Don Burke

It seems like a good time to remind folks that Volts is 100% listener supported. My only obligation is to you. Subscribe & help me keep doing it!

Tesla Expands Robotaxi Service Area Again, Reclaims Top Spot From Waymo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Kk...

Astonishing French report from Blatten Avalanche. This event might just be getting started. thinc.blog/2025/05/30/a...

Some good news! 3 absurd anti-solar and pro-gas bills die in Texas pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/05/28/a...

This is a seismic gut punch to the weather enterprise. It is impossible to overstate how important @unidata.bsky.social is in implementing many datasets/libraries (LDM, netCDF, THREDDS, metPy) we currently use in meteorological research & operations. www.unidata.ucar.edu/blogs/news/e...

Hey Katharine! I've since shifted to Gallagher Re. Myself and team release quarterly and annual natural catastrophe / climate reports with ample data to quantify and qualify how these risks are evolving globally. Q1 2025 www.ajg.com/gallagherre/... 2024 Annual www.ajg.com/gallagherre/...

Genuine reasons for hope - the constitutional order is under assault, but Trump's incompetence continues to improve the prospects for effective resistance www.vox.com/politics/410...

Hosting an event in Alexandria? Promote it easily on the ALXnow calendar www.alxnow.com/2025/04/29/h...

We & @sabincenter.bsky.social are tracking government attacks on science --> climate.law.columbia.edu/Silencing-Sc... @publicenvirodata.bsky.social is archiving critical data --> screening-tools.com And there are even more trackers in this list! --> ucsd.libguides.com/usgov/trumpt...

Eco-City Festival to showcase Alexandria's environmentally friendly initiatives www.alxnow.com/2025/04/28/e...

Hi everyone. I'm gonna start posting again. I needed to be away from social media for my sanity.

My Most popular post this week: Oil Majors tell Trump to go Frack Himself thinc.blog/2025/02/03/o...

Sometimes it is only one side of the #Arctic that experiences anomalously low conditions during winter, but this year we are seeing the sea ice edge on *both* the Atlantic & Pacific sectors at very low levels for this time of year. This is contributing to the historic record low for early February.

State-level permitting remains a critical safeguard against Trump's anti-climate agenda. States are strengthening environmental justice standards, ensuring impacts on marginalized communities are considered. Climate action is resilient—and states will continue to uphold key protections.

This is also a valuable resource for sky users theblue.report

State lawmakers nationwide are refusing to back down on our climate future. They're ready to take the lead — to use state power to build the clean energy economy and defy Trump’s attacks. Join us tomorrow for a press conference with leaders from red, purple and blue states: bit.ly/state-leadership

Here's how much ice NWS predicts Wednesday night into Thurs AM around the DC area. We think this is a reasonable forecast. Icy glaze most probable/significant west of I-95. Will want to use care on bridges, ramps, overpasses, untreated surfaces! Details: www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...

In 2024, for the first time, the EU grid got more power from solar than from coal.

Excellent article by the author of the must-read book, “On the Move”: “soaring home prices in the United States may have peaked in the places most at risk, leaving the nation on the precipice of a generational decline. That’s the finding of a new analysis by the First Street Foundation.”

Big national media outlet still failing. Headlines suggest some dispute over data access at US AID. *Not connecting the dots with other DOGE moves. *Not conveying illegality. *Not communicating constitutional crisis.

An anonymous person at the CDC just archived all the public CDC datasets as of 1/28 and uploaded it to archive.org

Today from Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: snyder.substack.com/p/the-logic-...

Keep an eye on this graph over the next few days or so (zacklabe.com/arctic-tempe...). An extreme #Arctic winter warming event is occurring bringing a narrow band of near freezing air temperatures close to the North Pole (associated with poleward movement of excessive heat and moisture).

“January 2025 beat the prior record (Jan 2024) by a sizable margin. And unlike the prior record Januaries (2007, 2016, 2020, and 2024) there is currently no El Niño event boosting global temperatures; rather, the world is in modest La Niña conditions that should…result in lower global temperatures.”

Absolutely brutal scroll on Fox.

1/2 Hi everyone. Someone asked me for Tesla export statistics, so I thought I’d share them here since it’s a current discussion topic For example, 49,747 Teslas made in the US were delivered outside the US, accounting for 7.4% of US-made deliveries in 2024 The next tweet has a more detailed table

I want some linguist or sociologist or something to do a study on the lifecycle of terminology on the right. I've seen the same cycle repeat itself dozens, hundreds of times over the years. It goes like this: 🧵

How to delete your Twitter account by @techcrunch.com

1/2 Tesla used to be a highly desirable brand. In 2022, they had 470K buyers waiting in line, trying to buy a Tesla. Model Y Long Range AWD, Tesla's most popular car in the US, was selling for $65,990 in 2022. Then Elon bought Twitter and Tesla’s brand image took a hit due to political controversy

My annual decarbonization presentation is here. 200 slides, covering everything from water levels in Lake Gatún to sulfur dioxide emissions to ESG fund flows to Chinese auto exports to artificial intelligence. www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations

The Copyright Office just released a new report on AI and copyright, focusing on copyrightability questions. The report doesn’t change policy, but clarifies existing policy by adding more detailed guidance. It concludes once more that AI created works are not eligible for copyright protection.

Please follow the Pacific Institute and welcome then to Bluesky. Also add them to Starter Packs for water, climate, equity organizations. @pacificinstitute.bsky.social

An Army official tells NBC News preliminary indications are there were three people on board the U.S. Army Blackhawk that collided with the American Airlines jet.

ATC audio with the military helicopter asking if they can see the regional jet, which it collided with seconds later. You can hear the controllers in the background react to the incident.

Hard to stomach the news from DC. Awful. Jon Ostrower @jonostrower.com is the best sourced and most informed aviation reporter out there if you're looking for accurate, timely and contextualized information about this tragedy or anything else happening in the skies.

From American Airlines: "American Eagle Flight 5342 en route from Wichita, Kansas (ICT) to Washington, D.C. (DCA) was involved in an accident at DCA... If you believe you may have loved ones on board Flight 5342, call American Airlines toll-free at 800-679-8215."

Tesla's Earnings Call Recap - HW3 Upgrade, Unsupervised FSD, FSD V14 and More

So... American Airlines crash with a helicopter happened over the Potomac tonight in DC. Is it a great idea to disband things like aviation safety advisory committees?

Army Blackhawk helicopters are crashing into passenger planes at DCA while the Secretary of Defense is on Fox News ranting about DEI

I spent so much ink on Gitmo in my book about concentration camps because it was clear that by failing to eliminate detention there, this is where we've been headed for decades. What the US has already done is horrific, and in an unconstitutional no-man's-land, we face the possibility of much worse.