Astrid Atkinson

The planet-warming impact of this single leak is equivalent to 1.5m gas-guzzling SUVs gunning their engines and there are more super-emitting dumps across Turkey. (Guardian)

My son is the same age. It's unfathomable to think of kids appearing in court, alone, without representation or adult support, and being deported like this.

Minivans are highly underrated.

Back in 2023, deep-pocketed Effective Altruist funders launched a remarkably successful takeover of DC tech policy: today we're seeing the results in the form of "AI safety efforts tightly focused on distant existential doom, not AI taking jobs, scamming people, or harming the environment today."

Normal, non-big-tech affiliated, non-effective altruist funded organizations working on ethical tech have been absolutely financially *devastated* in the last few years, thanks to both Trump and Big Tech deciding it no longer needs to pretend to care about ethics.

Yes, we're strip-mining the seas

The US President's new proposal to tax international students has been approved by the White House for release this week. It's an unprecedented $100,000 tax on int'l grads who stay to work after graduation on Optional Practical Training (most grads do), a crucial bridge to remaining by any channel.

This will devastate our research+innovation capacity, bedrock of the 21st century economy. 35% of *all* employed people in the US with STEM PhD degrees are both foreign-born *and* graduated from a US university. —> nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/292... Shutting them out is extremist folly.

All the plastic humanity has ever produced is ~10 billion tonnes. Humans emitted ~10 billion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere in the first three months of 2026. When we appreciate orders of magnitude, we see how intractable the CO₂ problem becomes once we dump it into the atmosphere.

Schoolhouse Rock, climate edition: "Climate change denial is a form of particularly potent disinformation — not misinformation, which implies that people might have made some honest mistakes — but disinformation with a 'D,' as in 'deliberate.'”

@ember-energy.org: "Solar met a record 10% of global electricity in H1 2026. Over a quarter of global electricity demand at midday becomes near-zero at night. New batteries installed in 2026 could shift 34% of new daily solar to the evening." ember-energy.org/latest-insig... 🔌💡

The American zeitgeist is that EVs are something on the spectrum between a failed experiment and some primitive and early tech, but worldwide the EV revolution is happening very quickly right now

Published estimates of AI energy use per prompt (~0.3 watt-hours) appear reassuring small. But they are increasingly disconnected from how we actually use AI. Modern agentic tools use around 600 times more energy per prompt, as I discuss in my latest over at The Climate Brink www.theclimatebrink....

This is the way www.kqed.org/science/2001...

The data center industry is building behind-the-meter fossil gas power plants at a frightening pace. If allowed to go forward, these 74 plants would generate 143 GWs of electricity – enough to power CA three times over. This new report provides pollution & demographic info for each of the projects.

What *actually* works — right here, right now — to address climate change? Here you go. This is the result of thousands of hours of painstaking research and analysis from the Project Drawdown team.

I was going to vote for Steyer for climate reasons, but this really sold me.

It is so tragic to see so many things built up over many decades of work by thoughtful, public-spirited, people destroyed in a matter of months by a corrupt, self-serving regime, supported by a corrupt foundation of Republican Senators, Representatives and Supreme Court Justices.

On the scale of their criminality, this is a minor offense, but it points to the Republican regime's desire to destroy independent sources of information so they can be the sole arbiter of truth. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/c...

The us government discussing immigrants as an alien invasion is horrifying. I am an alien. I have an alien registration number that the US govt gave me. I came here, started a family, started a company, made a home. The white house staffers who did this can go fuck themselves.

These buildings are really beautiful (as is a lot of Vancouver's newer highrise development). I ran past them during the Sun Run 10k earlier this year. They have balconies built into fishtail shapes.

I've got to say that I'm really disappointed in the recent discourse surrounding the RCP8.5 scenario. The lack of context and understanding is something I expected from the usual suspects, but it's frustrating to see such bad takes from people and outlets who should know better.

The power went out on Sunday night and we are entering day 3 of this outage. The batteries were offline this time. I have gotten too soft for this.

The dire ‘math problem’ of the Colorado River I asked Anne Castle how far western states’ leaders are from really addressing the crisis. Her answer: Nowhere near. www.latimes.com/environment/...

btw, regulators confirmed to us this morning that the 19 new turbines (and the 27 already on site) are not part of an air permit granted in March, meaning xAI has more than 1 GW of unpermitted gas power at Colossus 2 right now

Let’s remember: (1) the fossil fuel industry is desperate to pollute for free; if they can’t pollute for free, their business model collapses. 🧵

Spiralling global temperatures (1850-2026) It is exactly 10 years since I first put this animated graphic of changes in global temperature online. #ClimateSpiral It instantly went viral. People watched it over and over again. It still offers the power to shock a decade on.

Cursed to scream this into the void forever but: this is an absurd comparison and tells you absolutely nothing at all about whether aggressive deregulation and The Free Market results in a lot of clean energy @ramez.bsky.social should 1,000% know better than to say something like this A short 🧵

Had a meeting in a San Francisco cafe yesterday. The young students at the table next to us were fascinated with our drinks - a latte and a cappuccino. I am not sure they'd ever seen an espresso drink ordered "for here" in a nice mug before.

This is... really hopeful.

I visited Paris for the first time around 2007, rode across half the city in heavy traffic without bike lanes, got stuck blocking traffic in the Champs d'Elysee when the light changed. When I was back there last year it was leafy, clean, bikes everywhere. We can have nice things.

Nice piece by @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social in the NYT. Draws readers in by leading with AI data centers (timely, newsworthy, hot) but then pivots to regional transmission governance, a topic no one reads about by choice. Also has fancy graphics. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

This is my dream.

gas processing facilities like this are all over the Permian. Methane blasting out of flare stacks. This is where Europe gets its gas

As a human and a citizen I am in favor of universal health care. As an employer I am VERY in favor of it.

Xavier Becerra addresses single-payer healthcare in California in a way I can appreciate. He talks about the logistics of making it happen. He says it won’t be easy, but it can be done. I respect that. Too many politicians make it sound easy, then drop it once they’re elected. Becerra gets it.

Consider for a moment how much the 2020-2025 period differs from the 2000-2005 period. Consider how small the temperature difference was that unleashed this level of chaos we are experiencing. Now consider how chaotic 2030-2035 will be considering it will be the same number of degrees warmer…

There are innumerably many reasons why any exchange of nuclear weapons is horrifying to contemplate. But I want to dispel rumors that newer science suggests that large-scale consequences would be much less severe than perceived during Cold War era. That simply isn't the case.

Things are moving fast in the energy world thanks to the latest war. I cover a lot of the highlights of the past week in this piece.

Far from having fallen off the political agenda, climate change is at the center of Trumpism. 3/n

Obviously, we need to phase out all gases and all sources as quickly as we can. Cutting methane and other short-lived gases will abate temperature increases in the near-term, which might really help with mitigation and prevent rapid warming impacts.