Matthew Smith

NEW BRIGHT SPOTS: Even on 100% gas power, heat pumps cut emissions by ~48% and EVs by about half. The authors of an “electrification doesn’t cut emissions” paper made a series of compounding mistakes and used misleading assumptions. Here's why. janrosenow.substack.com/p/heat-pumps...

In 1990, about 20 million animals a year were euthanized in kill shelters. Today, over half the shelters in the US are designated no-kill and less than 500,000 animals are euthanized.

German airline Lufthansa has postponed the resumption of flights to Dubai until November 25, extending its suspension of services to the United Arab Emirates. War is coming….

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nuke these companies from orbit. That they still exist and thrive in our country is a moral stain. That they have so much money that they can effect our elections in this way is an abomination.

Not just the fastest, or the cheapest, or the best, but the *only* possible solution to climate change is a rapid global buildout of clean energy infrastructure. If you're standing in the way of that, you're not working on climate change & should be honest with yourself about your priorities.

Are the echoes of the Arab Spring more audible now? Is it clearer how these recent riots are not just about disaffected youths and poor public services, but are connected to the riots and protests across the entire world owing to soaring oil & gas prices owing to the wars on Iran and Ukraine? 7/x

Not only was #Digger a great movie but it had great music, and I can’t get it out of my head.

Here's something you may NOT know about beluga whales: they have squishy foreheads. This area is called the MELON, and it's a specialized organ filled with fat, oil & wax that acts as a deformable acoustic lens, focusing sound waves into the water around them. But wait, there's MORE!

Folks, my friend in southeastern Connecticut just had 128 gallons of home heating oil delivered. The price? $750 dollars. This a real world, on the ground crisis in the making. Oil delivery season is upon us. #fact

i wrote about why i think everyone (esp people working on climate) should see digger. unfortunately i had to spoil digger in order to write about digger. so do me a favor and see digger and then come back and read my review

*Look, science fiction was invented in the 1920s, while libraries have been burning-down ever since Sumeria *However, Artificial Intelligences getting burned down by remotely-targeted robot missiles, that's an exciting new trend *Is this situation some fantasist's "anxiety," no it isn't

10. We oughtta be building more wind, especially in seasonal climates like Europe. Solar will get built anyway, it’s cheap, but wind blows at night and in the winter. We’re going to need something to charge the batteries in winter, especially with rising heatpump use.

6. In a way, it’s reassuring that solar is saturating, as it means solar is actually displacing fossil fuel rather than power demand increasing vertically. But it means the beginning of a new phase: the age of cheap solar and batteries. This too will pass, but it’s just getting started now.

5. Solar is still the cheapest source of bulk electricity in many countries, and the quickest to deploy, and now you couldn't stop it if you wanted to. The limits to PV build in most places that aren’t yet running into saturation effects are grid access and permitting.

An amazingly stark example of how the US economy has broken: Zaslav clears nearly a *billion* dollars amid a CEO tenure where he made basically anything he touched worse, harmed multiple prestigious brands, led huge layoffs—but delivered a corrupt merger for shareholders. variety.com/2026/tv/news...

Farm animals are individuals forced into systems of exploitation created by humans. Cows, pigs, chickens, fishes, and others are not products, they are living beings who value their lives and deserve freedom, dignity, and compassion. #WorldFarmedAnimalsDay 🧡🐮🐷🐔🐠

Tech companies suddenly decide they can, in fact, moderate content on their platforms after all

Today I saw the new 4 hour documentary Musk, directed by Alex Gibney. There were too many times to count that a sold out theater burst out laughing at Elon Musk, something he said or did, even sometimes just how he looked. I believe that is his worst nightmare come to life.

*Every day I see the fossil fuel biz getting mercilessly pounded with increasingly powerful and accurate robot bombs, while every day, the planet's carbon emissions also somehow soar *This activity seems like the apotheosis of the "unsustainable," if that word means anything

The tightrope challenge for carmakers, not just German ones, is that the market wants electric cars now. However, this does not align with the slow transition towards 2035+ that carmakers had planned, which would have involved ongoing high returns on past investments in combustion engine models.

Heating oil just hit $5.39/gallon in Maine, 60% above last year. A heat pump installed today pays back in 3–5 years and you keep the oil system for backup. 4.79 million households should be making this call right now. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

The best film about 9/11 is only indirectly about 9/11. It is also IMO Spike Lee’s best film, period. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25th_Hour

*Everything* is another chance to remind the public of what's working for them

It does seem like this is happening. I consider that great news. Diesel generators pump out poison. "Generating the same electricity from a diesel generator as from a solar panel would cost as much in diesel, every three months, as the solar panel itself"

Genuinely abundant, cheap, accessible energy has vastly more liberatory potential than AI, for vastly more people -- especially more poor people. Which, I guess, is your answer.

Settlements are pure business decisions. If Meta was willing to pay $18 billion, imagine how guilty they must’ve been, how big they feared the real damages would be, and how insanely profitable it was to do this wrong in the first place.

On the topic of doing the right thing for the future while sharing joy, here's an electric ice cream van that I passed while out walking this evening. More of this!

LDES! China’s 80‑hectare HiTHIUM Heze Base is world’s first integrated industrial park dedicated to long‑duration energy storage (LDES). Production lines exceed 15 GWh. LDES is just starting! Price will plunge. LDES expands solar & wind. interestingengineering.com/energy/china... #energysky

Scientists have created a new category of heat waves: "snow eaters"

About 2/3rds of the primary energy consumed in the world is thrown away as heat. Electrification of industry and transport, and producing that electricity from intrinsically primary sources (like water, wind and sunshine) reduces the task enormously.

The film declares that far from being the thing to save Western civilization, the machismo that delights in cruelty to outsiders and stranger... is the very thing causing a contemporary civilizational collapse, by rupturing the bonds between men. We are the sea people.

The tech industry constantly talks about its ability to "flex" data centres in response to demand pressures, but this Aus grid operator report shows that they simply don't actually do that So AEMO assumes demand flex from them is zero megawatts in their forecasts www.aemo.com.au/consultation...

I think if there's anything that's guided me from military tech journalism to foreign policy advocacy it's broadly this: "getting the violence of war to end has to come from a place of understanding why it continues," which is a metric useful across conflicts, like in this on Sudan:

How much does it cost to install a heat pump? And how much can you save with rebates and incentives? We teamed up with @consumerreports.org to crunch the numbers, and here’s what we found: innovation.consumerreports.org/heat-pumps-m...

What a photo! A female Amur tiger is released into the wild in Kazakhstan.

This Texas 430 MW solar & 250 MW/500 MWh battery plant pays $100 million in local taxes to support schools, infrastructure and emergency services. Solar, wind & battery projects bring major tax payments that help to fund public services for millions! www.pv-magazine.com/2026/08/06/o... #energysky

Gulf allies have asked the U.S. in recent weeks for more air-defense interceptors and continued guarantees that the U.S. military will protect them if the tit-for-tat fighting drags on, officials have said.-WSJ

Behind the scenes, Gulf countries are frustrated with what they see as a lack of a clear strategy from the U.S. as the war drags on, subjecting their territories to frequent Iranian attacks, people familiar with the matter said.

Everyone talks about batteries as “firming” wind and solar. In this conversation we talk about why batteries make fossil better. Storage makes the ENTIRE grid run better fossil, nuclear, everything and treating it as a renewables-only cost is the wrong mental model. 🧵

John Klar was chosen for an EPA panel on federal policy that impacts farmers, ranchers and rural communities not just because of his farming experience, but also his leadership in the MAHA movement.

*This diabolical hack would be actually funny if it rewrote all the "poisoned" text as Situationist-tinted postmodernese. Entirely in French, of course

A better future is possible.

This is insanity — especially given the incoherence of the WHCA redoing their celebratory dinner with Trump tonight.

In Australia, both grid and household batteries are playing a huge role in balancing the grid this year, reducing the peaks and soaking up excess generation. Gas-fired generators are losing out to batteries.

@theonion.com, unfortunately, nails it #openai #ai

We in Georgia would like to point out the drastic upward pricing pressure and technological lock-in that happens with nuclear. I appreciate that academically it reduces portfolio risk, but wow, is nuclear such a bad deal. Over schedule, over budget, & centralized approach only benefits SouthernCo.

Triple Benefits Dual-use solar methods like ecovoltaics and agrivoltaics show solar "can generate renewable energy while simultaneously boosting biodiversity, conserving water, and securing steady income for landowners." pv-magazine-usa.com/2026/07/14/w... #energysky

Just saying:

Exactly so! I rounded up a dozen or so stories on the subject in @transitiontimes.bsky.social TT#7... and now here come the electric semis! www.transitiontimes.net/tt-7-chinas-...