climate
Implausible Thanks to a PhD "Climate Crank"
I’d closed my office door by this point, which was a good thing, because I fairly shrieked, “are you telling me George W. Bush got into Harvard Business School on [obscene gerund] merit??”
Matthew Klippenstein
electricity
The Sierra Club (of 1972) vs the Black Panthers
“We protected the world from nuclear power” rings differently than “we protected the world from nuclear power, and in retrospect it cost the health of a hundred communities poorer than ours”.
energy
US Gun Violence; Canada’s; BC’s Fugitive Methane Emissions and u.s.
There's a big difference between gun violence rates in the United States and Canada -- and in the fugitive methane emissions rate in the US and British Columbia, too.
energy
Dismounting the Hydrogen Ladder 3: A Farewell to Army Knives
The particulars of our places punish the general tool, whether a Swiss Army Knife or the Hydrogen Ladder. We use tools fit-for-purpose, instead. So a Hydrogen Star is proposed.
hydrogen
Dismounting the Hydrogen Ladder 2: Rubric Overreliance
Scoring rubrics can be helpful, but from 17th century farming to pondering hydrogen uses today, they can steer us in the wrong direction.
energy
Dismounting the Hydrogen Ladder: One Error, Two Cases, Rule of Three
This critique of the Hydrogen Ladder goes to the top of the Hierarchy of Disagreement to refute the central point of arguments against hydrogen in personal transport and households.
electricity
Mapping Resilience in Nature to Energy [1.3]
Can we map insights from biology (a very complex system) to our energy systems (which are also very complex)?
![Chasing Efficiency is Fighting Darwin [1.2]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/03/Ants-Winning-Evolution-1.png)
efficiency
Chasing Efficiency is Fighting Darwin [1.2]
Herbert Spencer summarized Darwin as “survival of the fittest” and not “survival of the most efficient”. Setbacks are inevitable and it’s resilience – not efficiency – that mitigates their impact.
![Efficiency, Resilience, and Maslow [1.1]](/content/images/size/w600/2025/03/1.1-Efficiency--Resilience--Maslow.png)
energy
Efficiency, Resilience, and Maslow [1.1]
Efficiency has value, but in complex systems it's still subordinate to resilience.
energy
Energy R&D: Resilience and Diversity
It is a cliché that digital cameras killed Kodak, but it deserves to be a cliché that Fujifilm survived. This example and many others suggest that while efficiency helps us in the short term, resilience carries us to the long term. We should consider this as we think about energy.
Attack on Titan: from Idealism to Internment Camps
The expanded finale of acclaimed Japanese anime Attack on Titan was in select North American theatres on Monday (February 10). I attended. I only wish I’d hooked my kids on it, so we could have gone together. While it superficially begins in the team of heroes-battling-monsters genre, the show
Beethoven's Notes, Medical Diagnoses and Motorcycle Maintenance
In my irrepressible nerdiness I finished this scholarly book on Christianity recently, which illuminated the importance of the context of written words. Especially hallowed words which influence culture. The gentlest way to ease into this is through Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance before