What mattered this week

Iran water crisis: US correctly blamed for stealing their clouds

Huh? Iran’s rivers drying up, snowcaps disappearing. 75% less rain this year, 21 provinces had no rain at all. Tehran’s reservoir at 5% - may be evacuations soon.
Clouds? A politician claimed US/Israel causing this by “stealing clouds”. You can’t pilfer clouds… but you can alter climates with huge emissions.
Read more: Forbes

We’re heading to a catastrophic 2.8°C, unless we hurry and spend $10T

What happened? Well, not enough.
Why does it matter? 2.8° is going to hurt - see this Economist video
Read more: Reuters; FT (£); Bloomberg (£) 

Hydrogen cars: So bad, drivers are suing Toyota for $5.7B

What happened? Class-action lawsuit over false promises that you would be able to… use it as a car.
Why? Reliability, fuel not available (often for week), acceleration issues making “the Mirai unsafe and unsuitable for everyday use.”
Read more: Electrek

One thing to worry about

Go see a glacier soon.

Declared extinct in 2022, Pizol Glacier had lost 98% of its volume during the last 18 years (“Monitoring the extinction of a glacier”, Cambridge)

One thing to be optimistic about

Nuclear-powered ships.

China (who else?) announced a thorium reactor will power the world’s largest commercial ship, holding 14,000 containers. (Interesting Engineering)

Key is China’s announcement, also this week, of successful conversion of thorium into uranium. They won’t need imported uranium, it has no meltdown risk, produces 2% of the waste, and doesn’t need water 🎯 (ThinkChina).

If you’ve got more time…

Ex-Goldman Arjun Murti of the Super-Spiked Blog thinks we’re in a once-in-generation super-cycle for energy:

• AI data centres plus emerging economies are causing huge demand increases for electricity

• We’ve dropped the illusion of an “energy transition” - it’s reliability and affordability first, emissions second

• That means growth in coal, gas, solar, nuclear - all of it

• New tech will spring some surprises - perhaps nuclear SMRs, geothermal, or batteries

Murti’s bet is clear: we’re still early, and the power sector will explode as we struggle to deliver the huge new amounts of power demanded.

Worth a read.