Remember when solar powered cars were some mad futuristic idea involving weird biscuit thin wheels on strange cars using hazy sun filled roads in an American desert?
Just boring everyday installations now.
Manga comic book cover featuring a comic illustration of a young man wearing a cowboy hat riding a fully laden touring bicycle. He has one arm in the air.
Cycle Yarō
Number 1 of 37 volumes
🎨Toshio Shoji
Cycle Yarō is a 1970s Japanese manga comic that follows the story of a young man who attempts to travel around Japan.
TECHNICAL DATA Recorded by a Grindley Gibbons Mark Two Panovistic microphone incorporating ecliptical suspension bars with two overhead valves, Sansom and Margrave condensers with hand ground tappets, disc brakes, and twin exhaust pipes. Three hundred megacycles on a frequency of two thousand bicycles providing an output of 0000.003 volts to the square inch with a noise ratio of ten to one at half volume giving an annual fall out of 97 units.
Love a good technical note on a vinyl record.
If I’m reading this correctly (it’s possible I’m not) the Evening Standard now has a news team of six journalists - two politics and four general reporters - to cover London.
Crime, transport and City Hall specialists all gone. Some really experienced good reporters such as Ross Lydall going.
I can’t believe you’re making me nostalgic for Brian Meek. Damn you!
NEW ENERGY FROM THE NORTH SEA LATEST!
Back in 2019 the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation had to abandon their attempt to buy land from Car Giant to support housing.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...
Turns out in 2026 land isn’t valuable enough to help support transformation of business. cardealermagazine.co.uk/official-hug...
More investment by tombola. Fund local government properly.
I'm biased, but I think this is the apex example of how our discourse has become detached from reality.
The reality has moved rapidly in one direction (dramatic fall in solar and battery costs; climate change seeming worse than expected). The discourse has moved in the exact opposite direction
I used to find it quite thrilling to watch the Shard growing in the distance as I cycled in from the west. Barely see it when I come in from the south east now, ironically.
Aaargh! I thought the Met had binary search explained to them but they are STILL using this excuse!!! onodi.co/bisect/
Quick recap: to make way for the A14 road scheme, 400,000 trees & shrubs were cleared. National Highways said they would replant more trees than they had felled.
In 2023, Sky News said three-quarters of the 850,000 saplings planted to replace veteran trees felled for the project had died!
I think that as economists we should be a lot more concerned that everyone feels like they've got poorer when the data show they haven't. We certainly shouldn't just be assuming that the customers are wrong, rather than that we're no longer measuring things that are most relevant to wellbeing
I wonder if we’re missing some fairly simple things. Like, today’s rowntree report confirms that rent costs are broadly up with inflation BUT the key problem is more people are renting privately. So more people feel more exposed and more stuck. And yes, we need more data and more curious questions!
There are people out there who don't own a car and have kids. Plenty actually. Also outside of London. It's much easier than some people make it out to be. And yes, cargo bikes are amazing, thanks @zackpolanski.bsky.social 😀
Without energy efficiency, the EU would need — and pay — 31% more for energy today.
Since 2000, efficiency has removed 265 Mtoe of demand from the market entirely.
The best protection against a price shock is not finding cheaper oil and gas. It's needing less of it.
BREAKING: Free parking advocate concedes defeat.🧵
Scientists have been working very hard and have finally achieved what many thought impossible: a Mail Online comments section defending a Labour MP.
And when you dig into it, all the heating oil support really is - is extra funding into discretionary local council administered welfare funds. So it can potentially, locally support towards system installation.
Thing is - the heating oil support is barely off the ground yet. It was easier for people facing heating oil costs to apply for heat pump installation. So there’s a hell of a nudge just because inevitably decarbonisation policy is ready before any crisis response is.
Also worth looking at Nesta’s visit at heat pump tool to find someone who has a similar experience to you. On the whole, you don’t have to rush it, but still be ready for when e.g. prices spike or you need to replace something. www.nesta.org.uk/project/visi...
You don’t have to do it all at once. I’d suggest looking at some of the Heat Geek accredited firms and some of the newer solutions they are developing. No harm in taking a few years and doing it incrementally. I’ve just focused on optimising my gas boiler this year as I’m in a new build.
Hey look - stuck with expensive heating oil in a rural area? You can now get a heat pump installed in as little as five days after a quote. And the cost after subsidies works out as roughly two £700 top ups of heating oil (£1500).
Don’t panic - just install.
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
It can't be said often enough, so I'll say it again:
Solar and batteries can power the world! It's cheaper than gas (esp. at today's prices) and a lot more reliable.
By 2030, solar and batteries could supply 90% of electricity to 80% of the world's population for < €80/MWh (including backup).
National Grid: Live The National Grid is the electric power transmission network for Great Britain Time 12:20pm Price −£16.49/MWh Emissions 39g/kWh Demand 33.2GW Generation 34.4GW Transfers 1.2GW Generation Generation Renewables 26.9GW 81.0% Note: percentages are relative to demand, so will exceed 100% if power is being exported
Indeed it turns out renewable electricity generation is now growing fast enough to reduce the proportion of the time that gas sets the electricity grid price.
Right now the grid is on negative pricing by one measure.
grid.iamkate.com
Last month it was claimed that the UK only having the equivalent of 2 days gas in storage was a worry.
In reality, we generated so much renewable energy that we needed the equivalent of 18 fewer tankers of LNG gas.
Want resilience? Replace gas with electric.
www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-rec...
Oil and gas in the North Sea is claimed to be:
-cheaper than renewables
-a goldmine that prints money
-so abundant we can depend on it
-so scarce that it’s valuable
-a tiny proportion of global emissions
-a world market changing quantity of reserves
Reality: mature, exhausted basin with little left
Everyone has a hobby.
Any serious analysis of "sustainable" aviation fuel comes down to this. The land use implications alone mean that SAF will never be more than a greenwash marketing term.
"To put it bluntly, an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago."
If you think it is necessary to be on Twitter to communicate your fact-based worldview, the reality is that worldview is being smothered.