Congratulations Colm!

Whoops, thanks!

It integrates agriculture, forestry and other land uses into our established TIMES-Ireland energy system model (TIM) and links outputs to a simple climate model FaIR to get direct temperature impacts from long-term scenarios that has near complete GHG and sectoral coverage.

We have a new pre-print for open peer-review on EGU. "Towards a national integrated model for land, energy, agriculture and forest systems (TIM-LEAF v1.0)" describes a new integrated modelling framework led by Neha Jaggeshar as part of our EPA-funded SELFS project.

😖 (this was my actual expression when I read the headline "biomass-powered AI growth")

They're being built with offgrid gas here too - in fact they not have to bring their own power. But it is accepted, though not proved, that renewables purchase agreements offset emissions from gas use.

Logic then emerges that growing data centres is positive for climate action because they can fund renewables via purchase agreements, even if data centres are mainly powered by fossil fuels, and these agreements are redirecting renewables away from decarbonisation.

I think the argument is more subtle. What I see among many policymakers is fully equating climate action with growing renewables, rather than the latter being a means to cutting fossil fuels in line with a carbon budget....

🚨 Half of all new cars registered in Ireland in September were fully electric (49.3%)! Car sales here are concentrated in January and July, so a single month is misleading, but I pulled out the BEV sales share for July-September sales for the past years: 2024 - 14% 2025 - 22% 2025 - 35% 📈↗️👆‼️

I can't see why grains like this are not in demand at least for those €6 loaves at bougie bakeries. It's not quite strong enough to use on its own for a traditional sourdough-type bread, so some of that Canadian high-gluten flour is still necessary.

"Today's AIs already have the necessary hacking skills & powers of persuasion to be turned against human interests in seriously harmful ways." "This suggests pacing advances: not training or deploying AIs without a strong safety case that convinces independent experts...AIs that are safe by design."

The best explanation I've read on AI misalignment, and how it could be a structural issue that can't be patched.

It's almost hit the really big league - your book is now close to the top of our UCC Climate & Sustainability book club list. It was just pipped by George Monbiot this month.

Are heat pumps gaining any traction as a heating source in CA? I know your electricity prices are high.

I am cancelling a class for my BSc Sustainability students next week to take part in a strike action. What readings should I assign them on the theme of collective action?

Also, "China is on track to double its data centre capacity by 2030 and 70 per cent of the energy for its data centres comes from coal." - again, why does this imply that it's a good idea for Ireland to double data centre demand and grow them largely with gas?