Jonathan Mingle

Jonathan Mingle

@jmingle.bsky.social

climate/energy journalist author of GASLIGHT and FIRE AND ICE words in @nytimes.com @nybooks.com @yalee360.bsky.social @undark.org and more website: jonathanmingle.com signal contact: jmingle.74

1.2K followers1.5K following671 posts

Jonathan Mingle reposted

JUST POSTED: Today at The NYT we are publishing a major investigation into how President Trump used his executive powers to expose millions of Americans to greater cancer risks. A six month-long investigation built on more than 10,000 pages of FOIA records. Read it www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/c...

nytimes.comHow Trump Gave the Worst Polluters a Free Pass (Gift Article)The president temporarily waived clean-air rules for industrial facilities that spew cancer-causing gases. Then his appointees worked to gut the regulations altogether.

David is correct. As I've written before, science on air pollution ratchets in one direction only: Every new piece of research suggests its impacts are *much worse* than we thought. What I find most grim: how damaging it is not just to kids' lungs but their brains. Lifelong, irreversible damage.

David Roberts@volts.wtf

I really don't think most people appreciate how much damage air pollution does to our bodies & brains. Even in the last 10 years the science has progressed a ton & everything it has discovered is *grim*.

Anyways, if you're interested in what air pollution does to people's health and the climate I have a book for you. In the decade since it came out, we've learned a lot more about just how bad it is for lungs, brains and for mountains and glaciers (see Nepal). us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

us.macmillan.comFire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the WorldHigh in the Himalayan valley of Zanskar in northwest India sits a village as isolated as the legendary Shangri-La. Long fed by runoff from glaciers and lof...

this sounds like an SNL sketch premise Darkest timeline etc

Oliver Darcy@oliverdarcy.bsky.social

Scoop from @brettlogiurato.bsky.social: CBS has sold its local election night coverage to DraftKings, stirring more controversy inside the David Ellison-owned company. Details in @status.news: www.status.news/p/cbs-draftk...

Of all the pieces I've written over the past five years, this -about the bubble that will burst as big swathes of America become uninsurable long before they become uninhabitable - is the one I think about most. Scale of municipal bond market exposure alone is 🤯 www.nybooks.com/online/2023/...

David Roberts@volts.wtf

A memo from senior insurance-industry officials warning that insurance modelers are being pressured to downplay climate in their models & that many insurers are already planning their exist from key markets. An explosive fuckup on the scale of the mortgage crisis is building.

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Anonymous insurance industry climate modeler: "People are not budgeting for a major increase in their insurance premiums or planning for their homes becoming uninsurable, but many of them absolutely should be."

6.5 months since the start of Trump's "short term excursion" in Iran, the shock waves continue:

Jonathan Mingle@jmingle.bsky.social

One month into the war and history's biggest energy crisis, fuel rationing is spreading around the world. But amidst all the needless suffering, this shock will speed the global pivot to clean energy and electrification. My piece in today's @nytopinion.nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/o...

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Counting the days until the insurance industry makes the inevitable turn and sues Big Oil for selling a product that amplifies extreme weather and causes rates to skyrocket. Insurers do it all the time in other cases. They will do it here eventually. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/13/u...

nytimes.comThe New Affordability Fight in the Midterms: Home Insurance Prices (Gift Article)Extreme weather is driving up insurance rates, impacting races from California to the nation’s central Tornado Alley.

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Another flash flood in Nepal as the country is still trying to recover their dead from the last one. This is what climate change looks like now. My heart goes out to all the families suffering devastating loss in Nepal. 💔

Massimo (mirror)@rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social

New flash flood in Nepal today. A devastating flash flood has swept away Salleri Bazaar and caused severe destruction in Jagat Bazaar along the Budhi Gandaki River, Gorkha District, Nepal. Original post

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Modi has lost it. "The govt has responded by massively increasing the security presence in the capital. Around thirty thousand police and paramilitary personnel have been deployed, internet services have been disrupted, trains to Delhi have been cancelled, metro stations and roads have been closed."

Your periodic reminder that phasing out fossil fuels would largely pay for itself in avoided death and disease from air pollution alone:

John Bistline@bistline.bsky.social

🚨 New study 🚨 Decarbonization has a public health bonus. Three U.S. energy models: PM2.5 mortality rates down 28 to 73% by 2050 under net zero.

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Jonathan Mingle reposted

"A series of deadly heat waves from May to August overwhelmed Germany’s healthcare and emergency response systems and led to an estimated 16,000 heat-related deaths during the summer, the most heat mortalities ever recorded in the highly developed country."

insideclimatenews.orgMass Heat Wave Deaths in Europe Show Climate Extremes Are Outpacing Adaptation Efforts - Inside Climate NewsAs preparedness lags, many regions around the world could be overwhelmed by rising temperatures, climate experts warn.

This from @gelliottmorris.com is a very striking chart. For a decade, ever since Trump said he "could stand in the middle of 5th Ave. and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters" many a pundit has wondered: What, if anything, could peel MAGA voters away? Maybe it's $6.50/gallon diesel.

G Elliott Morris@gelliottmorris.com

NEW: Amid rising diesel prices, Republicans turn against Trump for first time on handling inflation. A majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (52%) now say they disapprove of Donald Trump’s handling of prices: www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-10-02...

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Solar panels are so popular in Pakistan they’re being used as wedding dowries. That boom is now challenging a power sector that owes billions to China, and exposing snarls in Beijing's drive to dominate the global energy transition. bloom.bg/4xQoheN 📷️: Asim Hafeez/Bloomberg

To Leah's point, I've yet to see any evidence that AI is pulling down mountains. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/29/o...

nytimes.comOpinion | Mountains Are Coming Undone (Gift Article)The burning of fossil fuels is pulling down the world’s highest peaks.
Leah Stokes@leahstokes.bsky.social

“Unlike A.I., climate change’s existential threat is not hypothetical. It is killing people now." Amidst the AI-pocalypse, we can't lose sight of the climate crisis and the urgency of electrification. Gift link! shorturl.at/On4Jk

Jonathan Mingle reposted

With the Strait of Hormuz closed, Iraq has resorted to moving its oil across the desert to Syria in hundreds of tanker trucks, in true Mad Max style. From there, it will be shipped to worldwide markets.

Yep. Decarbonization has to go through, over or around utilities. It's as if everyone has forgotten that they are given monopolies in exchange for providing essential services to society. And that regulators/lawmakers/governors' job is to hold them accountable to the public interest.

David Roberts@volts.wtf

Governors need to get serious about disciplining utilities. Or claiming some of their planning powers for the state. Or making them publicly owned. Enough of this shit.

May 2024: "You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. Giving $1 billion would be a 'deal,' Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him." www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

washingtonpost.comWhat Trump promised oil CEOs as he asked them to steer $1 billion to his campaignDonald Trump has pledged to scrap President Biden’s policies on electric vehicles and wind energy, and other initiatives opposed by the fossil fuel industry.
Kevin J. Kircher@kevinjkircher.com

"after donating $201 million to re-elect Trump and his allies, oil and gas companies will now collect an estimated $190 billion in tax breaks and subsidies over the next decade"

“For every month the conflict lasts, the probability of permanent (oil and gas) demand destruction increases.”

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com

President Trump has inadvertently reduced global fossil fuel consumption because of the ongoing war with Iran. People worldwide are using significantly less oil and gas, which means less climate pollution.

Jonathan Mingle reposted

NEW: ProPublica revealed that the FBI was circling Sen. Collins over a defense contractor’s donations — until Trump gutted the unit in charge. Collins has since mustered a defense with a series of incorrect and misleading claims.

propublica.orgProPublica Debunks Susan Collins’ Claims About FBI Anti-Corruption ProbeProPublica revealed that the FBI was circling Sen. Collins over a defense contractor’s donations — until President Trump gutted the unit in charge. Collins has since mustered a defense with a series o...

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Replying to @volts.wtf

I love this slide. I really don't think the geopolitical implications of the clean energy transition have sunk in for most people.

Looking back a few years from now it will be clear just how much this own-goal global energy shock is swamping Trump's presidency. Pundits and oil market analysts used to be fond of saying that "Presidents have little to no control over gas prices." Trump has (inadvertently) proven them wrong:

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com

Breaking news: The effects of the U.S.-led war on Iran are about to intensify in the form of huge jumps in the prices of gasoline and diesel, analysts predict.

Your periodic reminder that *no one is driving the bus* 👇

Luke Kawa@ljkawa.bsky.social

JPMorgan’s commodities team: “For the first time since the start of the Iran conflict, we don’t have a baseline view. We simply don’t know how to model the endgame.”

Sure El Niño will cause massive suffering and damage. But have you considered how it will "juice hedge fund returns" and create an “unusually alpha-rich environment"? One fund's "targeting $500 million to bet on the ways in which El Niño will upend food prices." 🤪 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

bloomberg.comEx-Balyasny Trader Bets El Niño Can Turbocharge Hedge Fund GainsA former Balyasny Asset Management trader who now runs a boutique hedge fund in London says he expects to be able to amplify returns by anticipating how an evolving super El Niño will affect markets.

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Replying to @davidho.bsky.social

NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.

Jonathan Mingle reposted

While erasing any limit to planet-heating pollution from power plants, Donald Trump's EPA made two bold claims - that this will lower Americans' energy bills and the pollution doesn't even matter anyway. The EPA's own documents tell a very different story www.theguardian.com/environment/...

theguardian.comTrump EPA’s arguments for letting power plants spew unlimited pollution ‘dead wrong’Claims that dismantling pollution rules will lower energy bills and have little climate impact are far from convincing

In March 2025 I warned of far-reaching damage from DOGE/Trump cuts to air pollution monitoring at US embassies in 80 cities. Now it has come to pass: "Later that year, local air pollution levels increased by between 24 and 33 percent in 46 of those cities." www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

washingtonpost.comPollution spikes after Trump halted global air-monitoring efforts, report saysAir pollution in dozens of cities rose after U.S. embassies stopped providing readings that had previously spurred local government action, a study found.
New York Times Opinion@nytopinion.nytimes.com

“Their chain-saw-waving approach to cost-cutting will only leave us blind as we head deeper into the 21st-century maelstrom of supercharged hurricanes, extreme heat waves and toxic wildfire smoke,” writes Jonathan Mingle.

EPA press release today: "Models continue to show that GHG emissions from power plants have no material impact on global climate change. In fact, if all carbon dioxides were eliminated tomorrow, there would be no meaningful climate impact." ...🤔

Jonathan Mingle reposted

MAXXED OUT at $9.999!! GasBuddy data showing 5 stations in California that have hit the limit and are selling diesel at the dispensers highest possible price: $9.999/gal

Jonathan Mingle reposted

Not sure people understand how bad El Niño already is. In Southern California today, we had an offshore pacific hurricane (not normal) take out homes and beaches. We had temperatures topping 111°F with high humidity. There's a fire in LA. And we are just getting started with El Niño.

But this story is heartbreaking: "Funeral pyres...have been burning steadily. But instead of bodies, it is effigies they have set ablaze—shaped out of sacred grass, as if to conjure something tangible of the loved ones who disappeared in Nepal’s devastating floods." www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/w...

nytimes.comFamilies Turn to Symbolic Cremation After Nepal FloodsThousands are missing, and some families have lost hope of recovering their bodies. To carry out his sacred duty, a son lights the funeral pyre for a straw effigy of his father.

China's EV surge is remaking global energy markets. China's reduced oil demand is largely responsible for preventing oil prices reaching $200/barrel due to Hormuz. Looks like it's also responsible for its dropping CO2 emissions, per @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social: www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chi...

carbonbrief.orgAnalysis: China’s CO2 emissions fall in Q2 2026 due to plummeting oil use - Carbon BriefChina’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the second quarter of 2026, as oil consumption plummeted amid the strait of Hormuz crisis.
Jonathan Mingle@jmingle.bsky.social

Biggest story on the planet right now 👇

To summarize: "Our fossil fuel burning is pulling down the world’s highest peaks." www.nytimes.com/2026/08/29/o...

nytimes.comOpinion | Mountains Are Coming UndoneThe burning of fossil fuels is pulling down the world’s highest peaks.
The New York Times@nytimes.com

In Nepal, it will most likely take months for scientists to understand exactly what led to deadly flash floods that killed over 1,000 people and left thousands missing. Early theories posit glacier meltwater and a thawing permafrost could have contributed to bedrock collapse.

Congratulations to @leahstokes.bsky.social on her pub day! Looking forward to heading to @bearpondbooks.bsky.social here in VT to get my copy of The Carbon Wave soon.

Leah Stokes@leahstokes.bsky.social

It's publication day for The Carbon Wave! Thank you to everyone who has already bought a copy. Until Friday you can buy signed copies at Brookline Booksmith: brooklinebooksmith.com/book/9780262... Book tour: thecarbonwave.com/tour Book club: electricnotes.news/p/climate-bo...