thesis for why the US is dogshit at scaling up cleantech and, frankly, I think it's going to make nobody happy??

I know everyone is very excited, but

I'm immediately wondering how many insurance contracts have JTWC written into their wording instead of Australia BoM... suspect we'll find out shortly

Screenshot of JTWC with star next to service advisory

Screenshot of the page with a star by the service advisory www.metoc.navy.mil/jtwc/jtwc.html

SERVICE ADVISORY: The Joint Typhoon Warning Center will institute changes to its Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclone warning frequency and product suite on 05MAR2026. Tropical cyclones within 500NM of Learmonth, Darwin, American Samoa, and Diego Garcia will continue to receive 6-hourly warnings, associated TC product suite, and include a prognostic reasoning message. [highlighted] Southern Hemisphere tropical cyclones outside those four geographical areas will have a 12-hourly warning frequency [/highlighted] and may have an abbreviated prognostic reasoning.

4 circles showing where 6hr JTWC forecasts will continue, outside of these get 12hr forecasts

Service advisory up on JTWC page says that outside of a few circles, southern hemisphere tropical cyclone forecast frequency to be cut in half starting today www.metoc.navy.mil/jtwc/jtwc.html

For those quickly trying to visualize 500nm, whipped up this *very rough* sketch

This is my second for exactly that reason, broke the first one in a move.

In case anyone else needs one (yes you do), a portion of the proceeds go to support the Earth Science Women's Network

In case anyone else needs one (yes you do), a portion of the proceeds go to support the Earth Science Women's Network

NEW ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 2.4% in 2025 as coal fell to a 400-year low. Incredibly, we used less coal last year than than in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and Shakespeare was writing Hamlet.

All the details in our article: www.carbonbrief.org/...

My most beloved (hence beat up) coffee cup features this queen 👑⚒️

Pacific Ocean Floor by MARIE THARP, Bruce Heezan, and Heinrich Berann, *as published in* the National Geographic. There, fixed it.😉

Really dig this tool. Not just recommendations, but carefully researched discussions of the strengths and drawback of tech from common to obscure.

Thirty years of glacier grounding line retreat in Antarctica | PNAS The Grounding Line (GL)—the transition from ice grounded on the continent and ice afloat in the ocean—is a sensitive indicator of glacier stability...

A multiple-satellite study of Antarctica’s grounding line area show a loss of 12,820 km2 over the last 30 years. Grounding lines are the contact points where continental ice sheets anchor to the seabed, slowing their flow into the oceans.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

#Antarctica #sealevelrise

How Fossil Fuel Disruptions Lead to Booms in Solar and Batteries Past oil crises forced countries to cut fuel use and pay high prices, but now falling prices of clean tech offer another solution.

Past fossil-fuel price spikes left import-dependent countries with two options: pay up or cut fuel use. Now there is an alternative in solar and batteries.

I looked at recent examples in Europe, Pakistan, Cuba to glean what might happen with the war on Iran.

🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...