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I've just learned that Gil Masters, a pioneering energy thinker, a brilliant teacher, and a zany, creative, humble man, has passed away. Gil taught clean energy to thousands over half a century, with the deep-seated conviction that anyone could understand energy. I will miss him deeply.

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Danny Cullenward @ghgpolicy.org · 15/10/2026

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Reposted by Josh Lappen

This is a great figure for all your normie friends, climate people.

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Josh Lappen @jlappen1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

This is a crucial warning about the current permitting bill. More broadly, I see it as an indictment of a corporatist approach to public policy that imagines permitting as a set of check-boxes on the way to a preordained decision, not an opportunity to identify and achieve the best social outcome.

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Josh Lappen @jlappen1.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Agreed! Gil didn't see boundaries - he just saw interesting puzzles and social needs.

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Jacob Englander @jacobenglander.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Without a doubt Gil was one of the most influential people in my life. A classic engineer's engineer, an incredible teacher, and singular person. I sought him out as an advisor and he proceeded to see right through my bs but was very encouraging. I was so privileged to have him as an example.

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Jonathan Koomey @jgkoomey.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Gil was a true giant who taught many thousands of students over decades. He was what is called a teaching professor at Stanford. His two main focuses were brilliant teaching and making a difference in the world.

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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 14/10/2026

I wrote about how BAAJA, the federal permitting bill, might impact the buildout of power plants. I looked at the midwest transmission grid operator's updated interconnection queue, which MISO overhauled in 2024, as a leading indicator of what people are trying to build. TL;DR: It's mostly gas.

kevinjkircher.com

What power plants are people trying to build? MISO edition

On September 30, the Senate released a draft of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA), a 417-page beast of a highly technical bill. BAAJA would overhaul, in deep and compl...

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Cally Beaton @callybeaton.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Anyone who has ever complained about London Underground, complain no more.

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isaac @sevier.io · 14/10/2026

Gil was a tremendous teacher and mentor. When a friend was passing away from complications of cancer and HIV in SF and I was out of class often to care for him, Gil gave me every accommodation to finish his classes and hired me the next term as his teaching assistant. He's someone I'll never forget.

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He spent his summers helping remote Pacific islands transition from diesel and fuel oil to clean energy. He lent out Stanford-owned blower doors to students (including me) under the table to make their own dorms and homes more energy efficient. He was constantly determined to make a difference.

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Gil was a constant tinkerer and an energy democrat who believed in simplicity and accessibility of design. His campus lab was a haven of experimentation where getting the right answer was less important than learning by trying. He had a sharp sense of humor and absolutely no interest in status.

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Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

The only way through this crisis is shared governance! Put the faculty and students in charge of higher education!

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Reposted by Josh Lappen

My heart breaks for mathematicians whose lives and careers are being destroyed by AI — and especially this PhD student, who doesn’t even know he is a poet

Kai Shaikh, a Ph.D. student in mathematics at the University of Toronto, also currently at SLMath, observed that theorems are easy to use as benchmarks, but that they capture little of the wonderment at the heart of math. "Just like a photograph of a mile marker can't provide much of the value of actually going on a hike," he said,
"it would seem to me that proofs without stories, or even stories without struggle or mystery, and first glimpses of strange beasts, are not very meaningful or valuable to us humans."

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Chris Nelder @chrisnelder.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Remember the mysterious trades on oil back in March/April that were perfectly timed to Trump's announcements, netting the traders millions of dollars? Well a CFTC official referred the matter to the enforcement dept...then a Trump goon told the CFTC to squelch it. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

bloomberg.com

CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades

Chairman’s adviser intervened to take over examination of lucrative bets that were made around Trump reversal on Iran power plant attack.

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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 13/10/2026

I'm a huge fan of reconductoring as an a) + b) solution! I also think getting better at doing as much of this work hot as possible (esp tower uprating) is a big upskilling opportunity for states willing to put a bit of workforce-development money on the table.

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Reposted by Josh Lappen

Energy pals, what are your favorite ideas to - *without* passing regulation that requires a 60-vote Senate supermajority - a) either speed up electricity transmission buildout, or alleviate the need for transmission buildout (e.g. efficiency, DERs), or b) speed up buildout of renewable generation?

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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

NEW: The US theft of Venezuelan oil resources appears to bring the Pentagon its own source of money — something that should be understood as another milestone in the collapse of constitutional government.

forever-wars.com

The Dawn Of The Self-Funding Pentagon

It's not like the military is cash-starved from Congress. But it looks a lot like it's going to make money off Venezuelan oil

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John Kostyack @kostyack.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

@billmckibben.bsky.social explains why he cannot support the permitting reform bill, showing due respect for @whitehouse.senate.gov & clean energy advocates who believe it's a positive step forward. A must-read, both for the analysis & a lesson on how to lower the temperature in fractious debates.

substack.com

Making the Decent the Enemy of the Desperate

Or perhaps vice-versa--some notes on permitting reform

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Ilhan Omar @ilhanmn.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.

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(I doubt they monitor - I took this more as a "we have so many experts training our AI" than an actual effort to improve it...especially given that this particular company isn't known for its enthusiasm for solid history...)

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I doubt it! But hard to figure out in which direction harm reduction really lies with this one...

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@lissaharris.bsky.social you are not hallucinating! Tons of different examples of door-to-door gas stove sales techniques and gas-industry ad campaigns against cooking with coal. I'm travelling, so don't have my books, but in lieu of strong-arm examples, a few of my favorite ads:

black-and-white illustration of a man in a top hat and tails kicking a coal shuttle up towards a really creepy looking moon, with caption reading "I've got a gas range now"

A black-and-white cartoon of an older woman in then-old-fashioned clothes looking at a sign in a shop window that reads "Cook with Gas" and musing, "I've cooked with onion,s and I've cooked with garlic, but - Oh my!"

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(especially funny to me bc this is drastically below the going rate for tutoring actual humans, who typically do not have untold billions to throw at their tutors.)

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Adrian Hiel @adrianhiel.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

There's not enough money in the world. The terms, in case you're curious, are $35/hr, mandatory in-person, no flexible hours. Important to discipline your scholars as you suck them dry!

text of a LinkedIn dm recruiting humanists to train Grok

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Reposted by Josh Lappen

Counterpoint: weakening hydrogen ambitions is one of the best ways for Europe to build energy resilience.

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John Kostyack @kostyack.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Former SEC policy counsel Morse says the agency's attacks on shareholder rights to address climate-related financial risks are broadly unpopular, but few investors & companies are pushing back due to fears of retaliation. “This is such a low point for our democracy."

insideclimatenews.org

SEC Issues Warning to Investment Firms That Challenged ExxonMobil - Inside Climate News

The commission issued a rare “report of investigation” into the largest asset managers and state pension funds, part of a broader campaign to curb investor activism on climate risks.

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Academic hiring committees take note: If you hire me one day I will write an article about this, and I promise you will have a great time with the archival quotes.

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Mei 🪽 @meidotwav.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

We don't have this system in LA County because historically the City of LA just sent the LAPD to kick in the doors of other city halls and seize their tax revenues. I am not kidding.

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Reposted by Josh Lappen

treat your body like a data center. consume as much water, art and literature as possible. upset local municipalities with your existence.

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Funhouse-mirror historical echoes as an LA mayoral candidate who advocates for centralizing power draws on the echoes of San Fernando Secession in her campaign materials!

An Instagram post by Nithya Raman reading "The San Fernando Valley Deserves More," with the caption beginning "If the San Fernando Valley were its own city, it would be the fifth-largest in the country."

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tbc, I've never seen this beach even close to fully submerged under any tidal conditions.

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Anecdotally: I hosted a birthday party last week at an LA-area beach I grew up going to all the time. We went at half tide; the beach was completely submerged.

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(e.g. how many pieces have regional and national news done on the repeat obstructions to the 1 in Big Sur? That issue deserves coverage, but this impacts far more Californians!)

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Continues to drive me nuts what the industry deigns "reliable" for backup and continuity purposes, and what it rejects as "unreliable" - often better indicators of sectoral culture than actual CBA and vulnerability assessment of current options.

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While testifying to state regulators I did the back-of-envelope math on what it takes for a 100 MW data center to keep its diesel backup generators online in an emergency and ~2 trucks an hour is standard there. Really underappreciated piece of the overall impact picture.

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Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 10/10/2026

If this were a freeway and not the second-most-used rail line in the US, it would be all over the news and occupying the full attention of CalTrans, US DoT, the governor, and the state legislature. There's a Shapiro moment up for grabs here for anyone in CA who, idk, might have national ambitions...

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Reposted by Josh Lappen

I urge skepticism toward modelers who claim to know, with any degree of confidence, the extent to which the bill would accelerate fossil vs. non-fossil energy. I can make a model show clear fossil victory, clear clean-energy victory, or anything in between. All for plausible parameter choices!

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854

Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

In other words, it is the job of scientists to devise experiments that can test their claims, to always be cautious abt what they are claiming, and to critically evaluate the claims of other scientists. By these well-established standards, no serious science is happening behind Anthropic's claims.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It's the job of the media to scrutinize such statements and decide whether there's a story here at all (maybe the story is Anthropic researchers have fallen into a fantasy-land and brought many policymakers with them), not to just platform them. >>

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Reposted by Josh Lappen

It was a great day to get to see Purdue and meet some of the Herrick team! Kevin's built a pretty remarkable grad seminar with a really engaged culture - I really enjoyed getting to speak to them.

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