What mattered this week

This is not normal. UAE too hot for car air conditioners; shorts weather in the Arctic; Swiss town crushed under glacier rubble.

UAE? Always hot? Not like this. Breached 50°C two days last week. April’s average daytime temp was 43! (MSN)
And elsewhere? 30°C in the Arctic Circle (@extremetemps). Vast regions of China 16°C over usual 😱.
But who really cares? Um - what about the whole Swiss-glacier-crushing-entire-town-thing?
Read more: Find out if it’s hotter than normal: IsTheUKHotRightNow.com

Trump now really hurting US clean industry

Job losses? 10,000, at least, with $14bn projects cancelled so far this year(Inside Climate News).
And industry? Deep red jobs at risk too: Ford threatening to cancel their $3bn battery plant (Detroit Free Press).
What did you expect? This.

Indonesia addicted to coal. Wants palm crossed with silver to stop.

Didn’t they promise to get off the dark stuff? Yup, back in 2021. But in the Trumpian world of 2025 “Coal should not be considered an illicit commodity,” says their Energy Minister.
And to go cold turkey? They are clear: it’d take “donors with cheap money”.
Read more: Straits Times

One thing to worry about

Birds are moving their migration zones north at one mile a year (Nature).

But turns out this is not fast enough: heat is moving north faster than they are adapting.

One thing to be optimistic about

Get this: Every kilowatt of old batteries makes, after recycling, more than one kilowatt of new batteries (@jessepeltan). Power goes up - same minerals used, again and again.

Aren’t we clever? 👏

If you’ve got more time…

Should the answer to climate be nuclear power? No, says The Nation in a review of Joe Romm’s new book.

Simple: every dollar in nukes buys less clean electricity, far later, than the same dollar spent on wind or solar plus storage.

• Reactors take 10-15 years to build (more, in the UK) - meantime, we’re pumping out carbon every minute.

• Cost per MWh is high - about $160-170. Solar+batteries are half that.

• Costs & time for nukes is going up. Renewables? Relentlessly down.

Trump says he’ll quadruple nukes in the US. Hundreds of new plants. But only two have been thrown up since 1979. Chances of hundreds? Zilch.

My opinion? Nukes are great: low carbon, baseload and extremely safe. Despite delays and cost they have a role. A good energy system needs a mix of all technologies… but don’t think nukes are “the answer”.