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Sylvia Downe

@sylviadowne.bsky.social
557 followers 110 following 10 posts

Retired systems developer, married 53 years with 3 amazing children and 3 brilliant grandchildren. Keen to leave the world in a better state than it is now.

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Reposted by Sylvia Downe
Mike Hudema @mikehudema.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
"Current policies are taking the world to a 2.8 degree temperature rise...that spells catastrophe, yet the collective response remains pitiful." – @antonioguterres There is no time to wait. #ActOnClimate #climate #energy #renewables
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Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Why is it possible to pay around 14p per kWh for electricity from a very rapid charger in France when we pay between 60 to 95p in the UK? Asking for a friend
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Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Every glaciated region on the planet lost ice for four years in a row now. From 2023–2025 alone, glaciers lost around 1,400 gigatonnes of ice, equivalent to roughly 560 million Olympic swimming pools (the official weird measure for anything water related). Source: bit.ly/WMOStateofWa...
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Mike Hudema @mikehudema.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is the world’s first steel made without burning fossil fuels. Steel is a massive emitter so this is hugely important! We have so many solutions to solve the #climatecrisis. Implement them. #ActOnClimate #ClimateAction #reneables #renewableenergy
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Electrification is an energy security strategy. EVs already avoid 2.3 million barrels of oil a day. That's more than the volume that bypassed the Strait of Hormuz via the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline this summer.
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Josh Russell → @MVTFWD @joshfwd.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
🚨 Can we all agree to totally ignore and destroy the “PolitlcsUK”* account everyone gets their news from now? It’s run by a REFORM COUNCILLOR, and trickles bias and fabricated nonsense in under a neutral guise. Share this. Drop it under friends reposts. 👀 Evidence in next post…. /1
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Akshat Rathi @akshatrathi.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"This is the first time in more than 50 years that there has been no growth in India’s coal power over a two-year period, even as electricity demand grew overall." www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-ind...
carbonbrief.org
Analysis: India’s power-sector emissions flat for two years due to clean-energy surge - Carbon Brief
A surge in clean energy has kept carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in check across India’s power sector, with no growth from the first half of 2024 to the same period in 2026.
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Private Eye Magazine @privateeyenews.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The world’s scientists breathed a sigh of relief this week as temperatures in the UK dropped below 35 degrees, meaning that everything is fine and we can go back to burning fossil fuels forever without any worries. From the Private Eye archive. Issue 1682, August 2026.
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Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
A total of 28,063 electric cars were newly registered in the UK in August. This represents an increase of 27.7 per cent compared with the same month last year and means that BEVs accounted for 29.8 per cent of all new passenger car registrations last month. (Courtessy of SMMT)
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nodpisigma.bsky.social @nodpisigma.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Not to forget if you have a battery, you can fill it up overnight for around 7p per unit and sell what you generate from your solar panels during the day at around 12p per unit.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 01/09/2026
Solar cuts ‘at least £400 from bills in even the cloudiest British areas’
theguardian.com
Solar cuts ‘at least £400 from bills in even the cloudiest British areas’
Savings grow as energy prices in Great Britain rise and cost of panel installation falls, analysis finds Households in Great Britain’s cloudiest regions could still save more than £400 a year on their energy bills by installing rooftop solar panels, research has found. Rising wholesale energy prices mean the potential savings from a home solar panel system have climbed in recent years, as the cost of installation has continued to fall, leading to increased demand. Continue reading...
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Dr. Jeevun Sandher MP @jeevunsandher.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
📈 GREAT CLIMATE NEWS 📈 Renewables keep powering ahead. They now power *a third* of the world's electricity supply. And that number is only going up and up and up.
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Sarah Murphy @13sarahmurphy.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I see Farage has honked out another one of his ‘racist ideas for idiots’… Don’t solve the problem by building more social housing, make people in the queue angry with each other instead. What a little racist shit-stirrer with his £5mill and 5 homes, whipping up hatred to make himself richer. (Times)
Put working Britons first in housing queue, says Reform
Matt Dathan
British-born workers under 35 would be placed at the front of the queue for social housing, with priority given to married couples with children, in a new pledge from Reform UK
Nigel Farage's party has announced radical plans to overhaul the way such accommodation is allocated,
with
veterans also given preference.
Those on benefits would be regarded as a lower priority under the new policy, to be announced by Richard Tice, Reform UK's deputy leader.
The party has already pledged to bar foreigners from social housing and said they would be evicted after a "short grace period. Reform UK estimates that 540,000 social homes are occupied by foreign citizens and that of the 1.3 million people on waiting lists, 15 per cent - about 195,000 households — are foreign.
Tice said: "There are now 1.3 million people waiting for social housing in Britain. The vast majority of them do not have jobs. In terms of the social houses we have, less than half of households are in work and over half a million social homes are currently occupied by foreign nationals.
"Meanwhile, young British men and women, who are working hard, can't afford to move out of their family home… It is time for us to prioritise young British workers, and that is what our policy is about."
A Labour spokesman described
Reform's plans as unserious and unworkable. "Access to social housing is already tightly controlled. Illegal migrants, asylum seekers and migrants on student or work visas are not eligible for social housing," the spokesman said.
"This policy would go after long-term
UK residents that have contributed to our country but are not British citizens, including NHS staff. It would leave more families at risk of homelessness and drive up use of temporary accommodation at the taxpayers' expense. It would also mean renegotiations with the EU, resulting in years of wrangling"
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Jan Kirsch, M.D., M.P.H. @drjanicekirsch.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Medical Advice
How to survive the global heatwave 
Stay hydrated 
Treat yourself to an ice cream 
Dismantle the fossil fuel industry which is literally burning the planet for the short term profit of a vanishingly small capitalist class
Loose fitting clothing
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Mike Hudema @mikehudema.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Water temperatures around Australia's Great Barrier Reef were the warmest they've been in over 400 years this year, according to new research. Scientists say the reef is facing "catastrophic damage." No time to waste. #ActOnClimate #climate #energy #renewables
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Mike Hudema @mikehudema.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
If we switched to #renewableenergy, the number of ships crossing the ocean would fall by 40% because they're just carrying coal & oil & gas!! buff.ly/dpTrSpO We have the solutions. Implement them. #ActOnClimate #ClimateAction #climate #energy #GreenNewDeal
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GylesNaMopaleen @gylesnamopaleen.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
the Simpson episode, this clip is from, is 32 years old.
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Mike Hudema @mikehudema.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
A startling info graphic from the @UN - demonstrating the dire consequences of half a degree. Are you ready to say good bye to 30% of all marine life? There is no time to waste. #ActOnClimate #climate #energy #renewables #oceans
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Alex Papadopoulos @egeasri.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Italian researchers found that semi-transparent solar panels over olive groves increased olive yields by 12%, reduced water evaporation by 19%, generated clean electricity, and even improved olive oil quality. 🌿⚡🫒 #Agrivoltaics #RenewableEnergy #Sustainability #ClimateSolutions
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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 09/08/2026
Chris Hohn, billionaire hedge fund manager: ‘All these people who say we can't afford net zero - they're completely misunderstanding the gravity of the situation.' www.thetimes.com/article/de38...
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Matthew Todd @matthewtodd.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Scientists are trying to tell us that climate change is happening faster than predicted, and that the public don’t understand the imminent danger, but the media refuses to put them on air. Why? @ProfBillMcGuire is Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London.
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John Gibbons 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 @thinkorswim.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
There’s “off the charts” and there’s France’s absolutely bonkers June & July 2026 temperatures (see black line below). Bad things are happening. Fast.
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/08/2026
I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.
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Abilu Tangwa. @abilutangwa.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Every single second, the world hands $6,000 to the fossil fuel industry in subsidies. That’s $5 TRILLION every year. Renewables? Barely a fraction of that. We are literally paying to cook our own planet. When does this madness stop? 🌍💸 #ClimateCrisis #FossilFuels
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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
RefUK, RW media, & Eurofash are plainly trying to whip up a panic about this. Any serious report must begin by explaining that Ceuta is in Africa - not mainland Spain - and 48k+ of the 50k crossers were already returned. It is frightening how many still don't know this. Please share on all socials.
Map showing the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in North Africa.Screengrab from Politico piece that explains, citing Reuters, that 48,300 of the 50,000 recent crossings have already been expelled or voluntarily returned to Morocco.BBC report on Friday, still echoing the RW disinformation - or at the very least not challengning it sufficiently.

"Spain's PM blames traffickers after 60,000 migrants reach Ceuta from Morocco
01:32
What triggered the mass migrant crossings into Ceuta?
Sofia Ferreira Santos and Sarah Rainsford, Southern and Eastern Europe
correspondent
31 July 2026
Spain's prime minister has blamed trafficking gangs after about 60,000 migrants crossed into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco. At least 57 people died during the surge, according to local media."Daily Mail and Daily Express from this weekend, with front page headlines "Ministers MUST stop the Spanish border invaders reaching UK" and "SPANISH BORDER CRISIS IS 'WAKE-UP CALL' FOR UK", respectively.
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Wasnu schon wieder!? @wasnu.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Time for a new EU version of this clip m.youtube.com/watch?v=ptfm...
m.youtube.com
Patrick Stewart sketch: what has the ECHR ever done for us?
YouTube video by The Guardian
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Ben Zaranko @benzaranko.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Cutting VAT on electricity bills will provide a (modest) financial incentive for households to electrify, for instance by moving from a gas boiler to a heat pump, which is at least the right direction of travel.
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Josiah Mortimer @josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
I know it's not the biggest news of the day, but I just spotted this... One of Keir Starmer's last acts in Govt is this: Laying legislation that will legalise 'plug-in solar' (aka balcony solar) panels in Britain It means plug-in solar panels do not (legally) have to be wired in by an electrician.
statutoryinstruments.parliament.uk
Timeline - SI 2026/848 - Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 and Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002 (Amendment) Regulations 2026 - Statutory Instruments - UK Parl...
Timeline for Plugs and Sockets etc. (Safety) Regulations 1994 and Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002 (Amendment) Regulations 2026
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
"Overall carbon emissions have increased" in the UK, because of Net Zero, Kemi Badenoch repeatedly tells the BBC, to no pushback. Just completely untrue
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Luke Tryl @luketryl.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Over 85% Britons say that climate change is responsible - strikingly this extends even across more socially conservative segments more sceptical about things like net-zero. More broadly 66% of Brits are worried about climate change.
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@amybisinthewoods.bsky.social 🍄🍄‍🟫 @amybdogsandfungi.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
The dinosaurs couldn’t do anything about what happened to them. Are we really so stupid that we are going to kill ourselves?
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Count Binface @countbinface.bsky.social · 19/07/2023
Under a Binface government, anyone who doesn’t accept human-made climate change as fact will be sent back to school, from Year 1 right the way to A Levels, to see if anything goes in the second time round. #VoteBinface
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Robert Llewellyn @bobbyllew.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
FYI 74.1% of our electricity requires no imported fuel
A screenshot from the National Grid Live website. It shows the following sources of the electricity we are using right now.
Fossil Gas  6.7%
Renwables  74.1%
Nuclear   10%
biomass 2.5%
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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 10/07/2026
Why is AC so rare in much of Europe? Well, until recently it simply wasn't hot enough to need it. Here is the average number of days above 30C (86F) for major cities over time:
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Simon Gosden @simongosden.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
The stupidity is intergalactic
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European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 30/06/2026
Denmark has delivered! More than 250,000 zero-emission cars are on the road, and thousands of homes have switched to clean heating and improved energy efficiency.
Graphic showing a blue LEGO-style European Union flag with yellow stars partially overlapped by a red-and-white LEGO-style Danish flag, symbolizing Denmark joining or completing the NextGenerationEU initiative. The NextGenEU logo appears in the top right. Text at the bottom reads: "DENMARK – First to complete the set." The background is textured white.
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Adam Squires @adsquires.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
"What are you going to do when the wind isn't blowing?" latest. While advances in lithium and sodium ion batteries provide night time backup (eg for solar), longer term (days) is needed especially for wind. The iron-air battery is one example of a new technology in Long Duration Energy Storage
share.google
Record 1 GWh iron-air battery to replace gas backup with clean power
A record one gigawatt-hour (GWh) iron-air battery will store renewable energy for up to 100 hours and cut reliance on fossil fuels.
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Josiah Mortimer @josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Britain is more than halfway towards reaching Net Zero. Most people don't realise this, not least as the fossil-fuel fanatics want us to think achieving it is impossible. Via YouGov


**UK public support net zero, but underestimate UK achievement to date**

"Thinking about the government's target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, how much progress, if any, do you think the UK has made towards achieving this target?"

**Long way / less than halfway** — 50%

**Don't know** — 28%

**Most of the way / More than halfway** — 8%

---

*All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,040 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 17th - 18th June 2026. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+)*
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Prof Ian Hall @ianhall.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
While we cook in Europe, it's worth remembering that this isn't just a European story. Across the Arctic and other high-latitude regions, temperature anomalies are reaching extraordinary levels, with some areas forecast to be >10–20°C above historical averages. The climate signal is global.
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The Met Office’s theoretical forecast for 23rd June 2056 based on current climate change trends.
UK weather map showing temperatures up to 45C
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Codfather #FBPE 🇫🇷🇪🇺 @codfather.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
I know the people in the UK are going to have some hot weather today, but just spare a thought for us here in France where it will hit 45degrees. People will die, and this is all on failed government policies to tackle the climate change. We humans can be so stupid when we try.
static.klipy.com
Sun Solar Flare
ALT: Sun Solar Flare
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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
It seems to have become commonplace to blame net zero for Britain’s high energy bills and/or weak job market… … and I guess I’ll have to explain again why there is very little evidence of this. Britain has plenty of economic problems; net zero is not high on that list (though climate change is) 🧵
giftarticle.ft.com
Ed Miliband would be ‘noose around neck’ of job creation as chancellor, union boss warns
Comments by Sharon Graham come as Burnham team explores key government appointments
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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
I will continue to be excited by graphs like this one. It shows UK electricity demand over the past 24 hours (white line) and the amount that is supplied by renewables (green). It reached 90% in the middle of the night & was 80% for much of the day. 🎉🎉🎉. Still lots more to do, but we’re on the way.
Graph from iamkate.com showing UK electricity demand and supply over the last 24h.
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Danny Cullenward @ghgpolicy.org · 08/06/2026
I have resigned from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Independent Standards Board. The Protocol is openly violating its own rules and has effectively delegated forest carbon accounting standards to a secret, industry-led working group. ghgpolicy.org/s/2026-06-08...
Text too long; see machine-readable PDF at this link: 

https://ghgpolicy.org/s/2026-06-08-Cullenward-resignation.pdfText too long; see machine-readable PDF at this link: 

https://ghgpolicy.org/s/2026-06-08-Cullenward-resignation.pdfText too long; see machine-readable PDF at this link: 

https://ghgpolicy.org/s/2026-06-08-Cullenward-resignation.pdf
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Econ Analytica @econanalytica.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Cartoon by Steve Breen
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Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
In the face of frenzied right-wing attacks, this government has successfully executed one of the most ambitious climate change projects in the world. Time to give credit where it's due iandunt.substack.com/p/guest-post...
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
NEW @iea.org data: clean energy investment is now more than double fossil fuels. $2,155bn vs $1,008bn in 2025. The crossover happened around 2016. Since then the gap has only widened. What was a narrow lead a decade ago is now a >2-to-1 split.
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Friends of the Earth @friends-earth.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
The world is getting hotter and will continue to get dangerously warm without urgent action. If farmers can't grow food, water runs short, and our homes are too hot, the implications will be immense. It's time we do more to curb climate emissions, not less. shorturl.at/6rFDh
shorturl.at
Britain ‘sleepwalking into a food crisis’ without urgent action, experts say
Industry figures warn of national security risk and call for ministers to address impact of extreme weather, inflation and Iran war
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Paul Gowder @gowder.io · 18/05/2026
My 1999 self would weep at how totally broken the internet has become. AI slop, social media walled gardens that rot the brain, surveillance pricing and advertising, every single goddamn website has an endless cloudflare captcha loop before you get to read anything. Burn it all down.
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