Volewica

Thursday, November 5, 2026

Warmest October on record

October 2026 was the warmest October on record in Copernicus' ERA5 dataset, coming in at 1.75C above preindustrial levels.

With 10 months of the year now in, 2026 as a whole is on track to see the second warmest year on record in ERA5. And with a record-setting El Niño we are very likely to see a record warm 2027:

We should be panicking. We should immediately ban the sale of 100% petrol (gasoline)/diesel cars and trucks; force utilities to increase the percentage of renewables in electricity generation by 5% per annum; ban oil/gas heating, using heat pumps instead; tax CO2 emissions; and withdraw fossil fuel subsidies.

Instead, our politicians, our CEOs, the "élite" are behaving as if everything is just fine. Some of them are even trying to roll back pro-environment policies, even as we face catastrophe.

Solar overtakes gas in Asia

From Carbon Brief

Solar has overtaken gas power in Asia to become the continent’s third-largest source of electricity, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief.

The rapid expansion of solar power in nations such as China, India and Pakistan has seen its annual output increase nearly fourfold since 2020.

Asia accounts for around 60% of the world’s solar-power growth in this period, putting the continent at the heart of the global solar boom.

Coal and hydropower remain Asia’s largest sources of electricity, generating roughly 52% and 12% of the continent’s power each year, respectively.

Yet despite expectations that gas power would undergo “explosive growth” in the region, output has stalled due to supply disruptions, relatively high gas prices and growth in clean alternatives.

In contrast, solar has surged, generating some 1,727 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in the 12 months to April 2026.

As the chart below shows, this pushes it just ahead of gas, which generated 1,711TWh over the same period and has remained roughly flat for the past several years.

Electricity generation from solar (red) and gas (blue), TWh, on an annualised basis between December 2019 and May 2026. Source: Carbon Brief analysis of Ember data.

The milestone reflects wider trends in the global electricity mix, with monthly generation from both wind and solar surpassing gas generation globally for the first time in April 2026.

Asia’s solar expansion has been driven largely by China, which accounts for nearly three-quarters of the growth in the region’s output since 2020.

Record installations in 2025 took China’s cumulative installed capacity to 1.2 terawatts (TW) by the end of the year.

China also dominates global solar supply chains, hosting more than 80% of solar manufacturing capacity.

This means it has played an important role in enabling solar deployment in other Asian countries through cheap solar-panel exports. Amid the energy crisis sparked by the Iran war, Chinese solar exports to Asia doubled to reach a record 39 gigawatts (GW) in March 2026.

Meanwhile, Asian countries have faced a number of challenges in expanding gas-power capacity. Most of these nations are reliant on imported liquified natural gas (LNG) to support their gas-power projects.

Around 81GW of planned gas capacity in Asia was cancelled in 2022 and 2023, amid LNG supply disruptions and price spikes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

LNG import terminals and pipelines have faced delays and cancellations in south Asia and South Korea as a result of rising fuel and construction costs, as well as weak demand for gas power.

Global gas turbine shortages have also delayed plans to build new gas-power plants in Vietnam and the Philippines.

While Asia’s gas-power capacity increased by 22% between 2019 and 2024, gas-fired generation has only increased by a modest 6% over the same period. Existing gas plants are not always operating at high capacities, as gas is outcompeted by other fuels.

These trends are not uniform across the region, with increased generation in some countries – such as China and Taiwan – being offset by declines in others – such as Japan and India.

Although China has nearly doubled its gas -power generation in the past decade, gas supply issues and high prices make it less competitive than coal and renewables.

The expansion of clean energy has also reduced the need for gas-fired generation in many Asian countries. Pakistan’s widely reported “boom” in rooftop solar is one notable example of this trend.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the latest energy crisis has “renewed gas supply reliability and affordability concerns” among gas-importing countries in Asia, many of which are highly dependent on gas flows through the strait of Hormuz.

Between latitudes 34 degrees north and south (the global sunbelt), it will be easily possible for electric grids to run entirely on battery-solar. But as you move further away from the equator, wind becomes more and more important. Wind is seasonally inversely correlated with solar. In winter, when sunshine hours are fewer, and the sun is closer to the horizon, the electricity generated by solar panels falls. But conversely, on average, electricity generated by wind rises. At the equator, wind speeds are low, but (except in the rainy season), solar is high. 4 or 5 hours of storage will be enough to provide for nighttime use.

Battery-solar is cheap and getting cheaper, and it will continue to replace coal and gas, constrained only by the efforts of coal-dependent utilities and countries to resist the rising tide.

Tuesday, November 3, 2026

In the corridors of clowngress

By Gary Larson

China's wind vs US nuclear

From EVCurveFuturist (Chris Meder)

So I decided to look something up today and the answer was staggering tbh. China's wind alone hit 855.4 TWh in Jan–Sep 2026—9% more than all 94 US nuclear reactors produced in all of 2025. And China added 60.66 GW more wind capacity meanwhile; the US added zero new reactors. #Bettrification

As solar, wind, batteries and EVs grow exponentially in China, it seems very plausible that her emissions have peaked. They will only fall slowly, at first, since China's economy is growing at roughly 5% per year, but the fall will accelerate as more and more electricity is generated by renewables and nuclear and as the car/truck fleet starts to transition to electric. China has been the biggest contributor to the rise in world emissions, so if emissions have peaked there, they have peaked for the world too.

Source: Our World in Data

The poor are taught to hate themselves

By Sheril Kirshenbaum

In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut offered this sharp and still remarkably timely critique of American attitudes toward poverty through the voice of Howard W. Campbell Jr. in Slaughterhouse-Five.

The belief that anyone can become wealthy encourages people experiencing poverty to blame themselves rather than question the economic and social structures that shape their circumstances.

Solar grew 50% in just 19 months

From Gavin Mooney

One third of the world’s total solar capacity was installed in the last 19 months.

Global installed solar has now passed 3 TW. The first terawatt took decades to build – the latest one took just over a year and a half.

Having said that, SolarPower Europe is expecting a slowdown this year before growth picks up again from next year. It forecasts annual installations to fall to 612 GW in 2026 from a record 664 GW last year.

This would be the first annual decline in solar installations in more than two decades.

A few things stand out:

✅ The slowdown is a China story. China accounted for 57% of global additions in 2025, but installations there are forecast to fall 24% this year following domestic policy changes.

✅ Outside China, however, deployment continues to broaden. India has become the world's second largest market, installing 45.7 GW in 2025. The number of countries with at least 1 GW of solar has risen from 42 in 2020 to 74 now.

✅ Growth is expected to resume from 2027. By 2030 annual installations could reach 864 GW with the global fleet approaching 7 TW.

So while the next terawatt might take slightly longer than 19 months, the underlying direction remains clear: annual solar additions are moving towards 1 TW, while deployment continues to spread across more markets.

The other interesting part of this story is how solar growth is starting to spread into markets that barely registered a few years ago.

BloombergNEF highlights rapid rooftop growth in countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria and the Philippines, while smaller markets like Lebanon and Cuba have also accelerated sharply.

The main constraint for these countries increasingly looks less like panel cost, and more like access to affordable finance.

We can run our grid on renewables, except (perhaps) in very high latitudes. According to Engaging Data, 179.4 million people in the world live north of Manchester (latitude 53 degrees N). This is a lot of people, but it makes up just 3.4% of the world's population. The rest of us will be able to run our grids off wind and solar, with battery storage. Those brave enough to live in high latitudes should still be able to run their grids mostly on renewables, with back up from gas and (maybe) nuclear, even if they don't import electricity from sunnier places.

Source: Engaging Data

State of the climate

From Michael E Mann

"The 2026 state of the climate report: challenges and opportunities" | Honored to be a co-author of this article in #Bioscience, led by @williamripple.bsky.social , detailing the increased danger signs from our warming planet: academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

ABSTRACT

Earth’s climate system is moving deeper into uncharted territory. We present the 2026 update of planetary vital signs that track the state of Earth’s climate system, alongside indicators of the human activities driving ongoing change. Of 16 climate-related indicators, seven are currently at record extremes. Several indicators also show evidence of accelerating trends or abrupt shifts, raising concerns about increasing climate instability, interacting feedbacks, and the growing risk of crossing critical tipping points. Human activities, particularly fossil fuel combustion, remain the dominant drivers of these changes. Despite the worsening trends, encouraging signs of societal changes are emerging, including the rapid expansion of renewable electricity and battery storage, although progress remains far below the scale and speed needed to stabilize Earth’s climate system. Rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, effective adaptation, ecosystem protection, and transformative societal change remain essential to reducing climate risks and securing a more resilient and sustainable future.

It's still not too late. We can cut emissions of greenhouse gases. There is no technological or economic reasons why we can't. There're many who do not want emissions to be cut — oil, gas and coal companies; feckless legacy car makers who were too stupid to embrace EVs; the rabid right, who think cutting emissions is somehow woke; imbeciles, who still despite the evidence believe that climate change is happening. We must not them derail decarbonisation.

Older adults and B12

From The Conversation

Two micrograms is an almost unimaginably small amount. It weighs less than a tiny fragment of a grain of table salt. Yet adults need only around this amount of vitamin B12 each day, depending on the guideline used, to support red blood cells, nerves and DNA production.

In 2026, it is 100 years since George Minot and William Murphy reported that a liver-rich diet could treat pernicious anaemia, then a frequently fatal disease. Their work transformed medicine and eventually led scientists to identify vitamin B12 as the substance in liver that treated the disease.

But the route to that breakthrough began with an unexpected clue from animal experiments. The American physician and pathologist George Whipple had shown that liver helped dogs recover from anaemia caused by blood loss. Blood-loss anaemia happens when the body loses red blood cells through bleeding. Pernicious anaemia is different: the problem is not bleeding, but poor absorption of vitamin B12. Even so, Whipple’s experiments pointed researchers towards liver as a source of a powerful blood-forming factor.

Patients with pernicious anaemia who had been close to death often improved dramatically within weeks of eating liver-rich diets. The success of liver treatment eventually led scientists to isolate the deep red compound now known as vitamin B12, or cobalamin.

Often mistaken

Despite decades of research, vitamin B12 deficiency remains common, particularly among older adults, vegans, vegetarians and people with conditions that affect absorption. Some people do not consume enough B12 because it is naturally found mainly in foods from animals, including meat, fish, eggs and dairy products. Others struggle to absorb it properly.

This becomes more common with age. Some older people produce less stomach acid, which is needed to release B12 from food. Others develop autoimmune gastritis, in which the immune system damages stomach cells involved in producing acid and intrinsic factor, the protein needed for vitamin B12 absorption. Weight-loss surgery and some medicines used for diabetes or acid reflux can also reduce absorption.

The symptoms of deficiency can develop slowly and are often mistaken for normal ageing. People may feel exhausted, weak or short of breath. Some develop numbness or tingling in their hands and feet, poor balance, memory problems or what many describe as “brain fog”. These symptoms are not specific to B12 deficiency, so persistent tiredness, tingling or balance problems should be checked rather than assumed to be a simple vitamin problem.

People at higher risk, including vegans, vegetarians, older adults and those taking medicines that affect stomach acid or diabetes treatment, may need testing or supplementation advice from a health professional.

Doctors have traditionally linked tiredness in B12 deficiency to anaemia. Without enough vitamin B12, the bone marrow cannot produce healthy red blood cells. Instead, it releases unusually large and immature cells that carry oxygen less effectively around the body.

But anaemia may not be the only reason people with low B12 feel exhausted.

Low energy

In humans, vitamin B12 is directly needed by only two enzymes, the proteins that help chemical reactions happen in the body. One helps the body make DNA, which cells need when they divide. The other helps mitochondria process certain fats and protein building blocks. Mitochondria are the tiny structures inside cells that help turn food into usable energy.

This mitochondrial role has attracted growing interest from researchers studying ageing, muscle function and vitamin B12 status. A 2026 study explored what happens when cells do not have enough B12. Researchers found that low B12 could interfere with the DNA inside mitochondria and reduce energy production in laboratory models of skeletal muscle (muscle cells studied outside the human body).

A related study in aged female mice found that B12 supplementation improved several signs of mitochondrial health in muscle, including the number and structure of mitochondria. Together, this work points to one possible reason why some people with low B12 report fatigue before obvious anaemia is detected.

These findings do not mean vitamin B12 supplements can reverse ageing or act as an energy booster for people whose B12 levels are already normal.

Scientists have suspected a link between B12 and mitochondrial function for many years, because one of the two B12-dependent enzymes works inside mitochondria. Earlier research has also suggested that low B12 status may be linked with poorer muscle function in older adults, although much of this work is observational and cannot prove cause and effect.

So if you’re feeling persistently tired, is it worth paying for vitamin B12 injections at a wellness clinic or medispa? For most people, no. B12 injections are an established treatment for diagnosed deficiency, particularly when absorption is impaired, and the NHS uses hydroxocobalamin injections for vitamin B12 deficiency anaemia.

But there is little evidence that B12 shots boost energy, weight loss or performance in people whose B12 levels are already normal. The more useful first step is to find out what is causing the tiredness.

The story of vitamin B12 is unusual because the body needs so little of it, yet the consequences of deficiency can be profound. Long before scientists understood its chemistry, doctors recognised that something in liver could restore strength, appetite and vitality to desperately ill patients.

A century later, researchers are still finding that this tiny cobalt-containing molecule does more than prevent anaemia. It may also help explain how cells maintain energy and function as the body ages.

I am vegan and was recently diagnosed after a blood test with a B12 deficiency. I take a B12 supplement every couple of days, and my deficiency has been cured. I strongly recommend that you do not take supplemental B12 unless your doctor advises it after you have had a blood test.

As always, I am neither a doctor nor a nutritionist. Consult your own doctor or specialist before taking B12.

The unstoppable solar tsunami

By John Hanger

Solar shortly will be 59% of Botswana's total generation capacity! Solar does more to electrify Africa & end energy poverty than any technology. Oil & gas imports are unaffordable for poor countries. New coal & gas plants are unaffordable. Solar & batteries are the option!
Solar increases Botswana's TOTAL generation by 148%, since 2024. Botswana had 0.76 GW or 760 MW of TOTAL generation at end of 2024. Solar was 10 MW or 1.3% of that total. Botswana adds 1.1 GW of solar, with 271 MW operating & 820 MW under construction!

Botswana is not a key contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. But it is emblematic of all the developing countries in the sunbelt (its latitude is +-22 degrees south). These countries are installing solar hand over fist because it is cheap. Cheaper than oil and coal and gas. So cheap that total electrical capacity is doubling (or more) every year because of new solar installations. People who never had electricity before now have it. Factories that struggled to afford electricity or even to have electricity now have it.

And the costs of solar and batteries haven't yet stopped falling. This is an unstoppable revolution. And we enter the era of dirt-cheap electricity. Except where countries have turned their faces against it. In the US, and in Australia, where the right-wing parties are inexplicably promising to subsidise coal power stations. The stupid really burns, doesn't it?

Monday, November 2, 2026

A lot more people in a lot less space

From a Bluesky post by Brent Toderian.

To carry 50,000 people per hour in each direction, a city needs a 175m wide road for cars. Even if those cars are electric. And then there’s all the parking. OR a city can move A LOT MORE people in a lot less space, with A LOT LESS public money, emissions, pollution, noise etc. Choices. Simple.

How much would trams carry? About a quarter or a fifth of a metro, but they are on the other hand cheaper to build and run.

Solar passes nuclear in Texas

From Chris Meder (EVCurveFuturist)

Solar passed nuclear in Texas 2 years ago. Now it's double. Texas is what makes this chart powerful. This isn't green ideology winning. It's pure economics. Solar is cheap, modular, scalable & incredibly fast to deploy. Wind keeps growing too. When economics take over, ideology becomes irrelevant.
You can politicise energy, but you can’t vote away the cost curve. Texas follows the money, and that solar curve tells you where it’s going, followed closely by wind. Add batteries and the economics get even harder to resist. Good luck stopping that. It's not even a race, its domination by new #SWB [Sun, wind, batteries]

It's shameful how many Ozzies are dying in poverty

From The Guardian

Stunning new data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows the abysmally low rate of jobseeker means at least 3,000 more unemployed Australians die each year than would be the case were they not purposefully kept in poverty.

We often talk about how tough it is for those on jobseeker. But last week a report from the AIHW titled “Mortality outcomes among people receiving income support” shows talk is cheap when people are dying.

The report found that Australians on jobseeker are up to 10 times more likely to die than those not on welfare support.

In 2022, the rate of deaths for 35- to 44-year-olds not living on welfare support was 30 per 100,000. By contrast, the rate was 288 per 100,000 for those on jobseeker – 9.6 times greater.

Can someone explain why – in an economy in which the central bank has decided we need almost 700,000 people to be unemployed – those people live in such dreadful poverty that it can make you up to 10 times more likely to die in the prime of your life?

The Reserve Bank believes we need unemployment to be 4.5% to 5% to keep inflation stable. At that level, they believe total household income is such that we won’t buy too much stuff and there won’t be a wages breakout.

It’s not just the RBA: every government since 1996 has been more than happy to ensure the gap between the unemployment benefits and poverty has either grown or remained well above what it was when Bob Hawke and Paul Keating [Labor Prime Ministers] were in power:

Currently, jobseeker payments are almost half the poverty line – roughly $300 a week less than what would be needed for a single person to be right on the poverty line. The only time this was not the case was during the Covid pandemic when the Morrison government effectively doubled jobseeker temporarily.

During 2020, the death rate of those on jobseeker dropped 32% from 328 people per 100,000 the previous year to 224 people per 100,000:

It is too simplistic to say the doubling of jobseeker in 2020 was the reason the death rate dropped. A big factor was that the number of people unemployed almost doubled due to the Covid lockdowns. This group had not come from the level of poverty the usual cohort of unemployed people had, and as a result would likely be healthier.

Crucially, however, being unemployed did not automatically sentence them to poverty.

We therefore cannot say just how big of an impact the doubling of the payment had unless we were able to strip out the numbers of “unemployed due only to lockdowns”.

But while we cannot attribute the doubling of jobseeker to the drop in the death rate, that should not stop our anger at the higher death rates of those on unemployment benefits – and the disparity is getting larger.

In 2019, 328 people died per 100,000 of those on jobseeker. This fell to 224 in 2020, but then rose straight away to 300 the following year and then again to 326 in 2022. Conversely, over the same period, the rate of deaths for those aged 22-64 and not on welfare kept falling.

It means that the likelihood of dying for all unemployed people aged 22-64 is now nearly five times greater compared with those not on welfare – the biggest gap in the AIHW report:

The 2020 figure when jobseeker was doubled does however give us a good base to work from to estimate just how many more people on jobseeker die because they live in poverty.

The cruelty of poverty is that it sentences those in it to a poorer diet, less access to healthcare, less ability to afford exercise activities such as gym and sport club memberships, and as a result a much higher morbidity rate.

In 2022, 3,985 people on jobseeker died. If instead of dying at a rate of 326 per 100,000, the rate was the same as it was in 2020, then 1,246 fewer people would have died (a total of 2,739).

But let us lift our standards. There really is no reason why people on jobseeker should die more often than those not on welfare.

We are a rich country with supposedly universal healthcare. Raising jobseeker to the poverty line (about $37,000 a year) would cost roughly $11bn this year. For comparison, this year the Treasury estimates the richest 10% (people earning more than $162,000) will get about $22.5bn in superannuation tax breaks.

If those on jobseeker died at the same rate as those not on welfare payments, in 2022 just 817 people would have died – 3,168 fewer than in reality:

Poverty kills. And the way to lift people out of poverty is to lift the unemployment payment (and other forms of welfare).

Raising the level of jobseeker would save thousands of lives.

These sorts of results are not unique to Australia:

Why equality is better for everyone

Flight attendants/pilots and cancer

A passenger jet on approach to Newark Liberty International Airport flies over the setting sun in Newark, N.J., March 27, 2019. (AP Photo/J. David Ake, File)

From AP

Flight attendants and pilots are at the highest risk of dying from radiation-related cancers — even more than people who work with radioactive materials, according to a new study.
Cosmic radiation comes from space. Only a small amount reaches the Earth’s surface, but exposure is greater for people flying at high altitudes.
There’s been limited evidence from small studies suggesting that the exposure translates to higher cancer death rates among people who fly often — particularly pilots and flight attendants. The new study “brings important new evidence to bear on this question,” two Australian radiation experts who weren’t involved in the research wrote in an accompanying commentary.
The latest study, published Monday by JAMA Internal Medicine, used national data from more than 12 million death certificates that included information about occupations. The authors looked at death rates from cancers that are tied to radiation exposures, including leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and cancers of the skin, breast, thyroid, prostate and central nervous system.
Among more than 500 occupations, flight attendants had the highest percentage of deaths from radiation-related cancers, and pilots were second, the researchers found. For those two occupations, the odds of dying were unusually high for each type of radiation-related cancer.
Neither group showed higher-than-normal death rates from cancers that aren’t tied to radiation exposure, noted the commentary writers, Catherine Olsen and Ken Karipidis. That fact “supports the hypothesis that occupational radiation exposure, rather than lifestyle or socioeconomic factors, underlies the observed excess,” they wrote.
The researchers found that flight attendants had about 50% higher odds of dying from a radiation-related cancer than the general working population, and pilots had about 36% higher odds.
In terms of absolute risk, about 6.9% of flight attendant deaths were from these cancers — roughly 1 in 14. Among pilots, it was 6.7%. For the general working population, it was 5%, said the study’s first author, Dr. Vishal Patel of Harvard Medical School.
The authors acknowledged some limitations in their study. They do not know how much exposure each flight attendant and pilot got in the air or from other sources. It’s also possible occupations were misclassified on some death certificates.
They also could not account for another possible contributor specific to the professions: Cancer risk can be worsened by frequent disruption of the body’s internal clock, which can be affected by jet lag, crossing time zones and irregular work schedules.
The Federal Aviation Administration has acknowledged that aircrews are exposed to ionizing radiation, but the government does not set federal dose limits or require monitoring, the authors noted.
“You can’t manage an exposure you’ve decided not to measure,” Patel said in an email.
Sara Nelson, who leads a union representing 55,000 flight attendants, said the report reinforces that radiation exposure needs to be taken seriously, as the union has suggested for years.
“The risk is known, but crew are not educated or informed. And, no one is taking responsibility,” said Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
Annual skin examinations may be warranted for all people working on high-altitude flights, and women in those jobs may want to get mammograms earlier or more frequently, Olsen and Karipidis wrote. Doctors who care for pilots and flight attendants also should have a “heightened index of suspicion” for cancer when evaluating these patients, they said.

Air travel adds to greenhouse gas emissions. It's bad for the world. Now it turns out it's bad for the people who fly us.

And Mars's atmosphere is only 0.6% as dense as the Earth's. The cancer risk will be much higher there, even from shorter exposures.

Sunday, November 1, 2026

Life at different levels of GDP

From Our World in Data

The chart shows the relationship between GDP (gross domestic product) per capita — a measure of average incomes in a country — and people’s living conditions.

Where GDP per capita is higher, living conditions are far better in many ways. Where average incomes are higher, children die less often, fewer of them are born dead, mothers die less often, fewer children suffer from hunger, doctors can focus on fewer patients, people live longer, more people can read, children have better access to education and better learning outcomes, more people have access to electricity and clean drinking water, and people are happier with their lives.

The disparity between countries with a low and a high GDP per capita is enormous. Looking at the first panel, for example, you can see that a child born in one of the poorest countries is more than 20 times as likely to die as a child born in one of the richest.
In my article “What is growth?”, I have written about why a high GDP per capita is so important for our living standards and how economic growth is possible