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Saul Elbein

@saulelbein.bsky.social
644 followers 407 following 481 posts

Rooted cosmopolitan. Uncovering stories to build broad coalitions around clean water and soil for all Texans. Co-publisher of Heat Death with @asherelbein.bsky.social‬.

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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
a credo to knit this fractured country back together
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
In Texas this passes easily for nsfw
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Not a lot in the pity tank here, but hard not to feel for the person who had to stand up at Climate Week to defend this turkey — something that presumably no one asked her about or cared about her opinion on
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
lol, as they say, lmfao
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Rachel Frazin @rachelfrazin.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Court reinstates $7B ‘Solar for All’ program axed by Trump thehill.com/policy/energ...
thehill.com
Court reinstates $7B ‘Solar for All’ program axed by Trump
A federal court has rebuffed the Trump administration’s effort to slash a $7 billion program that seeks to provide rooftop solar power in disadvantaged communities.  Judge Mary McElr…
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Reposted by Saul Elbein
Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is a really good thread
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"If Texans at meetings are angry, it’s not because they hate or misunderstand the oil business. It’s often they have been railroaded." New op-ed with Virginia Palacios; free link below. www.expressnews.com/opinion/comm...
expressnews.com
Texas' oil and gas regulator cuts out the public from its meetings
Last month the Railroad Commission of Texas — which oversees oil and gas, not railroads — ended guaranteed public comment at its monthly open meetings.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
If you're at all interested in climate or energy not paying attention to the Texas Railroad Commission — our state's confoundingly-named oil and gas regulator — I don't even know what to tell you. Except that things are getting *crazy* there in a way that are a serious risk for Texas Republicans.
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Western Environmental Law Center @westernlaw.org · 04/09/2026
New must-read article from @saulelbein.bsky.social and HEATED 🌎 on fracking wastewater, how dangerous discharge could be to cropland and water supplies, and how Texans can fight back. #NMPol is facing the same threat, and WELC is fighting tooth and nail to protect clean water.
heated.world
Oil executives just accidentally exposed the industry’s greatest weakness
To keep drilling, Big Oil needs permission to dump treated fracking wastewater into rivers and onto cropland. We don’t have to give it to them.
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George Dubya @itisgeorge.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
But why is it my responsibility to look out for them? Nobody else does, not for them or anybody else. Their own industry is screwing them every chance they get despite record profits. The days when a high school dropout with a pair of work boots could go to the Bakken and make 6 figures are gone
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
The coal miner comparison is interesting because in a strong sense both fracking and coal mining are in the same place: only the dregs remain, so (1) the waste-to-product ratio sucks and (2) the extent to which it poisons workers and communities is rising www.npr.org/2026/08/05/n...
npr.org
Black lung rates in Appalachia are high as the 1970s, with thousands of miners sick
Rates are now the highest they've been in nearly 50 years among veteran coal miners. Mining experts blame toxic silica dust, now more common in mines.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Wherever I am Wherever I go I will always be A TXO bro
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Texas Observer @texasobserver.org · 09/09/2026
New today: Analysis by @saulelbein.bsky.social, who has spent years documenting dangerous "zombie" oil wells, found more than 25,000 plugged wells across Texas are at critical risk of failure—50 times more than had previously been reported. This map helps you find them.
texasobserver.org
1.2 Million Oil Wells Are Buried Underneath Texas. Do You Live on Top of a Dangerous One?
Our state's homes are built above a hundred years of drilling by an industry that was never made to clean up after itself.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
at my kids’ daycare a tiny baby fence lizard
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Has anyone crunched the delta between what a farmer who puts in agrivoltaics gets vs one who grows corn for ethanol?
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Well what if I told you that anti-semitism is actually defined in the dictionary as bigotry against Christian Zionists
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
this is like if Dem fundraising emails were written by a Borcht Belt caricature of a Jewish mother
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Texas has hundreds of thousands of old oil and gas wells that were plugged decades ago and then forgotten — many now under neighborhoods grew on top of them. We read the state's own records against the scientific lit. We found 25,000+ now at risk of going zombie. tinyurl.com/zombie-wells
tinyurl.com
25K Texas oil and gas wells could soon be ‘zombie wells,' watchdog group warns
Analysis by Future Heist watchdog group identifies 25,000 high-risk "zombie wells" and hundreds with leaks threatening groundwater and communities.
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Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
There are ancient sources of power underground, for which we've delved too greedily and too deep — and which can spread their poison long after the delving's done. My brother @saulelbein.bsky.social's new climate outfit, @futureheist.bsky.social, just launched with an investigation into them.
houstonchronicle.com
25K Texas oil and gas wells could soon be ‘zombie wells,' watchdog group warns
Analysis by Future Heist watchdog group identifies 25,000 high-risk "zombie wells" and hundreds with leaks threatening groundwater and communities.
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Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
@saulelbein.bsky.social's climate watchdog @futureheist.bsky.social turns public data into (very cool) tools the public can actually use. This map shows the sheer extent to which Texas has been penetrated by the fossil fuel industry. It's a visual primer on oil power you have to see to believe
futureheist.org
Texas Zombie Wells — Risk Map
Texas oil & gas wells mapped by zombie-well risk, injection threats to drinking water, and schools & daycares.
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Martha Pskowski @psskow.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The technology exists but who pays for it? I’ve done a number of stories about communities in Texas w/o clean water and it always comes down to how to get more funding to public water systems.
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WATERSHED Investigations @watershed-i.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
It seems that specific, influential group of rich people have definitely considered this a lot
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
But have we considered that while doing nothing is expensive to everyone, doing *something* would be expensive to a specific, influential set of rich people
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Troubling long-term dynamic here: as the rains increasingly fail, Texas cities will rely on fossil groundwater. But the groundwater — given that much of Texas spent its prehistoric seas, and sumps for rivers eroding ancient, geologically active mountains — has a *lot* of bad stuff in it.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
No shade (hah) whatsoever to Michael or Oliver, who understand this in their bones, but I am begging @theguardian.com to for the love of god stop, stop, stop, posting heat wave pictures of people having fund at a splash pad. I get it, they're trying to cool off, it's too hot.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The attack on data represents media savvy by the pro-fossil camp: it doesn't just stop climate science, it also closes off a data pipeline that translates directly into artifacts that journalists can quote, and numbers that can become memes. It leaves the question of: how do you cover an absence?
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
@rahmstorf.bsky.social did The Week just steal one of your photos for a piece framing the fires as an issue of “adaptation“?
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Not only are the Feds bulldozing the best parts of Big Bend for the wall, there’s an almost 1:1 transfer of park funds **to the damn Reflecting Pool**
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Head of Texas environmental regulator just told Senate hearing that public challenges to air and water discharge permits is way up — but refused to say why. Cites the "high level of public interest in the permits and work we do." (It is, of course, data centers, which need both permits.)
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
wait did these oil yahoos just invade Greenland AND hire Dr Phil to film it www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...
theguardian.com
Greenland issues ‘strong warning’ as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill
Island’s government says no approval given after Greenland Energy brings kit ashore for exploratory drilling
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Huge divide between what the industry wants and what Texans want here.
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Future Heist @futureheist.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
"Still, he acknowledged it’s getting harder to find a home for produced water," which is to say, the toxic wastewater that comes out of the oilfield at 4x the volume of oil — minimum. "Reuse [putting it on crops and in rivers] has to be introduced at some point." www.mrt.com/business/oil...
mrt.com
Permian Basin oil companies prioritize water management strategies
Producers highlight the need to incorporate water management into their operations
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Ugly little parable here in the tendency of weather disasters to compound. Kerrville is running low on water ... because the floods knocked out the water treatment plant. www.expressnews.com/hill-country...
expressnews.com
Kerrville declares 'water supply emergency,' restricts water use
With the city's water treatment plant still offline, officials say the restrictions are needed to "aid in prolonging our groundwater supply.”
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Cool, but also: can anyone answer why beavers are on both sides of the Atlantic, seems wrong, they should pick a side
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
“We regret the omission”
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
2x chai + 1?
Text that says: "We’ve set up a program where people can donate $$ to buy copies for readers who can’t otherwise afford them. Each time we get a donation of $37, we send a book to someone on this list."
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Future Heist @futureheist.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
"I began to see this as a pattern in some of Fasulo’s arguments against industrial solar: Legitimate concerns were often inflated into sweeping conclusions with shaky evidence." heated.world/p/the-influe...
heated.world
The influencer teaching millions to fear solar
Alexandra Fasulo says she’s protecting farms and wildlife. Her campaign is becoming a blueprint for the fossil fuel right.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
sea people classic thehill.com/policy/energ...
thehill.com
Stone-age hunters crossed the Mediterranean, study finds
Long-distance seafarers crossed the Mediterranean Sea far earlier than scientists had believed, a new study has found. Excavations at a cave on the island of Malta have uncovered stone tools, cooki…
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
on the subject of people of the sea: evidence suggests Homo Erectus crossing mainland Asia to Indonesa *by sea* in large enough numbers to establish a population 800,000 years ago
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
tired: the Sea Peoples didn't exist wired: the true Sea Peoples were the English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
“And if Homer, perhaps, wrote at the dawning of a new civilization, Nolan maybe writes at the beginning of the end of one—or at least so he seems to fear.”
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Future Heist @futureheist.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
“The beaver education started for me then,” Smith said. “I never really knew … all the different things that they contribute to an ecosystem.” news.mongabay.com/2026/07/beav...
news.mongabay.com
Beavers brought a volcanic wasteland back to life. Now it's under threat
The Smith family referred to the back part of their property as “the wasteland.” It opens up to the North Fork Toutle River in the U.S. state of Washington, which was swamped with volcanic sediment an...
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Campaigning for all serious Anglo-American publications to have a full-time reporter on the beaver beat. bsky.app/profile/futu...
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Future Heist @futureheist.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
... "a new Pfas that chemical giant Chemours is attempting to fast-track for approval for use in cooling datacenters, and [that] would almost certainly pollute regions around the facilities." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
theguardian.com
US environmental groups urge EPA to reject new Pfas to cool datacenters
Coalition says Chemours downplayed health and climate risks in bid to fast-track the compound’s use
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Whatever gets built now, in the headlong rush to build as fast as possible, we are likely to be stuck with for a long time. Which is why it's important to talk about *how it is powered and cooled* just as much as *what it is*.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
“The sky outside is hazy orange, and my five-year-old son is screaming bloody murder. ‘Sorry, buddy, we have to stay inside,’ I say. ‘It’s not safe to breathe out there.’” hell of a lede
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
There is a kind of honesty in their admitting that you can’t have the current data center boom without massive pollution from gas plants etc.
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I can’t read past “palaeo-media” without choking, is this like naewspaepers
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Asher HELLbein @asherelbein.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Genuinely quite disappointing that Tim Haines apparently got up onstage and directly shilled AI-generated prehistory animation, but somewhat heartening that he was essentially booed out of the room over it
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Saul Elbein @saulelbein.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
and that friends is why we always double check the AI transcript
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