August 9, 2024
Joe Biden is the “Drill, Baby, Drill” President
I would guess that we are going to hear the phrase “drill, baby, drill” a lot in the next three months. Here at THB, one goal is to ensure that whatever our politics or views on policy, that we work hard to share a common understanding (or at least a shared understanding of disagreement) of…
August 5, 2024
Renewing the Partnership Between Government and Entrepreneurs
Our government grapples with challenges that demand quick solutions and decisive action. However, the government’s structure often lacks the necessary incentives to drive innovation. How can venture capital principles be applied within governmental agencies to foster impactful change? Below are the highlights from my conversation with Arun Gupta, as he emphasizes the importance of a renewed…
August 2, 2024
We’ll Always Have Paris
In 2015, countries around the world met in Paris at the 21st Conference of Parties to the U.N Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) where they agreed to limit global temperature increases well below 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. We now have 8 years of data on global emissions following the “landmark” Paris Agreement. Today, I evaluate…
August 2, 2024
Data Center Electricity Use III: Make or Buy?
The exponential growth of data centers, driven by the burgeoning demand for cloud services, AI computations, and big data analytics, has increased electricity consumption significantly. In the first two posts of this series, I discussed the increasing data center electricity use, its implications for the electric grid, and how those implications will differ over time…
July 29, 2024
It’s All About the Base(line)
This is Part 5 in the THB series — Climate Fueled Extreme Weather. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, and Part 4 here. Each can be read on their own, but I encourage you to start from the beginning as each installment draws on the ones before. If you have made it this…
July 25, 2024
Why Climate Misinformation Persists
In 2001, I participated in a roundtable discussion hosted at the headquarters of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) with a group of U.S. Senators, the Secretary of Treasury, and about a half-dozen other researchers. The event was organized by Idaho Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) following the release of a short NAS report on climate to help…
July 24, 2024
Raising the Bar, Not Lowering Our Guard, Around Cybersecurity
Last week’s global IT outage demonstrated the vulnerability of our deeply interconnected digital infrastructure. A single unchecked software update by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to its customer, Microsoft, rapidly cascaded into a series of worldwide disruptions throughout the network of operating systems, with CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity solutions safeguarding nearly 60 percent of the Fortune 500, 86 percent of…
July 22, 2024
We Don’t Need No Stinking Science
This is Part 4 in the THB series — Climate Fueled Extreme Weather. You can find Part 1 here Part 2 here and Part 3 here. Each can be read on their own, but I encourage you to start from the beginning as each installment draws on the ones before. Everyone knows that in recent years climate change has…
July 18, 2024
Regulation and Utility Performance
Last week’s outages in Houston due to Hurricane Beryl were agonizing and frustrating. The Category 1 hurricane made landfall on July 8 and maintained hurricane strength until it reached Houston, delivering 10-15 inches of rain in some areas and resulting in 2.7 million power outages in the region. Four days later, over one million customers were still without…
July 15, 2024
It’s Later Than You Think
Today, I discuss the concept of the “time of emergence” for the detection of a signal of a change in climate in observations and projections. Our early work in this area led to some surprising results (at least to me!) and profoundly shaped how I think about the detection and attribution of changes in the…