I respect Moxie a lot and it greatly diminishes my opinion of him that he agreed to be part of this. I hope he got paid a lot for this, and that he’s plowing the money back into something worthwhile.
I work in clean energy, and whenever I read comments like those in this thread I realize there’s so much that I take for granted that is still relatively unknown outside my bubble.
It's somehow still early innings for the energy transition, and there are a lot of fun engineering problems to work on. Join us, start here: climatebase.org
I told someone about UBI and they hadn’t heard of it, 4 or 5 years ago, despite being an executive at a charity that is supposed to help people with food money.
No, the clean energy industry is doing that, it’s a large and growing industry with billions of capital deployed and millions of people working hard across technology and policy to make it happen.
I don't see anyone replying to you here, and I don't know what your background is in this, but I think and hope you're spot on here. The more I've read replies in this thread the more I think this is mostly regulatory and maybe slightly a hardware issue (hardware issue is that there needs to be some kind of plug on an electrical panel that would remove the risks of having to pull the face off the panel, install a new breaker and connect the inverter).
I've worked in clean energy for about a decade, building analytics software for DER providers (solar, batteries) and EV companies, and I build large-scale portable battery and solar systems as a hobby. I keep up with the industry and the regulatory environment closely via podcasts, newsletters, and conferences.
China’s massive coal footprint is shrinking due to successful, intentional effort under the most recent five year plan, and coal’s presence in China’s power mix will likely continue to shrink, while China ramps up exports of clean energy technology to the rest of the world.
In absolute terms, china's coal footprint is increasing, and will continue to increase in the short term, as of early 2026, they were still opening new coal plants.
China is shifting it's coal use from direct burning in coal power plants to coal based oil, gas and chemicals, reducing the need for energy imports that could be cut off in a conflict. Carbon, in form of CO2, will still be released to the atmosphere from this products.
It’s also from focused efforts to close coal plants, and rapid, massive deployment of solar in the last 20 years, and new technology emerging (better batteries and dispatch technologies) to make solar into a 24/7 resource.
For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything. Thankfully, this is not true — determined people can change things for the better.
It’s true, and the strategy of climate activists in the early 2000s and 2010s was to do everything they could to make coal and other fossil fuels as expensive as possible: by reducing access to capital, increasing the cost of legal and regulatory hurdles, sometime delaying projects through physical blockades, etc etc.
Some utilities didn't have direct market pressures to close coal because they were regulated and the regulator allowed them to recover costs plus a profit on top.
> For whatever reason, there’s a strong motivation for people to dismiss the gigantic global effort to transition the energy system away from fossil fuels, and claim that all that effort isn’t really doing anything.
Because renewable energy is Communism, or something.
But seriously: $$$$. The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful. The owners of these companies and their media co-conspirators should be tried in the Hague for what they have done to our planet just to keep making fucking money.
> The Fossil Fuel industry, before it finally dies, will make big Tobacco look downright merciful.
This should not be surprising when one realizes that this industry is the biggest industry that humanity ever created (in terms of monetary value). Nothing ever is or was bigger than energy from fossil fuels. Predictably, those who profit from this, behave like selfish [...] and fight tooth and nail to keep their profits.
I would disagree, I think that plentiful affordable energy has been a huge benefit to the human race. Transportation, refrigeration, manufacturing, simply having electricity in the home, most everything we take for granted in terms of our current standard of living traces back to abundant and cheap energy.
But there is no reason to hang on to the old, dirty technology if there are now better alternatives. And if the economics work, the market will follow, as it seems to be doing. You can't fake lower costs.
Nuclear should have replaced coal decades ago but the economics didn't actually work, even though the environmental benefit would have been real.
Oh for fucking sure. I consider humans as much a part of the planet as anything else, but also very valid to call it out specifically.
Mass death of species too numerous to name, the biosphere itself, property damage from rising ocean levels, the soon to fail air currents, all the damage and death from extreme weather events, all of it. All of it could've been fucking prevented and it wasn't, because profits.
The AI job crisis is large tech employers firing workers to free up cash for AI capex, and those workers competing with everyone else in a competitive job market.
I’ve been unemployed and actively looking for a job for about 6 months, the longest stretch of active job searching I’ve ever done in my career. Several close friends who work in tech or tech-adjacent fields are in the same boat. Anecdata on Hacker News or LinkedIn tells the same story.
A chart showing “total number of jobs” is not meaningful. I took a temp job in a metal shop to make ends meet while I wait for the endless rounds of interviews I’ve now gone through with 4 companies. It pays less than half of what I was making before, and I am barely making ends meet. It’s not sustainable, even though the pay is more than fair for the work.
There are also a lot of job openings for home health care workers, or seasonal resort workers, that used to be filled by immigrants. Those jobs are not going to be taken by any of the engineers who just got laid off by Meta.
I have the strong impression that people who write articles like this are very disconnected from the reality of the economy right now, and that their curiosity ends at the line on the chart they cooked up to make a contrarian point.
I am very sympathetic to your situation, and fear something similar happening to me. But the article is addressed to investors, who are interested in aggregate labor demand declines.
"A chart showing “total number of jobs” is not meaningful."
It is meaningful in answering the question being asked, which is whether the hype around labor displacement, which has been growing for nearly five years now, is actually occurring in a way that would justify some of the higher valuations for AI firms.
The "AI jobs crisis" is generally understood to mean a sustained downturn in demand for all labor due to AI substituting for labor across a huge range of tasks.
Same boat, used to do backend infrastructure but have now been doing basic IT support at a non-tech industry; on paper I'm still employed, but between making not enough to make ends meet anymore and not even being fully engaged with the work, I feel effectively unemployed.
That's true! In 12 months, I got two contracts: a 3-month fixed-term contract and a previous 10-day contract role. Let's say that the landlord decides to sell the place I'm renting, I won't be able to rent another place due to unemployment.
It’s so economically valuable that smarter people than you decided it should be provided as a public good, to give everyone access to it regardless of ability to pay. We should do a lot more of this.
Are you not aware of any instances where "evil capitalist bastards" fail to act in their own long term interest? If not, then you might want to pay more attention.
Surely you're not proposing it is uncapturable economic value. That's not economics. As for the mechanics, first we have to hear what they were thinking about the substance of that value was. That's not my assertion, but rather the question posed by the persons I was replying too -- but virtually by definition economics involves the topic of capturable valuable. If it is not capturable value then I don't see how it's economic value.
But lets say, for the hell of it, we take a wild guess and presume that to be economically valuable it has to be if not easily tradeable at least actionable, but for whatever reason the hypothetical here is it's only useful in the US if the government does it. I would presume, though not propose, they could sell it to US enemies, such as China. Now I am not promoting treasonous activities, but I'm quite sure, some capitalists would happily do them.
If it's actually usable economically then the government will partially recover (capture value) it via taxation. If US suppliers fail to match the predicted effects, then Chinese or other suppliers can. This yields tax receipts in China and elsewhere. So if it's actually 'distributable' then it is worth at least some non-zero capturable amount as sales to foreign governments if the US government will not be participating, even if you suppose no private entities will buy the information.
It seems you've completely lost the plot. Refer to what we're replying to
>Can you think of any economically valuable reason why it might be important to know about weather trends or events in advance? Any at all?
You're damning me for questioning someone who presumed market efficiency with an appeal to economic value to a government that stands to capture that hypothetical value? The premise of the government acting on market efficiency was what I responded to, not my introduction.
If we're discounting the premised market efficiency of the government actor to which I replied, then the question was moot, and you're targeting the wrong commenter. But of course, that wouldn't fit your two-faced (and post response underhanded conniving editing 'centrally-') rebuttal, so you wait to set the catch-22 trap of damning rebuttal comments for acting on a premise introduced in a counter viewpoint.
The comment you originally responded to does not presume market efficiency. In fact it carries the opposite assumption - if markets were efficient then the loss of economic value from weather forecasting would be immediately apparent and we wouldn't need to discuss larger-concept models with the goal of overcoming inefficiencies.
That original comment posits an idea of "economic value" that is independent from what can be captured by whomever is contributing to it, which is what you seemed to be rejecting.
The market efficiency it presumes is that an appeal to value is actually a rational actionable appeal to the government actor. That seems to be the whole point of the question (paraphrased) "can't you see the value of the thing we're losing" and speaking that to someone who stands to capture the value via tax receipts.
Of course if the government doesn't care at all about the 'market efficiency' of that value it's not clear why this question is even posed -- a hypothetically irrational rejection of the efficient projection of this value seems to be what the question contends with. The very question relies on a premise of someone somewhere acting with market efficiency on this data. With zero market 'efficiency' from the data, there's no useful market value generated whether you frame it as "capturable" or not.
> The market efficiency it presumes is that an appeal to value is actually a rational actionable appeal to the government actor. That seems to be the whole point of the question (paraphrased) "can't you see the value of the thing we're losing" and speaking that to someone who stands to capture the value via tax receipts.
Ah, no, but at least this puts our difference in stark relief. One can rationally appeal to government (as a democratic institution with a goal of furthering lofty ideals, like society and the economy in general) without necessarily appealing to government (as a selfish entity) desire to collect more tax receipts. If you must, think of it as appealing to individuals who may or may not support the government, and the government optimizing for that support rather than optimizing for mere tax dollars (which it can always print more of).
So you're back to to "fallacy" of market efficiency, expecting private actors to advocate to foot taxes with an expected ROI from capturing the value delivered by government implementation of the program. Yes you can appeal to the government without appealing to tax receipts, but under a value proposition premise we have here it's conditional upon the market being 'efficient' enough that either the private actors realize the tax / inflation paid is worth the ROI and/or the government finds it worth the tax receipts -- a value proposition doesn't make sense if none of the actors expect to realize it.
It seems your thesis here contradicts your prior argument. You're merely flip-flopping -- the private actors are acting with "efficiency" when one argues about government efficiency and the government is the one acting with efficiency when you're arguing the private actors aren't.
>Ah, no, but at least this puts our difference in stark relief.
It does nothing of the sort.
The reason why I introduce the notion of tax receipts is in part because some arguments presented appeared to dismiss the "efficiency" of private actors while still asking me to answer the question of how a private actor might "capture" the value of generating the data themselves even in the face of private buyers not buying it (one answer is: foreign governments or those they represent might be "efficient" enough to buy it). You've grasped onto that notion as if it's a "gotcha" presenting some stark difference. In fact it creates no obligation for the government to act solely on tax receipts, it's merely one more value proposition for a non-private actor to buy the data.
Not much point going much further down this "heads I win, tails you lose" flip-flop reasoning you're presenting, but good luck with that. You've created a logical contradiction at this point no matter which side you try to flip back to.
> So you're back to to "fallacy" of market efficiency, expecting private actors to advocate to foot taxes with an expected ROI from capturing the value delivered
Or I'm pointing to the existence of arguments that fall outside of your paradigm of reasoning through direct economic self interest.
I'd guess the flip flopping you're feeling here comes from trying to shoehorn my argument into your paradigm, and it not fitting. The resulting logical contradiction does not imply an error in my argument, but rather the inapplicability of the paradigm you're attempting to use.
>The resulting logical contradiction does not imply an error in my argument, but rather the inapplicability of the paradigm you're attempting to use.
This is a diabolical level of gaslighting to present your logical contradiction as my fault. Perhaps the "shoehorning" you're finding is in fact a function of forcing your reasoning into the premise of appeal to economic value to which I responded while simultaneously damning my response in a way that created a contradiction in your logic.
>>Can you think of any economically valuable reason why it might be important to know about weather trends or events in advance? Any at all?
The whole premise of this was appeal to the economic interest of constituents of the people ending the program.
If you want to pretend like we're addressing an entirely different "argument" in whatever la-la land is existing in your mind right now, so that you can seriously make your statement, I'm not particularly interested in addressing your hallucinatory fantasies. Have a good one.
All you've seem to have done here is push your own favored framework, and then argue reflexively based on it. My initial point was that the assumptions of your framework would seem to be incorrect. You merely translated my point into your framework, and then blamed me for the resulting logical contradiction.
The specific problem here is imagining market participants as efficient actors. In reality, it's more like an NP-hard problem, and making logical appeals based around abstract models is exactly how we try to convince other market participants that something is in their interest (eg the comment you originally responded to).
In general, there was no need to come out swinging at me and accusing me of "gaslighting". Try more understanding, and less arguing. You'll get further.
You'd think that but the evil capitalist bastards generally think one financial quarter at a time and will absolutely dismantle the long-term prospects of just about anything if it gets them some shiny nickels.
Technologies: Python (web apps, pandas), Javascript/Typescript (all of the web frameworks, data vis), HTML/CSS (Zeldman was right), Java, C++ (enough to get in trouble). CAD, CNC, power electronics, embedded systems.
I am a builder and leader in clean energy and climate tech, with ten years in energy industry software, deep technical and domain expertise, and a long-term focus on climate change.
As a product manager, full-stack software engineer, and solutions engineer, I've built complex energy modeling products end-to-end to accelerate DER deployment and grid decarbonization. In my spare time, I've built custom BESS systems to replace generators, managed logistics to replace diesel truck hauling with EVs, and organized volunteer ecosystem restoration projects.
I am seeking roles that leverage my technical skill, product leadership, and domain expertise, with mission-driven teams focused on decarbonization.
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