davidfickling.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

South Africa has one of the world's dirtiest power grids - it's dominated by old coal plants built during the Apartheid era (and some new but problematic coal plants). But things are starting to change. December was the best month ever for solar (12% of the mix). That sent coal's share down to 77%.

submitted 1 hour ago • 4 comments

Sorry, kids, we're going to have to cut short Cancun, I just got a surprise promotion to being in charge of the entire US government.

submitted 13 hours ago • 84 comments

Martin Wolf in the @financialtimes.com: “The US is now the enemy of the west” With a chilling final paragraph. on.ft.com/3XcaH5R

submitted 15 hours ago • 6 comments

The scale of what's happening with Chinese solar abroad is undercovered. Great piece by @davidfickling.bsky.social Take Pakistan: it imported 16.6 GW (!) of Chinese panels in 2024. At 15% capacity factor, that's 21 TWh for the year on a grid that totaled 150 TWh! www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

submitted 16 hours ago • 3 comments

At this point, whispering “rare earths” has become a sort of magic incantation to enchant lazy business/diplomacy types so they buy into whatever con you are selling

submitted 23 hours ago • 8 comments

A fun thing is that the latest position that energy transition denialists have retreated to is “actually electricity isn’t all that important”

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

Brazil, Chile, Morocco, Nigeria, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan each bought enough solar panels from China in 2024 to meet between 3% and 5% of their annual electricy demand. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

The EU building 4,000 military vehicles sounds a stretch until you consider the EU manufactures ~15m cars a year. Industrial capacity is not the issue here.

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

"What five things did you achieve last week ?"

submitted 2 days ago • 7 comments

Guy who doesn’t even respond to the mothers of his children: reply to my email or you’re fired

submitted 3 days ago • 546 comments

DOGE is like if Fyre Festival was a government agency.

submitted 3 days ago • 305 comments

Max Hastings: “never [anticipated] that Americans, whose leadership we have gratefully accepted since 1945, might acquiesce in the substitution of a monarchy for the republic in which, since the Founding Fathers, they have taken such just pride.” www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

On a personal note: I am doing my first full Ironman triathlon in April. I’m raising money for WaterAid, to provide the billions who lack access to it with the clean water I will be gulping as I swim 3.8km, bike 180km, and run 42.2km! Please click the link! www.mycause.com.au/p/366670/hel...

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

"The failure of Biden to match lofty rhetoric with projects on the ground — whether it be electric-vehicle chargers or promised emissions reductions — prepared the way for Trump’s rollback of the few measures that were taken" - @davidfickling.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

submitted 7 days ago • 1 comment

It’s fascinating how much of the 19th century commodity economy was a sort of proto-history of the oil era. Cellulose, whale oils, ivory, rubber, pearl shell. Hugely important c19th industries that mostly disappeared.

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

seems like it is a big deal that the unifying ideology of the doge team is neo nazism

submitted 9 days ago • 495 comments

It's been a long time since Private Eye's satire has made me audibly wince, but this is so to the point if it were a knife people would demand it be banned.

submitted 11 days ago • 16 comments

I want to highlight what I believe is a significant document that I reviewed for this story. It's a memorandum of understanding between DOGE & CFPB. In all the coverage of DOGE's takeover of agencies I haven't read or heard about a document like this. I think this stands out 1/

submitted 15 days ago • 75 comments

If you see this, quote post with a beach photo from your gallery (Bondi, last Saturday)

submitted 13 days ago • 2 comments

What @davidfickling.bsky.social says. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Prices of tropical commodities like coffee and rubber are surging. But that's a harbinger of climate change wreaking havoc, writes @davidfickling.bsky.social @opinion.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

They are going to play Russian roulette with US debt markets www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

submitted 16 days ago • 14 comments

Exclusive: "It's chaos." The world's most sophisticated weather agency struggles to comprehend what it's supposed to do now. By @laurenthal.bsky.social and @weathersullivan.bsky.social 🎁🔗: www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

submitted 17 days ago • 10 comments

Entire USAID agency worldwide was deleted by a consulting government employee with no authority to do so. It’s a constitutional crisis that puts US national security at risk and normies won’t get this until legacy media says this clearly and loudly.

submitted 19 days ago • 133 comments

SCOOP: A US Treasury threat intelligence analysis has designated DOGE staff an ‘insider threat'. An internal email reviewed by WIRED calls DOGE staff's access to federal payments systems “the single biggest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced.”

submitted 18 days ago • 738 comments

submitted 18 days ago • 109 comments

⚠️ DOGE staffer Edward Coristine was fired for leaking info from a data-security firm. He later bragged he retained access to the firm’s system. He was also on law enforcement radar for communicating in an online chat room with an alleged hacker under investigation. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

submitted 18 days ago • 85 comments

Horrifying how closely events have matched this column, which I worried about writing 11 months ago because the scenario it raised seemed so outlandish: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

NEW: The lie that conservatives are censored on social media is giving cover to something dangerous: the nationalization of US social media by Trump and Musk. My @opinion.bloomberg.com column today (gift link):

submitted 20 days ago • 11 comments

Im all for more funding and efforts to get microplastics out of our exposome/bodies but I'm skeptical of a lot of media coverage (see black utensils). I saw the new microplastics accumulating in the brain headlines and started digging into the pyrolysis GCMS methods they used to measure polyethylene

submitted 21 days ago • 3 comments