Royce Kurmelovs

I'm excited to announce the first of two essays I've produced this year will be published on 28 October. "Means, Motive, and Opportunity" looks at how fossil fuel producers worked to buy the numbers used to direct Australia's response to the science of climate change from the very beginning.

"...a dependency on equipment you buy once is very different from a dependency on fuel you buy every month. When a shipping lane closes, a fuel-importing economy feels it within days. If solar panel exports stopped tomorrow, the panels already installed would keep generating for decades."

NEW: Hormuz reminded fuel importers that buying energy cargo by cargo means importing every price shock. In TIME, María Mendiluce and I argue the response will decide who becomes the electrostates of the next decade. @wemeanbusiness.bsky.social time.com/article/2026...

So after all the Howard Govt's efforts in bugging the East Timor government to get Woodside an advantage in the Sunrise gas project, Woodside is selling out for not much. Little Timor now left with job of finding partners to finally develop the thing. www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jon...

Dispelling its initial uncertainty, the WA government has confirmed an investigation is underway into repeated large methane emissions from Chevron's Gorgon gas complex.

🚨"Internal memos among company scientists and executives obtained by The Times reveal that for at least half a century, the plastics industry has been aware of and concerned about the potential for microplastic contamination in the human body."

"The Coalition has vowed to dismantle Australia’s climate policies" www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...

What is true is that this was a conflict—and make no mistake, this was a conflict; this was a protracted battle in a hybrid war, more than anything—that was largely fought by large numbers of people laboriously working to unfuck the nation's informational environment.

Answering this as a quote because it’s something I think a lot of people would like to know: Deloitte et al sell credible blame for governments. Their role is not to provide solutions. It is to give the government something to point to when a decision is unpopular. ‘The report said we had to’.

To be fair, at this point those Hollywood Blockbusters are all just remakes of the same film.

"More than half of the $31 billion in cuts comes from slashing climate-related policies. Those costs have only been broken down into two large bundles, rather than itemised."

BRAZIL'S FLAVIO BOLSONARO: WE WILL ASK ELECTION TO BE ANNULLED

Rather than recalculate these, Labor passed new legislation to retrospectively validate debts they had already conceded were illegal. Now people are having to go back decades to find evidence with which to defend themselves. This is beyond indefensible. Spitting in the faces of Robodebt victims.

"The engineer proceeded by feel. He paused now and again to tap his fingers against a particular spot. ...When you dig down to the very bedrock of A.I., you discover that underneath all of its cognitive power is a dude drumming his fingers with occult proficiency." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Lula Goes HARD

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came from behind to win Brazil’s runoff election, halting a right-wing wave sweeping Latin America and defying predictions that the 80-year-old political veteran had finally reached the end of his extraordinary career. bloom.bg/4BsvV24 📷: Maira Erlich/Bloomberg

More shocking displays by Bolsonaro supporters in the last 24 hours: voters wearing T-shirts that say “long live fascism,” doing a Nazi salute when entering the polls, and a white man walking a Black man on a chain at a pro-Bolsonaro gathering in Rio de Janeiro.

Between Brazil and Serbia, there is too much going on in the world for a Monday morning, Australian time.

Polls close in Serbia as strongman Vučić faces challenge to 12-year rule – Europe live

Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. @latimes.com (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*.

Bolsonaro-friendly mayors appear to be sabotaging public transport on Election Day. Buses aren’t running in Lula-friendly areas, flights and ferries mysteriously canceled. Traffic lights have gone out and people’s power cut in Salvador, indigenous people’s travel restricted

"The global book market is expected to grow five per cent annually for the next several years; for the generation now entering college, book sales are at a lifetime high." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Shame we demolished it for a quick buck.

MIND-BLOWING STATS: A record two-thirds of new cars in China are now electric (NEVs*), while combustion-car sales have fallen by two-thirds since they peaked in 2017 – In 2020, ~95% of sales were combustion-engine cars – By Sep 2026, they crashed to 33% – On the flip side, NEVs hit a record 67% 🧵

Story from KOAT-TV in ABQ about the northern NM flooding. Amazed this is not getting more national coverage. www.koat.com/article/new-...

"At Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, service members described roughly three months of near-constant incoming fire beginning in March. Alarms often couldn’t keep up."

“Discrete”

What most people don't know: when you fill up a petrol car most of the energy never moves it. Petrol car: 13–21% of the crude oil's energy reaches wheels. Electric car on today's UK grid: 43–45%. Electric car on wind+solar: 77–80%. That's why we don't need to replace fossil energy one for one.

This is pretty much the entire point of undercover reporting.

You hate to see it.

3 from 3 now with the datacentres I reported on in May cancelled or delayed. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Like some kind of metaphor perhaps, but in the literal Greek sense, where μεταφορές are removal and relocation specialists www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

OpenAI trims valuation target to $1.25tn after pitching higher price ft.trib.al/v31DYCE

'In a statement, Chevron said satellite monitoring came with "a wide range of uncertainty".'

A #Mongabay investigation shows U.S. deep-sea mining claims in the Pacific now equal half the area managed by the U.N. International Seabed Authority. These overlapping high-seas claims spark intense legal conflicts and threaten fragile deep-sea ecosystems. Story by @elizabethalberts.bsky.social.

I write books and I endorse this message.

@albomp.bsky.social’s Govt doesn’t want to confirm Australia spied on Timor to steal their oil & gas. Next month they’ll explain why in a partly closed hearing, protected by a secrecy certificate👇. Today they’re in the ART asking to ban media & the public from the “open” hearing 🤷‍♂️ #auspol