Tim Small

Budget 2026: No change to VAT on plug-in solar :-( Boiler Upgrade Scheme (heat pumps) is continuing and funded at current levels :-)

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme costs £400m/year. Compare that to the £40bn the Treasury spent propping up bills during the last energy crisis. It’s about 1% of that & it helps get all types of households - including social housing - off the gas that caused the crisis in the first place @gjuk.bsky.social

This is some heroic field work m.youtube.com/watch?v=V4xj...

The SNP conference has supported a motion calling for the SNP & the Scottish government to leave the X platform owned by Elon Musk www.thenational.scot/news/2664596...

Normal Situation www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Matrix underpins public sector comms across Europe, yet only one govt agency commits to support the standard they all rely on. Here's how the Digital Commons EDIC can help build an open source 🇪🇺 and fill gaps like this: matrix.org/blog/2026/10... #OpenSource #DigitalSovereignty #DigitalCommons

This year's record setting El Niño will impact many different parts of the world, with some experiencing severe drought and others flooding. In a new analysis at The Climate Brink, I explore what impacts happened during past events and which are most likely to occur this year

Freelancer? In Brighton? Come to our meet up tomorrow evening! It's very relaxed, usually 10-15 freelancers along for a nice chat. We'll be in the Battle of Trafalgar pub from 8pm-11 Last week: www.brightonfarm.com/2026/meeting... Map: maps.app.goo.gl/CbGLaPkoPuXM...

Russia has one enormous strategic advantage of which it is taking advantage. It can daily attack civilian targets--hospitals, universities, markets--knowing that while Ukraine can do the same, the Ukrainians are too humane to do so.

Very pleased to see that this research from my Smith School colleagues is getting traction in national media.

Probably not wise to vote for friends of Russia then.

My former colleagues, Mark Cane and Stephen Zebiak, were the first to successfully predict El Niño more than a year in advance in the late 1980s. Now we’re really good at it, and know the consequences. It’d be irresponsible for governments not to take action. Read this from my buddy Jeff Shaman.

X is blocking the Brazilian Catholic Bishops' Conference account as polling shows Catholics backing Lula. The Church has denounced outside interference in the election

Small scale solar is #1 yo

Answer to Dutch PM question on the risk of dismantling AMOC monitoring: "The government is examining how AMOC monitoring can be ensured, whether at the national level or within an EU context. Discussions on this matter are currently underway between various government bodies and research institutes"

NEW – Analysis: ‘Super El Niño’ reaches ‘remarkable’ all-time record ✍️ Written by @zekehausfather.com Read here: buff.ly/4a9XUAK

The Facial Expressions of Tethys by artist Julius von Bismarck. A suspended high-sea buoy that moves in real time. Sensors on a twin buoy out in the Atlantic Ocean send live satellite data to motors inside the museum. This makes the indoor buoy copy the exact, real-time movements of the ocean waves.

Berkeley Earth's Sept 2026 climate report includes temperature forecasts for the coming year including details on the 2026-2027 El Nino: m.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjki...

Tell me that you don’t understand insurance without saying you don’t understand insurance… 🤦

And here's the trailer. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY_8...

Streisand Effect, Activate.

Holy Jesus, Mary Immaculate and all the fucking saints. How can anyone who has been both ELECTED and PAID SO MUCH be so GOBSMACKINGLY stupid and ignorant? How? How is it possible that her husband and children don’t stop her? Are they all sucking at her money teat? I just don’t get it.

Another piece on energy from me today (happy Friday, I guess!) This time it's a bit of a good news story: the latest on electricity prices decoupling from gas. Decoupling is still happening, and electricity bills would be higher if the UK didn't have so much clean power.

NEW from us: five years after China pledged to stop overseas coal power projects and support clean energy, dozens of coal power plants have been canceled and the country's overseas clean energy financing has seen impressive growth, but gaps remain in the coal ban.

The United States, which once freed prisoners from Germany's concentration camps, is now siding with the war criminals—and obstructing those who would hold them into account. Shameful—if this administration had any shame.

I have a new piece out in Nature today on the record-breaking 2026/2027 El Niño, what impacts we should expect, and how governments can prepare. The Niño3.4 region is currently running more than 1C hotter than any prior event on record, and we remain months away from the peak www.nature.com/artic...

This year's El Niño event is moving into record territory, with the daily Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) tying the record previously set during the 2015/2016 super-El Niño. My latest over at Carbon Brief: www.carbonbrief.org/...

I've created a new dashboard for The Climate Brink that is updated daily with ERA5 global mean surface temperature data. It includes daily anomalies, monthly and annual forecasts, and a bunch of interactive data visualizations: dashboard.theclimate...

All the September dynamical ENSO models (including SINTEX) are now in, and they give a 100% chance of a record event this year using the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) metric:

Since the rise of humans, wild land mammal biomass has declined by 85%. Around 100,000 years ago, all of the wild land mammals on Earth summed up to around 20 million tonnes of carbon. By around 10,000 years ago, there had been a huge decline, likely in the range of 25% to 50%.

"I asked about the threat of the rising sea. 'It’s definitely a problem,' the agent said. I blinked. 'Dang,' I said. 'Then how do you protect a place like this?' 'Really expensive insurance,' he replied. 'That’s the answer.'" 🙃🙃🙃 Great commentary by @kzhill.bsky.social too

We're losing the great scientists that developed the first tools to understand how we're changing the #climate & then warned us about the consequences. Remembering them & building on their work is our responsibility to their legacy. RIP Dr. Robert E. Dickinson fromtheprow.agu.org/robert-e-dic...

I love this slide. I really don't think the geopolitical implications of the clean energy transition have sunk in for most people.

A cool solar PV facade and balconies on the 12-storey biobased apartment block in Malmö 🇸🇪 A total of ⚡ 218kWp system paired with 🔋 194kWh battery storage. Makes a lot of sense for low sun winter generation ☀️ via ETC Bygg

Oxide and Friends: “For Want of a Resistor” is now live! Listen to the full episode wherever you stream your podcasts: buff.ly/bxFQl6b

Fickling does it again: "China’s Electric Cars Aren’t Europe’s Real Problem" "current policy gets the problem back-to-front. Europe is restricting imports of Chinese-made EVs, but allowing unrestricted trade in the batteries that power them" #battchat www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Scenes like this did a lot of damage to Mosley and the BUF in the 1930s. Though that relied on Conservative papers reporting them.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... The video is nicely done. "the kind of thing Nigel won't know, doesn't know, won't know. It's the kind of thing he'd want, he'd rather not know".

Associate prof-not the real thing, and yes, if Cambridge uni want to retain any respect, he has to be sent packing!

Elder statesman of cryptography Bruce Schneier on the impacts of AI on financial, political/societal and computer systems. Sounds dry and niche/technical, but absolutely isn't. Essential viewing! m.youtube.com/watch?v=eEBv...

Burnham to tackle ‘subscription traps’ From the latest Private Eye, out now.