This is Not Cool – with Peter Sinclair

Trump “Energy Dominance” Agenda Plays into China’s Hands

Besides providing more evidence of the President’s bottomless insecurity and neediness, the obnoxious “Energy Dominance” messaging from this administration, coupled with military attacks on Venezuela, and Iran, as well as threats against NATO allies and Canada, are only accelerating the energy transition to China’s benefit.

Jigar Shah on Linked In:

Most discussions of global oil markets fixate on supply: where the next barrel comes from, how much it costs to extract, and which producer sets the marginal price. That lens is in full force with the Venezuela and Iran events this weekend.

China’s energy strategy suggests a different framing—one that looks far more like the long-standing playbook advanced by Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI): don’t fight oil directly. Get more out of each barrel through efficiency, electrification, and better system design until demand structurally disappears.

If China succeeds at achieving their peak oil demand this year, their domestic success will be embraced by other oil importing countries that are looking to shift their oil import dollars into domestic technology investments. Oil demand will never go away, but we are seeing a long-term erosion of oil’s economic relevance.

Reagan Judge finds Fracker Energy Sec’s Climate Denial Panel Illegal

Turns out having secret meetings coordinated by shadowy fossil fuel funded groups with a pre-determined outcome aimed at overturning critical policies based on mainstream science is wrong.

In the video above, the grifter DOE Sec-to-be took time out from his busy schedule as a Fracking millionaire to produce a video on the complete harmlessness of fracking fluid.

What is misleading about the demonstration is, Fracking fluid that goes down into the hole is not the problem. It’s the stuff that comes back out.

Our Energy Secretary is a con man – Pete Hegseth without the tattoos.

New York Times:

A federal judge on Friday ruled the Energy Department violated the law when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming.

The Energy Department issued the report, which downplayed the dangers of warming, in late July without having held any public meetings or made records available to the public. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, then cited the report to justify a plan to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark scientific determination that serves as the legal foundation for regulating climate pollution.

But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking. Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said the Energy Department did not deny that it had failed to hold open meetings or assemble a balance of viewpoints, as the law requires, when it created the panel, known as the Climate Working Group.

“These violations are now established as a matter of law,” wrote Judge Young, who was nominated to the bench by Ronald Reagan. He said the Climate Working Group was, in fact, a federal advisory committee designed to inform policy, and not, as the Energy Department claimed, merely “assembled to exchange facts or information.”

Ominous AI Post of the Week: Reddit for Bots

Moltbots/Clawdbots now have their own social network (@moltbook) and it's wild.

This is the first time I'm a little scared…

You need to watch this. pic.twitter.com/cek1MQfWQJ
— Matthew Berman (@MatthewBerman) January 31, 2026

We are in the age of WTF.

China’s EVs Will Destroy Detroit

Detroit automakers just assumed they’d always be protected behind tariff barriers, and it looked like that would be the case for a while, at least, as Canada, understanding that it had a stake in US automaker’s success, followed the US in applying 100 percent tariff barriers on Chinese cars.
That was before Trump made it clear he was going to force US automakers to pull their manufacturing out of Canada, and started bullying, threatening, and ridiculing Canadians, while actively working to subvert upcoming elections in Alberta.

Now there’s a deal with China for Canada to import EVs, with a tariff of only 6 percent. Small numbers, at first, but is there anyone who believes it will stay that way, especially when reviews of Chinese cars on YouTube have become a tech-porn addiction for millions of viewers. (see above)

Wall Street Journal:

My dearest Xiaomi SU7 Max,

It’s been about a month since we were last together. Now, every time I climb back into my Ford Mustang Mach-E, I can’t stop thinking about you—your long range, your modular interior, your absurdly large infotainment screen.

At night, I miss your adjustable color lighting. On weekends, the kids talk about your wireless karaoke mics, walkie-talkies and yes, that back-seat minifridge.

Please come back to America…for me.

Always,

Joanna

The Xiaomi SU7 Max—like other Chinese-made cars—is effectively blocked from the U.S. market. And yet, late last year, I spent two weeks test-driving one of China’s hottest cars around the mean streets of New Jersey. A friend who previously worked at Xiaomi bought the car and got a temporary permit to drive it in the U.S. He generously let me take it for an extended spin.

My time with the car confirmed what experts in the auto industry have long been saying: Holy crap, China is winning the digitally enhanced electric-car race.

Elon Musk Confirmed in Epstein Files

it's so wild watching this knowing what we now know ☠️pic.twitter.com/Cco6OWTjgv
— Micah (@micah_erfan) January 31, 2026

Ever wonder how it was that Elon Musk did that sudden switch to backing right wing politics?
Maybe it was the Ketamine. Maybe it was going crazy when one of his (how many does he have again?) children came out as trans.
Or maybe, maybe, it was something else.

The Weekend Wonk: India Taking Short Cut to Electro Tech

India has been behind China in economic and technological development, and as they are coming up the curve, they are now looking at a different set of options than China had 2 decades ago.

Ember:

India is generating more solar electricity, burning far fewer fossil fuels and electrifying transport faster than China did at an equivalent GDP per capita.

India is harnessing some of the cheapest solar in the world to power its industrial rise – bypassing an expensive, insecure, fossil-burning interlude. Where China and the West took the long road to the energy future, India is taking a shortcut.

India’s shortcut has consequences, both at home and abroad. It offers a faster, cheaper route to growing electricity. It means greater energy sovereignty at an earlier stage of development. It can position India as a third pole of influence in a world where energy is being reshaped by electrotech and trade by Sino-American competition. Such advantages are not a foregone conclusion, but the signs are promising.

China is Riding an out of Control Energy Transition Avalanche

This story, man.
Definitely worth your time, I’ve only excerpted here.

Wired:

By now, major headlines have begun to catch on to the reality that China’s renewable energy revolution is one of the biggest stories in the world, while Donald Trump’s anti-renewable vision of American energy dominance is a backward sideshow by comparison. But chroniclers of this green tech revolution almost always understate its chaos. At this point, it is far less a tightly managed, top-down creation of state subsidies than a runaway train of competition. The resulting, onrushing utopia is anything but neat. It is a panorama of coal communities decimated, price wars sweeping across one market after another, and electrical grids destabilizing as they become more central to the energy system. And absolutely no one—least of all some monolithic “China” at the control switch—knows how to deal with its repercussions.

IN THE UNITED States, 2024 was a record-breaking year for solar. Across the entire country, those 12 months saw some 50 gigawatts of new solar capacity added. (Solar projects are typically measured by their power output, not their square footage.)

Now consider some different numbers, for scale and contrast. In China, the first three months of 2025 alone saw 60 gigawatts of new solar capacity added to the national grid. Then April packed in 45 more gigawatts. Finally, May added an eye-watering 92 gigawatts of new capacity, or 3 gigawatts every day.

The reason for this brain-warping mad dash of solar development? At the start of 2025—in an attempt to rein in the renewables sector—Beijing announced that it would discontinue a long-standing policy that had effectively propped up renewable energy prices, pegging them to that of the “baseline” coal power in each province. Any solar capacity that went in after May 2025, Beijing declared, would no longer get this deal. So the all-out solar installation frenzy was simply a mass attempt to get in under the old terms.

In Australia, Electric Prices Plunge as Renewables Soar

Sydney Morning Herald:

Electricity prices in eastern Australia fell sharply in the final three months of last year as record-breaking contributions from renewable energy and large-scale batteries reduced the need to call on fossil fuels to plug supply gaps.

Figures from the energy market operator, to be released on Thursday, confirm renewables and batteries powered more than 50 per cent of the grid in the December quarter for the first time in history, crunching coal to its lowest-ever seasonal share of the mix, and gas to its lowest since 2000.

Wholesale power prices – what retailers pay generators for electricity before selling it to customers – tumbled to $50 megawatt-hour, a 44 per cent decline from the same time a year earlier.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who remains under pressure over rising power bills adding to cost-of-living strains, said the new figures showed Labor’s policies were working.

“The drop in wholesale price is good news – and we are working to ensure as much of that flows through retail prices,” he said.

Violette Mouchaileh, the Australian Energy Market Operator’s head of policy, said the lower average prices across the quarter were the result of years of sustained investment in clean energy and storage projects. It proved that adding more wind, solar and battery capacity into the grid reduced the need to burn higher-cost coal and gas for electricity, putting “downward pressure” on prices, she said.

Nipah Virus is Asia’s Ebola

I’m sure the professionals at CDC are on it…oh, wait..

Reuters:

Two cases of the deadly Nipah virus in India have prompted authorities in Thailand and Malaysia to step up airport screening to prevent the spread of the infection. But what is Nipah virus, and how worried should people be?

Nipah is a rare viral infection that spreads largely from infected animals, mainly fruit bats, to humans. It can be asymptomatic but it is often very dangerous, with a case fatality rate of 40% to 75%, depending on the local healthcare system’s capacity for detection and management, the World Health Organization says.

However, while it can also spread from person to person, it does not do this easily, and outbreaks are usually small and fairly contained, according to experts and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Candidate vaccines are under development, although none have been approved yet.

Nipah was first identified in Malaysia in 1999. Since then, there have been small outbreaks almost every year, mostly in Bangladesh. India also sees sporadic outbreaks. According to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a group that tracks emerging disease threats and funds the development of medical tools to protect against them, as of December 750 cases had been recorded in all, and 415 of the patients died.

When first identified in Malaysia, Nipah spread largely through direct contact with sick pigs or contaminated tissues. Since then, it more commonly spreads from contact with what scientists say is its natural host: fruit bats.

More specifically, the consumption of fruit or fruit products – like raw date palm juice – containing urine or saliva from infected fruit bats has been the most likely source of infection, the WHO says. Human-to-human spread has been found, mainly after close contact between a sick patient and their family or caregivers.
—
The current outbreak is reportedly under control.

Trump 0, Offshore Wind 4, 1 to Go

Trump hates wind, because some turbines were built near his golf course in Scotland, and he has the mind of a toddler.

They tried the whale thing, when that didn’t fly, they tried “national Security”.

Utility Dive:

The 800-MW Vineyard Wind project offshore Massachusetts can resume construction, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, in another setback to the Trump administration’s efforts to halt offshore wind development with a Dec. 22 stop work order.
Vineyard Wind is the fourth offshore wind project to receive an injunction against the stop work orders, which cited classified national security concerns as the reason for the pause. A fifth case is pending.
Vineyard Wind said after the order was issued, it “repeatedly” reached out to confer with the relevant government agencies “to forge a path forward without litigation,” but that those agencies “refused to discuss the supposedly new information about national security impacts or what Vineyard Wind might do to mitigate them.”

Vineyard Wind’s developer says the project is 95% complete and partially operational – already delivering power to the grid. In its stop work order to the project, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management gave its developers permission to continue activities necessary for power generation but not more construction.

Judge Brian Murphy with the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts granted Vineyard Wind a stay against the stop work order during a Tuesday hearing. The preliminary injunction follows similar rulings in cases brought by Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, Revolution Wind and Empire Wind. Sunrise Wind is still awaiting a decision in court.

The Department of the Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said at the time that last month’s stop work orderwas prompted by “national security risks” identified in “recently completed classified reports.”