Change Discussion

16/10/2026

The 2026 state of the climate report — challenges and opportunities — makes for sobering reading but we can also be optimistic. 50 years: 1980 to the present.
https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biag125
Fig 1. Emissions up. Surface temp up. Sea pH down. Sea level up. Earth's Energy Imbalance up. Rainforest area down, Ice mass down.
Fig 2. Humans up. Animals Up. Energy consumption up. Armed conflicts up. EVs up. World GDP up.
The world is changing from burning 500 years of stored energy to capturing 1.5 hours, and fossil fuel companies see their grip on the world fading, and they are not happy.
Modern energy frees those 160 countries from the tyranny of 23 fossil fuel exporters. The faster the transition, the better the curves we can expect from Oxford in 2030, 2035.

15/10/2026

How come News Corp and Santos have paid ZERO tax for the past decade?
Greg Jericho on Substack pulls data from an ATO report.
News Corp $24bn income, $1.3bn in taxable income, $0 tax. (Nada, Zip, Zero)
Santos $51 bn income, $220 million taxable income. $0 tax.

Try to think of 2 companies that are more focused on climate denial than these 2 miscreants.
Five primary interconnected forces are behind the assault on science and reason, the “five Ps”:
* Plutocrats
* Petrostates
* Pros - paid promoters of anti-science
* Propagandists
* Press. Media – with important exceptions .
Guess News Corp is press, and Santos a petrostate.
Together they have generated a perfect storm of anti-scientific disinformation that now threatens humanity.
Both decry government spending. Maybe there is one solution. They pay a fair tax. Commensurate with revenue.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-218729857

13/10/2026

What does one do with my late mother-in-law's 6 books and family genealogy? The first was written in 1966, and the last in 1990. What to do with the photocopy booklets? Time to biff? Or was there another option?

AI and digital printing to the rescue. Now the series is live at https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0HHGPXHNJ

Two years ago, I scanned 2 of the booklets and sent them to the Philippines to be retyped. ($60ea). OCR was just not good enough. Then time got in the way.

Six weeks ago, I wrote detailed instructions for Claude. Told it the directory of scans. How I wanted it to read and reproduce the scrawled pencil marks. What to do with photos? Layout, revisions, follow-up data. Claude was infinitely better than that typist. It read those stories. Compared with 2 years ago, it was powerful, not puny.
It took a few hours for each of those 7 books. Claude took a few hours. But most of the time was family members who checked pages, hunted for updated photos, or corrected some of those initial mistakes or misinterpreted photo captions.
I used Kindle Desktop to print the booklets, which cost about $8 per 200-page booklet proof, and I've put them out there now at cost (about $15). Cheaper than a photocopy.
If you come from Rotorua, New Zealand and interested in history; get a copy. If your family is Ford, Fulljames, Lewin or Allen - there might be something there for you or references to the family history.

If you have family history and stories buried in the back room, contact me, and I can send the AI skill files as an MD and process for you to put that dusty archive where others can read and reminisce.

04/10/2026

Look at nuclear through three lenses.

Technology: 411 reactors operating, 27 fewer than the 2002 peak, after a quarter-century of stagnation.
Economics: in 2025 renewables added 693 GW of new capacity; nuclear added 1.5 GW.
Politics: both the Coalition and One Nation still promise new reactors.

The irony is hard to miss. Nuclear update 2026 – still moribund, drawing on the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026:
https://optimisticstorm.com/nuclear-update-2026-still-moribund/

23/09/2026

Foxconn - maker of iPhones and electronics. Moved from phones to EVs. Tony Seba, 15 years ago, said EVs are computers on wheels!
Two announcements - both with Foxconn as the primary builder. A new Mitsubishi. First in 15 years. And a new Saudi Ceer
https://www.drive.com.au/news/mitsubishi-asx-vr-e-electric-car-will-not-be-the-cheapest-in-market/
Saudi startup Ceer unveiled its first two fully electric vehicle models and said it will launch five more models by 2030 as part of Saudi Arabia's goal to create a viable auto industry to curb the country's dependence on oil.
https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-news/ceer-exobot-sedan-and-suv-are-saudi-arabias-first-locally-made-evs

20/09/2026

The vexxed case of Aukus submarines. $380 billion of outdated, outgunned, out-relationshipped old-fashioned defense. No lessons learned from Iran or Ukraine.
Malcolm Edgar writes a rational, well-researched paper at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He says real-time monitoring and real-time production ensure Australian sovereignty. It works now and could be fully in place by 2030. Would cost 10% of the submarines.

Australia’s declared strategy of denial needs to become effective long before the powerful new nuclear submarines become meaningfully effective in the 2040s. This can be done in the 2030s with what I have called the ...

18/09/2026

Transport and household energy costs can fall 70-80% when electrotech and infotech are deployed together. Electricity and electrons collapse costs. Electrify a household then optimise its usage by AI, and running costs fall by up to 80%. Electrify motion and automate driving, and freight and taxi costs fall by up to 70%. Combine electrification with advanced automation, and manufacturing costs fall by 40-70%. We are in the Age of Power from Ember.

16/09/2026

H hot El Nino? Images by Zeke Hausefather and Jeff Berardelli show the likely range is up 4°C, biggest variation since 1880. Just starting.

12/09/2026

August 2026. More EVs sold than petrol cars in Australia
https://bit.ly/4gNCST7

Fossil fuel hierarchy is collapsing as the EV fleet crocodile meets the renewable grid crocodile The crocodile jaws have closed on both transport and electricity: electric vehicles are taking sales from combustion vehicles, while renewable electricity is taking generation from all fossil fuels. The....

12/09/2026

Are EVs taking over from ICE cars in China? Don't tell Toyota.