Adam Bell
@adambell.bsky.social
"Former energy czar" - the Guardian. "Energy big brain" - Politico.
Wow. "the Romanian naval forces carried out a controlled explosion to divert a large volume of water to the Old Danube and the Cernavodă nuclear power plant to help with its cooling" www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
South-eastern Europe faces heatwave energy crunch as Romania detonates Danube rock to increase water flow – Europe live
Explosives used to move a large rock and let more water flow to cool nuclear power plant
theguardian.com
In fairness to the Online Right, I think it is possible to envisage an alternative framework to drive action on climate change that centres markets and innovation rather than planning. I haven't seen anything from Kemi and co that amounts to this, however.
James Murray@james-bg.bsky.social · 5d agoThis is even worse than Badenoch’s letter yesterday, as she has space to explain what she would do instead of net zero targets to tackle the climate change she accepts is real but then doesn’t. She accuses Labour of not having a plan, then insists we should trust her unannounced plan will be better.
I'm not qualified to judge whether such people are psychopaths. All I can say is that they behave as if they are. From today's Telegraph.
Can't believe TikTok is censoring my content on Flat Horse Theory.
Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social · 7d agoTikTok has incredible moderation team. Our InfoWars video about Multiple Horse Theory — the idea that there are many horses in the world and not just one — has been fully deemed misinformation and lost the formal appeals process. Confirmed by Larry Ellison: There is only one horse on Earth.
++BREAKING++ The Daily Telegraph has... *rubs eyes* ...published something sensible about climate change: "I’m coming to the view that the Online Right is going wrong, eschewing compassion or charm, talking itself into corners of angry irrelevance. Take climate change."
At both the Telegraph and NS had to navigate the hurt feelings of some politicians about things that those publications had done, sometimes 20 years in the past. Now loads of politicians will merrily post away on a website whose owner regularly endorses the idea they, personally, should be killed.
If I can, let me explain today's Times story. This is less to do with renewables and much more to do with where generation is located and how it shows up at a system level. /1
Dr Stylite@columnist.bsky.social · 2w agoCan anyone provide me with an informed opinion re the greater / lesser / same propensity for electricity shortages the greater the use of renewable.* * I get that in principle wind / solar is less controllable than fossil fuels but presumably that just means operating with a greater supply margin?
I am a fully signed up member of Team YOLO and I think the most amusing timeline is to schedule Farage's by-election and then schedule a general on the same day including all other seats, forcing the anti-Farage voters to coalesce around Binface.
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 2w agoI oscillate wildly on this one. The basic challenge is “what you do about the fact the 2027-9 plans are a political nightmare?”, with the options being: 1) make the tough choices that Starmer-Reeves deferred in the third year of the parliament (🥶) 2) risk an early election (🥶)
Round our way if you banned parking on pavements you'd block roads that were originally designed for horses. Unless you want to knock down all streets built before WW2 I can't see how you can avoid pavement parking.
Transport Action Network@transportaction.bsky.social · 2w agoDoes your council allow / encourage pavement parking? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Great to see this actually happening. Electric planes will be quieter than jets, meaning that a lot of local airports could find ways of expanding that would be impossible when using combustion engines.
James Murray@james-bg.bsky.social · 2w agoIt's only an electric aircraft that really could be operating on commercial routes in the UK within three years. www.businessgreen.com/news/4533212...
Stop exactly what you're doing now, even if you're flying a plane or putting the last matchstick in your Palace of Versailles model, and read this from the Kilowatts Substack. Some thoughts from me below. open.substack.com/pub/kilowatt...
The Night France Saved the British Grid
Inside the control-room nightmare of 23 June: the day Britain's grid ran out of margin — and was saved by a phone call
open.substack.com
Tom Haddon@tomh-analyst.bsky.social · 3w agoNot commented on this as, well what do I know? But from the outside it looks like a Twitter conspiracy theory, driven by Claire Coutinho's 'red team', come to life. What has NESO hidden? All frequency/voltage/inertia data is public. We can see what every asset was instructed to do, in real time.
Take this part. We’re already importing oil and gas from Norway. We’ve been importing it all through the period when the Conservatives had a period of maximising production.
Andy Burnham is currently being given the access codes for the national computer. It was designed by Charles Babbage inn 1867, is made out of zinc, crystal, and the heart of Lord Nelson, and is located seven miles below the crypt of Westminster Abbey.
Mark continues to do the Lord's* work in scrutinising the actual workings of Government rather than its political veneer. *A Pun
Mark Pack@markpackuk.bsky.social · 3w agoThey appear each week here - committees.parliament.uk/committee/25...
Childhood's End: today my daughter was very disappointed to learn that Hatfield is not where the hats are grown.
While there's lots to like here, if we forgive energy debt in an untargeted way and don't restore penalties for non-payment we create tremendous moral hazard. You'd be an idiot if you ever paid your energy bill again.
Andrew Sissons@acjsissons.bsky.social · 3w agoNEW: we’ve published our Nesta proposals for how Andy Burnham should look to cut energy bills. As covered by @guardianheather.bsky.social and Jillian Ambrose in the Guardian here: www.theguardian.com/money/2026/j...
Its not a new observation - @jim.londoncentric.media has been making it for months now - but this all comes back to a society where it seems there is no consequence for bad behaviour Austerity hollowed out and collapsed the regulatory state. Its the same phenomina with shoplifting, tax dodging etc
Jennifer Williams@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social · 3w agoOk well live next door to a house that’s a nightmare - anti social HMO, empty and a lightning rod for nonsense, a commercial building rotting - that’s owned by someone hundreds or even thousands of miles away, who is unresponsive, and their agents don’t care, and even the council can’t get purchase
I will always describe myself as a pro-market anti-capitalist. Efficient markets should prevent the concentration of capital on anything other than a temporary basis.
Alan Beattie@alanbeattie.bsky.social · 3w agoForgive me if you've made this point somewhere here but there's also a large yet frequently-elided distinction between being pro-business (backing large incumbents) and pro-market (fostering competition). Reeves is not a principled free-marketeer.
Great to see my boy Triceratops take bronze in the Cool Dinosaur awards.
YouGov@yougov.co.uk · 3w agoWith a T-rex skeleton selling for $50m at auction on Tuesday, our poll shows that the Tyrannosaurus Rex is Brits' top dinosaur, with 30% listing it as their favourite T-rex: favourite of 30% of dinosseurs Stegosaurus: 12% Triceratops: 11% Diplodocus: 10% Velociraptor: 7% yougov.com/en-gb/articl...
Starmer and Reeves' legacy is stabilisation without a strategy. My unsolicited advice to Andy Burnham and the new Chancellor. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Burnham must learn from Starmer’s mistakes: Labour was elected to transform the economy, not just stabilise it | Jonathan Portes
Devolution, tax, the EU and immigration: these are all opportunities for growth if Burnham abandons the excessive caution of the past few years, says economist Jonathan Portes
theguardian.com
Oh well, back to not caring about football. At least until Brazil next year.
God this is unbelievably pathetic. Any man who's had high T days could tell you that ensuring your soldiers are extra horny is not a war winning strategy.
Matthew Gault@mjgault.bsky.social · 3w agoHegseth announced they're gonna start screening for T and administering testosterone treatment for warriors found wanting
FAT GASSY CATS: The third in my series on the electricity wholesale market. Today we're looking at how the Capacity Mechanism has distorted the kinds of generators that get built and led to a limited number of plants making a quite astonishing amount of cash. open.substack.com/pub/unbalanc...
A Whisper in the Turbine Hall
How cumulative interventions increase consumer costs
open.substack.com
I can guarantee you that no-one will lose their jobs because of this. A lack of accountability borne of no 'advice' being in place is a feature of the system.
James Austin@jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 4w agoThat manager and several people senior to them should absoloutely lose their jobs over this
If you want to reduce the influence of the ultrarich, wealth taxes are terrible way to do it. The sums proposed, like ~2% of assets per year, are typically lower than the growth rate of those assets. All that happens is they get rich slightly slower. /1
George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 4w agoThis point needs to be made over and again: The main purpose of wealth taxes should not be to raise revenue. That's a small and secondary benefit. The main purpose should be to *reduce the fortunes of the ultrarich*. Why? Because those fortunes present a massive threat to democracy and public life.
Train driver into London Euston has decided that it's hot enough that he can pretend he's flying us into a resort on the Med. Over the tannoy just now: "This is your captain speaking. We are currently cruising at a height of about three feet and a speed of 60 miles per hour..."
Masterful inadvertent trolling from James, in a thread which sees people purport the existence of chess wormholes to avoid the conclusion that knights move in 3D space.
James Austin@jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 4w agoOnce again I want to say that all chess is, depending on how you conceptualise a chessboard, 4D chess. Chess pieces have 3 dimensions. A knight jumps pieces. Time is a crucial component. 4D chess is just.... chess
I mean, this shit is called like Bonk and Magic Internet Money. As a species we've wasted way too much time, effort, money, regulatory bandwidth, political capital and computing power on this utter nonsense. The opportunity cost is huge.
FinTwitter@fintwitter.bsky.social · 4w agoKraken has temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals of Bonk due to an ongoing incident affecting the token, according to its website.
It's the morning after the night before, and the streets of my very middle class town are littered with discarded Madri glasses.
