Simon Waldman

Do we want to keep fixing the same issue? Unlearned lessons from the first big oil crisis As energy prices tripled in the 1970s due to Middle Eastern wars, Scandinavia, France and the Netherlands sped up green transition

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Map of the North Sea showing projected wind farm locations occupying quite a lot of its area.

Have you wondered "If all of the North Sea nations built as much offshore wind as their govs have announced, what would the Sea look like"?

Do you need a plausible scenario for farm and turbine locations in 2050, based on that premise?

If so, read this new paper!

www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/19...

Producing an imperfect, but useful, set of data that people can work with (rather than waiting in hope of €millions to do it properly) is useful to science and industry, but hard to publish with peer review.

"You haven't done x rigorously"
"We weren't trying to! We explained that!"

#academicSky

I don’t really know what I expect in posting this, but maybe some people see it and can learn from it.

I’ll call it “lessons from an unwilling immigration attorney.”

1/

Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been ‘flat or falling’ for 21 months - Carbon Brief China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 1% in the final quarter of 2025, likely securing a decline of 0.3% for the full year as a whole.

www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chi...

Some good news!

Good luck.... 🤞

An ongoing barrage of "urgent" admin demands from my employer which prevent me from having time or headspace to write.

University of York latest to decline offer from publisher Elsevier, with several more expected to walk away after previous agreements expired #highered #AcademicSky https://ow.ly/zUjv50Y9maa

What makes a "Superuniversity"? Will the combined scale be bigger than an existing giant such as Manchester?

Hands up everybody who has had to halt a lecture to run back to their office / car / wherever they left their phone to be allowed to show something to the class!

UK’s £8bn research fund faces “hard decisions” as it pauses new grants UKRI boss Ian Chapman said it had been told by the government to

This is an incredibly vague article from the BBC about UKRI funding changes, but concerning nevertheless.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

#AcademicSky

Hence a race to produce makes a kind of grim sense.
(IANAExpert)

I think it's rational, although of course not ethical.

If you think that an end to demand is coming, then it's no longer about getting the maximum value from the oil that you have; it becomes about making sure that of the limited amount that will still be burned, as much as possible is yours.

US pauses leases for five offshore wind projects over radar concerns The Trump administration suspended leases for five large-scale under-construction offshore wind projects over national security concerns, the Department of the Interior said on Monday.

US pauses leases for five offshore wind projects over radar concerns

www.reuters.com/business/ene...

Anybody know if these are the same wind farms that a court recently ruled Trump couldn't stop on other grounds?

Enhanced Open-Source Modelling of a Floating Tidal Turbine Reference Model at Heriot-Watt University on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - Enhanced Open-Source Modelling of a Floating Tidal Turbine Reference Model at Heriot-Watt University, listed on FindAPhD.com

Interesting #PhD opportunity that I have minor role in, for people who want to get into the detail of modelling individual #tidal turbines. Funded for home students only (NB if you've lived here a while you may count), deadline 18th Jan.

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

#energySky #renewables

Update: This Nature news piece is based on a study that is only reported in a glossy report by Frontiers that has a clear agenda ("only half of researchers use AI for peer review? We need to help the rest"). I'm not saying it's wrong, but... I've limited trust. www.frontiersin.org/documents/un...

Thanks. I'm not even precarious. It's just that when I got the permenant job, selected partly for my research track record, my research stopped 😢

I see this as a sort of validation that I am not slacking when I avoid working evenings/weekends and fail to get much research done. Unfortunately that choice of not working the majority of evenings/weekends may mean I don't have a longer term career in academia.

Bigger picture: Nobody has time to do peer review, so many reviews are shoddy. Now shoddy reviews can have AI help, but they're still shoddy reviews.
AI's making it worse, but the fundemental problems here are around workloads.

#AcademicSky

"GPT-5 could mimic the structure of a peer-review report and use polished language, but that it failed to produce constructive feedback and made factual errors."

Yep, that matches the recent review I had, on the basis of which my manuscript was rejected.

#AcademicSky

DB Regio awards framework contracts for 3,300 buses. Over 3,000 coming from MAN, BYD to provide BEV intercity buses - Sustainable Bus Deutsche Bahn has concluded its largest-ever bus procurement, securing long-term framework contracts for more than 3,000...

Deutsche Bahn signs contract for 3300 electric buses.

🔌💡

www.sustainable-bus.com/news/deutsch...

A mashup image rendered in a sickly green, "Stranger Things" style, showing a Vecna-like Grinch figure with tentacles and a gnarled staff. He stands in a ruined, stormy Christmas landscape filled with broken presents, decaying wreaths, and a corrupted tree, with green lightning flashing in the sky. The title "STRANGER GRINCH" appears in a glowing green, neon font at the bottom. Generated with Nano Banano Pro.

Students: 'Have a lovely Christmas, see you in January!' Me, staring at the 150 coursework submissions they just uploaded:

#AcademicSky #MarkingSeason #StrangerThings

I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things. I can grade. I can do hard things.

#academicsky

Look, I've been teaching in some way for two decades now.

So I know that there are always going to be students who don't care, don't understand, and some combination thereof.

But each term, dealing with them, makes me less and less inclined to teach.

Death by paper cuts.

I've assumed that there must be some parts of the world where the funding works such that this can happen, as otherwise why all the attempts.... I don't do rejections to unsolicited apps any more though, they go straight in the bin.

😯 wow. I might have expected that in rural Scotland, but in a place with 50k population? Shocked.

What experiences can people share about sharing PhD interview questions with the candidates in advance? Apparently starting to be considered best EDI practice. Pros/cons? I'm concerned about wasting interview time on pre-planned / scripted responses.

Thanks
#academicSky

They should invent a university that prioritizes teaching and research

'A Collective WTF': National Renewable Energy Laboratory Gets a Trumpian Name Change NREL employees, many of whom joined the lab specifically to work toward its clean energy mission, are not happy about the oil-soaked leadership's moves.

NEW: I heard from a bunch of NREL employees after the announcement of a name change yesterday. They're not thrilled.

"Morale is bad. Funding is tenuous.... I've been through two W administrations, many R congresses, and [the first] Trump admin. This is the worst."

Yeah. And from the statement given, it sounds as though the GGA know it. Was very much a "we're forced into this" vibe.