Somehow we need to monetise this - and quickly

Power from SMR’s will be devastatingly expensive (€200-500 per MWh) for the next two decades. Batteries (of all kinds), renewable overbuild and thermal storage for industry are a cheaper and less risky strategy.

The Irish Times@irishtimes.com · 2w ago

Michael McDowell: Unless we embrace nuclear, Ireland will remain partly dependent on gas

Inside European Agribusiness's War on Public Health, Climate Mitigation and Nature: www.grilled.media/inside-copa-...

Inside Big Ag’s plot to kill the EU Green Deal

Documents from inside Europe's most powerful farming lobby reveal plans to block efforts to cut pesticide use and reduce factory farm pollution

grilled.media

A reminder that despite 30 years of trying, Crop Engineers have made very little progress on drought tolerant crops that also have high yields. My deep dive from last year: www.linkedin.com/pulse/crop-e... www.linkedin.com/pulse/crop-e...

Crop Engineers vs. Climate Drought (Part 1)

This week I'm taking a break from my series of articles on climate solutions to write about drought, crop yields and genetic engineering. Specifically, how climate change is changing the frequency and...

linkedin.com

“Crop-based biofuels were not effective at reducing emissions once the wider effects on land use were taken into account… When you take food out of the global food market, you have to replace it elsewhere… Allowing crop-based fuels into aviation would be a huge step backwards”

UK ministers changed stance on biofuels after officials’ US lobbying tour

Revelation raises concerns that US commercial pressure could weaken Britain’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions

ft.com

🔴 NEW: Northern Ireland Turned Into ‘Sacrifice Zone’ to Feed UK’s Appetite for Meat Nearly two thirds of country’s pig & poultry farms leach polluting manure into lough supplying half region’s drinking water, latest research finds. 📝 @shaunacorr.bsky.social👇 www.desmog.com/2026/07/08/n...

Northern Ireland Turned Into 'Sacrifice Zone’ to Feed UK’s Appetite for Meat, New Report Finds

A version of this article also appeared on investigative site The Detail Northern Ireland’s largest source of drinking water is besieged by toxic pollution linked to a government drive to accelerate p...

desmog.com

“There should be a zero tolerance approach to issues like this moving forward” – Dr Puneeta Sreenivas, SWAN. The issue of wastewater featured heavily at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Tuesday. Watch back some of points raised by SWAN and the Irish Environmental Network.

“Restoration without pollution control is not a policy, it’s a gesture, and an incoherent one at that. It spends public money cleaning up what private and public polluters are permitted to dirty, in a publicly-funded loop without end.” By me for @irishtimes.com www.irishtimes.com/life-style/2...

Ireland punishes tax evaders. Pollution should be just as risky

Nature absorbs the impact of polluters because the political will isn’t there to make the consequences serious enough to stop them

irishtimes.com

Gold plated environmental standards? In a country where: 90% of protected habitat types are in unfavourable conservation status 371,884 t of peat exported in 2025, with no compliance with env or planning law At least 9 env cases in the CJEU & 16 infringements www.irishtimes.com/ireland/hous...

Top Government adviser calls for action to roll back ‘gold-plated’ environmental legislation

Laws exempting key projects from national climate goals should be followed by moves to curtail environmental screening, says taskforce chief

irishtimes.com

Private Credit incentivizes managers to allocate $$ to higher interest rate/riskier loans even if those loans are paying out interest as payment-in-kind. The mess is unsurprising. www.ft.com/content/7db5...

What Medallia’s faceplant tells us about private credit

Equity wipeout, debt distressed . . .  trebles all round?

ft.com

I used Claude to code up a Water Quality dashboard that can take hydrochemistry downloads from catchments.ie and visualize them. Here is one with data from the Folly Stream in Killarney (one of Ireland’s three worst rivers). follystreamwaterquality.netlify.app

Our third "Worst Irish River" is the Clareen Stream It's a short ¬1km tributary of the Nenagh River (Nenagh, Tipperary). It rises south of the town and is culverted for half its course under Nenagh. It carries treated wastewater from the Nenagh WWTP and an Arrawbawn creamery.

Ok part 2 of the Worst Irish Rivers deepdive: This is the Ahavarraga Stream in County Limerick. It is a small stream draining agricultural land and running through the large village of Dromcollogher and on into the Deel river.

The Irish Times had a recent story on the EPA's 2025 Water Quality Report. The story mentions the three worst river segments in the country: the Folies Stream (Killarney), the Ahavarraga Stream (Limerick) and the Clareen River (Tipperary). Here's my data deepdive on each of them:

$1.5 trillion in capital spending has resulted in just a *4 month* time to market lead for the big US AI model-makers on standard performance benchmarks vs. open source models? That seems ... unsustainable.

GOP Urges Democrats To Tone Down Rhetoric Used To Quote President Verbatim

GOP Urges Democrats To Tone Down Rhetoric Used To Quote President Verbatim

WASHINGTON—Imploring their colleagues across the aisle to be mindful of how the highly charged language might elevate national tensions, congressional Republicans urged Democrats Tuesday to tone down ...

theonion.com

I especially love this diagram.

One of the EPA's three Irish river segments rated "Bad" in 2025. The Folly (or Folies) Stream that carries the discharge from the Killarney Waste Water Treatment Plant into Lough Leane. "Bad" means a dead river - the only insect life that can survive, can breathe surface air.

My new iPad might be the first badly designed product I’ve ever had from Apple. It’s too heavy, it runs hot, its protruding camera leaves scrapes if you leave it on soft wooden surfaces and it has poor background battery usage.

Small - usually rural - waste water treatment plants that are over capacity, are a significant contributor to poor river quality in Ireland, but most of them are not scheduled for an upgrade by Uisce Eireann.

I've been using Claude to help me build a water quality dashboard over the last few days. While it takes longer than doing one-offs in Excel, it's ridiculously more productive than doing it in R or hand-coding and it's highly re-usable for this class of data.

Very disappointing to see this continued profit-over-wildlife campaign from a major birdfood producer and seller. The RSPB/BTO guidance is very clear - do not put out seeds and peanuts between May and October. Not reduce, but stop. It is killing wild birds by the millions. #ukbirding

"Water quality will not improve unless nutrient pollution is reduced. Right now, there is no clear sign of long‑term reductions in nutrient levels, making it unlikely that we will see meaningful improvements in water quality anytime soon." www.irishtimes.com/environment/...

Water quality in Irish rivers and lakes remains ‘unsatisfactory’

Assessment showing Ireland’s best rivers continue to deteriorate ‘must concern us all’, says EPA director

irishtimes.com

A concern about using electrochemical batteries for long duration electricity storage is their relatively poor land use efficiency per kWh stored But lithium air batteries - CATL’s post 2030 tech direction, could deliver 12kWh per kg (~100x!) - which solves that! cleantechnica.com/2026/06/06/c...

CATL Developing 12,000 Wh Per Kg Lithium-Air Battery - CleanTechnica

CATL said this week it is developing lithium air batteries that could have an energy density of up to 12,000 Wh/kg.

cleantechnica.com

Ireland’s energy policy went badly off track last December with the Large Energy User policy. This is a succinct Summa Contra of what needs to happen to get back on track from Prof. Hannah Daly.

Hannah Daly@hannahdaly.ie · 2mo ago

Reflections on the Joint Committee on AI and my new working paper that shows how data centres could consume 55% of Ireland's electricity by 2040 and cause gas demand to rise. hannahdaly.ie/2026-06-11-J...

Deputy Malcolm Byrne is that sort of person who will say ‘oh you oppose data centre expansion but you have an IPHONE???’ and thinks it’s clever cc @hannahdaly.ie

A brand new piece for Crikey: digging into what happens now for Australia's data centre debate Anthropic, planning 20GW, would have to build 1.7x the amount of all renewable energy ever built in Australia to date, to meet the 100% mandate. www.crikey.com.au/2026/06/10/m...

This is the projection of gas-fueled electricity generation through 2040 as a result of this government's LEU datacenter connection policy issued last December - an appalling betrayal of the country's climate committment. From Hannah Daly's and Teresa Bonsorio's working paper:

On this #WorldOceansDay, The New York Times uses our research on the diversity of fishes caught in the worlds bottom trawls to argue why it is time to rethink this widespread and problematic fishing practice. @ubcoceans.bsky.social @projectseahorse.bsky.social @amandavincent.bsky.social

Opinion | 3,000 Different Species Are Killed for Supper. Why Do We Allow It?

nytimes.com

So if you don’t want SpaceX in your portfolio but like the convenience of index funds - you might want to check out frec.com - which offers index fund analogs via direct indexing but allows you to exclude specific companies.

Frec Direct Indexing: Tax-aware investing for smart money

Frec is making sophisticated investing strategies simple and accessible. Low-cost direct indexing with supercharged tax savings. Earn high interest on cash with Treasury. Next-level investing without ...

frec.com