“These three concepts — gradient, density, and power density — describe the thermodynamic floor beneath civilisation. No policy, no subsidy, and no amount of determination can override them.” (Richard Lyon, below)
Energy engineer/educator Richard Lyon recently illustrated the importance of the key concept of energy density, a subject of note at MasterResource. [1] “The Physics that Demolishes Energy Policy” (March 3, 2026) is taken from Chapter 1 of his book in process.
“There is far more heat energy in a swimming pool than in a pan of boiling water,” he begins.
… Continue ReadingYou can boil an egg in the pan. You can’t boil an egg in the pool. And if you doubled the size of the pool, you’d double the energy available — and still have a cold, raw egg.
This is not a riddle.
“True, Australia is ‘not reducing fast enough to achieve NSW’s legislated targets of a 50% reduction by 2030 or a 70% reduction by 2035.’ That calls for loosing or ending the unrealistic targets, which is now the climate policy for most industrial economies.”
Rob Grant, a self-described “energy transition leader” based in Perth, Western Australia, recently expressed the concern of the climate alarm community: that adaptation is the way forward, with traditional mitigation yielding. “Australia is quietly settling into a climate strategy of adaptation over abatement,” he begins, “and the temperature data says that is a bet we will lose.”
… Continue ReadingLast week’s Labor conference set no new aspiration on climate. Our Paris commitment stays the central plank, and if you assume we deliver on it, the comfortable read is “this is all Australia needs and can do.”
Belle de Jong, environment editor at The European Correspondent [1], recently posted on social media:
Climate journalism is shrinking, this recent Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard piece shows. CBS lost its entire climate desk, the Washington Post cut 74% of its climate team, and NPR laid off its climate desk editor. The Media and Climate Change Observatory’s 2025 year-end analysis showed a 38% reduction in global media’s climate coverage in 2025, since the high-water mark of 2021.
She then reverses the causality to state:
The decline in weekly climate news consumption was driven partly by reduced supply, rather than a lack of interest, the Reuters Institute’s 2025 report found. People are still interested in climate news, but newsrooms stopped supplying it.
de Jong then states what she wishes were true:
… Continue ReadingAll while climate change is changing our daily lives, from fatal heatwaves and floods to food prices and public health.