Chris Bataille

The range of useless and poorly installed bike racks is amazing, when the simple, very useful designs that are easy to install. But seriously, REI should know better.

So you start a war for which the clearest objectives are 1) eliminating Iran's nuclear weapons capacity & 2) regime change, but you keep killing leadership candidates, expecting a viable contender to emerge with no ground support. Meanwhile, you're running out of anti-ballistic missile defences.

The politics of American clean energy and climate policy: Why the Inflation Reduction Act passed - Climatic Change Climatic Change - When President Biden won the 2020 election and Democrats gained control of Congress, a climate policy window opened. Many voters, activists, and lawmakers wondered: after...

Excited to share my newly published article with Olivia Quinn in Climatic Change, which explains why the Inflation Reduction Act passed Congress when the Waxman-Markey bill failed.

It's open access so anyone can read it!
link.springer.com/article/10.1...

One cannot overstate the importance that while the US used to show up on these "Straight of Hormuz" vulnerability charts, & high on the chart up to >15 years ago, it just doesn't anymore because of shale fracking. The US coupling to the Middle East is completely political now, not energy physical.

Seems good.

February 2026 was the 5th warmest February on record, at 1.5C above preindustrial levels in the ERA5 dataset.

This is not that surprising given weak La Nina conditions at the start of the year; February tends to be one of the months most sensitive to ENSO.

That’s a longer run story. Tobacco and alcohol used to sponsor most sport and cultural events. It’s always something. On a fairly deep level we’re an imbalanced culture floating from one distracting drug hit to another.

No kidding. I kind of need to walk away from my phone for awhile.

The US must be awfully sure Taiwan isn’t happening anytime soon.

Here be the doors to nihilism. Betting markets on war and war outcomes, bet on by those with pre-knowledge of the decision. Insider trading in death. 😞

Agreed, and that’s all well and good, but batteries don’t get within a quanta of the energy density of hydrocarbons and alcohols. It doesn’t matter in most applications, but it does in some.

I genuinely value and wonder at Chappell Roan referring to Saskatchewan 🙃

A gift to the timeline

Obviously solar fusion drives the formation of natural hydrocarbons and alcohols.

Hydrocarbons and alcohols are by far nature’s most efficient, energy dense and accessible energy forms. Ever seen salmon oil burn? It’s a problem when they are fossil sourced and add to atmospheric CO2 ppm. So how do we work our way out of this conundrum?

I sometime wonder what the Middle East would be like if we’d skipped the whole internal combustion with crude oil refined products development stage, and gone straight to electric transport as we could have done.

Canada needs a strategic olive oil, coffee and chocolate reserve until such time as climate change makes it possible to grow these things here 🙃.

Outokumpu and Boston Metal sign a Memorandum of Understanding to optimize metals production Outokumpu and Boston Metal sign a Memorandum of Understanding to optimize metals production

Som positive news from Boston Metals after their recent layoffs. For the time being they may survive (which is a big deal) as a consultant to forward thinking metal processors. www.outokumpu.com/en/news/2025...

Credit where credit is due, the instincts of the right wing base were on to the Epstein files being real and scarily important long before everyone else. Unfortunately, they were looking in the wrong direction.

Breaking: China's official statistics report a 0.3% drop in CO2 emissions from energy&industry in 2025, the third time that annual emissions have fallen this century and the first fall predominantly driven by clean energy growth. 🧵

Trump says U.S. discussing ‘friendly takeover’ of Cuba U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday suggested a “friendly takeover” of communist-led Cuba, as the longtime U.S. nemesis suffers an economic crisis.

Between this and the Epstein files, he really has no concept of personal nor national sovereignty, does he? www.ctvnews.ca/world/articl...

uh-oh. A billion years ago I volunteered on Parliament Hill, and we used to count 1 letter as 10,000 opinions. That's obviously a broken relationship now.

👇 The US economy is basically on Keynesian fiscally stimulated growth high without the subsequent cost recovery rise in taxation to compensate. The current round of tariffs are mostly basically disguised and regressive taxes on their own consumers.

To coast mountain folk - the accumulated pack is meters and meters lower than normal (doesn't bode well for summer and fall), but there's a hard potential "stick, accumulate, and slip" layer there that could be really problematic if there is one last big dump. Careful out there.

Shale gas has hugely increased global available reserves & likely use. A 1st priority is normalizing & requiring ultra-low fugitives, which is becoming more feasible & economically viable due to innovation. Really enjoyed working on this with @columbiauenergy.bsky.social @jack-cavanaugh.bsky.social

Cheaper, Cleaner, Better, Faster — Part 3: Upstream Low hanging and productive fruit

Upstream methane mitigation is relatively low-cost, and can often be cost-saving for operators

EQT has shown this in the field

@chrisbataille.bsky.social and I highlight their success and more in our latest on upstream methane mitigation

open.substack.com/pub/carbonmi...

How America Chose Not to Hold the Powerful to Account Our national project of elite impunity

After the arrests of powerful men across the world, you might be asking why the US has so much trouble holding its leaders accountable for lawbreaking. Since Nixon, all three branches of government have worked hard to ensure they can break the law with impunity www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration's plan to dismantle a major scientific research center could cause property insurance prices to increase across the country, according to an industry group representing actuaries. The warning adds a new dimension to the potential breakup of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, whose climate data is used by the insurance industry to help predict financial losses and set rates. "We're incredibly reliant on curated and unbiased data sets available to the public," said Peter Ott, who leads a research committee at the American Academy of Actuaries. The academy said in a recent letter that disrupting the center would "undermine the stability and affordability of insurance." The White House budget office stunned the scientific world when it announced in December that it would break up the federally funded center, which budget director Russell Vought called "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism." The move is among an array of steps taken by the Trump administration to dismantle programs aimed at addressing climate change.

Climate denial is expensive!

The American Academy of Actuaries warns that closing the National Center for Atmospheric Research — which the Trump regime calls “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism" — would lead to higher prices for home insurance and thus for housing itself.

For Québec to become that much a part of France they would have to become a departement. And seriously, "Je me souviens" is just as much their pissed-offness at being abandoned by France in negotiation (for Caribbean sugar territories) after 1757 as there p-o-ness at the British and English Canada.