Author, research, innovation, angel investor, strategic management. Start-up in datacomms, solar. Medicine. 310 ppm @hughbutler35.bsky.social
Qld, Australia
Joined July 2010
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Forbes says climate change isn't an existential crisis. Its assumptions are demonstrably false. The doomer says retreat; the optimist says innovate.
Stop burning rocks. Wires not pipes.
🔗 optimisticstorm.com/stop-bur…
#OptimisticStorm #ClimateAction #EnergyTransition
ALT Chart of global temperature over the last 20,000 years, showing a stable climate for modern humans and a steep rise since the Industrial Revolution towards 2.7°C by 2100
📚 Using AI to make final editing and Kindle publishing easier. Claude checked all three Optimistic Storm covers, titles and descriptions, caught the wrong series order and a duplicate barcode, and I made every call. It took me about 2 days work for each when I first published them. And a bit less for the second editions.
If you write and publish and don't have a good proofreader on tap, check out how it worked for me, and took less than a day for all: optimisticstorm.com/using-ai… #OptimisticStorm
ALT Box set of the three Optimistic Storm books by Dr Hugh Butler
Some climate deniers/delayers post a theme that despite billions, renewable energy hasn't made a dent. Whereas this shows the 2 step process.
1. Solar picks up all new demand.
2. Solar then eats existing electricity generated from coal & gas.
Expect 2026 to show that.
NEW | Solar power surge in 2025 stalls rise in fossil electricity worldwide ⚡📈
Clean power growth outpaced global electricity demand last year – with solar alone supplying THREE-QUARTERS of the increase in demand ☀️
ember-energy.org/latest-insi…
🔬 NEW on The Debunk
Hydrogen gets talked about as if it's the missing piece of the clean energy puzzle.
It's not. And the numbers show why.
This week I'm unpacking the hydrogen hype — where it came from, who's funding it, and what the thermodynamics actually say about green hydrogen as a mass-market energy carrier.
Some things are hard to decarbonise. Electricity grids aren't one of them.
🔗 Read it on Substack → optimisticstorm.substack.com
#Hydrogen #CleanEnergy #EnergyTransition #ClimatePolicy #OptimisticStorm
⚡ NEW on Electrons Not Molecules
Solar panels now produce electricity more cheaply than any fossil fuel ever built.
Not slightly cheaper. Dramatically cheaper — and the cost is still falling.
This week I'm looking at what Wright's Law means for energy, why the crossover point matters, and what the solar cost curve tells us about where every other clean technology is heading.
🔗 Read it on Substack → optimisticstorm.substack.com
#SolarEnergy #EnergyTransition #ClimateAction #OptimisticStorm #RenewableEnergy
The 2026 state of the climate report — challenges and opportunities — makes for sobering reading but we can also be optimistic. 50 years: 1980 to the present.
doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biag1…
Fig 1. Emissions up. Surface temp up. Sea pH down. Sea level up. Earth's Energy Imbalance up. Rainforest area down, Ice mass down.
Fig 2. Humans up. Animals Up. Energy consumption up. Armed conflicts up. EVs up. World GDP up.
The world is changing from burning 500 years of stored energy to capturing 1.5 hours, and fossil fuel companies see their grip on the world fading, and they are not happy.
Modern energy frees those 160 countries from the tyranny of 23 fossil fuel exporters. The faster the transition, the better the curves we can expect from Oxford in 2030, 2035.
What does one do with my late mother-in-law's 6 books and family genealogy? The first was written in 1966, and the last in 1990. What to do with the photocopy booklets? Time to biff? Or was there another option?
AI and digital printing to the rescue. Now the series is live at amazon.com.au/dp/B0HHGPXHNJ
Two years ago, I scanned 2 of the booklets and sent them to the Philippines to be retyped. ($60ea). OCR was just not good enough. Then time got in the way.
Six weeks ago, I wrote detailed instructions for Claude. Told it the directory of scans. How I wanted it to read and reproduce the scrawled pencil marks. What to do with photos? Layout, revisions, follow-up data. Claude was infinitely better than that typist. It read those stories. Compared with 2 years ago, it was powerful, not puny.
It took a few hours for each of those 7 books. Claude took a few hours. But most of the time was family members who checked pages, hunted for updated photos, or corrected some of those initial mistakes or misinterpreted photo captions.
I used Kindle Desktop to print the booklets, which cost about $8 per 200-page booklet proof, and I've put them out there now at cost (about $15). Cheaper than a photocopy.
If you come from Rotorua, New Zealand and interested in history; get a copy. If your family is Ford, Fulljames, Lewin or Allen - there might be something there for you or references to the family history.
If you have family history and stories buried in the back room, contact me, and I can send the AI skill files as an MD and process for you to put that dusty archive where others can read and reminisce.
How come News Corp and Santos have paid ZERO tax for the past decade?
Greg Jericho on Substack pulls data from an ATO report.
News Corp $24bn income, $1.3bn in taxable income, $0 tax. (Nada, Zip, Zero)
Santos $51 bn income, $220 million taxable income. $0 tax.
Try to think of 2 companies that are more focused on climate denial than these 2 miscreants.
Five primary interconnected forces are behind the assault on science and reason, the “five Ps”:
* Plutocrats
* Petrostates
* Pros - paid promoters of anti-science
* Propagandists
* Press. Media – with important exceptions .
Guess News Corp is press, and Santos a petrostate.
Together they have generated a perfect storm of anti-scientific disinformation that now threatens humanity.
Both decry government spending. Maybe there is one solution. They pay a fair tax. Commensurate with revenue.
substack.com/home/post/p-218…
Look at nuclear through three lenses. Technology: 411 reactors, stagnant for 25 years. Economics: renewables added 462x more capacity in 2025. Politics: still promising new reactors. The irony is hard to miss. optimisticstorm.com/nuclear-… #nuclear #auspol
ALT Concrete cooling towers of a nuclear power plant emitting steam under a cloudy sky
Still false narrative by Aidan. He needs to look at IEA latest report that concludes 35% electrification by 2035.
1. Technology works.
2. Cheapest
3. Gives sovereignty and political stability.
Is he a shrill for fossil fuel industry that's seeing the end of their life?
Somewhere deep in the bowels of Treasury there are some grey-beards with their heads in their hands. They joined an institution that was regarded as world-class for its analysis.
Now it's producing nonsense propaganda.
Renewable energy is...
putting downward pressure on bills?
supporting energy entensive industries?
making us a renewable energy superpower? 1/
Frame in 3 ways.
1. Technology works
2. Economics sound
3. Its only politics.
The IEA was commissioned by Turkey & Australia for COP31 to adopt 35% renewable energy globally by 2035.
Thats all energy needed globally. Not just electricity
The Argument For Clean Energy Has Flipped
"Last week, the @IEA published a report called Electrification. Its central thesis can be traced back to 2009, when a Stanford engineer named Mark Jacobson wrote an article for Scientific American presciently arguing that we could power 100% of the planet with renewables. At the time, this was a somewhat niche position."
...
"The IEA’s new report borrows many of the same concepts, and lists the benefits of electrification in the same order: energy security first, competitiveness second, and emissions third (think how different this is to the moral argument for taking climate action)."
onlygoodnewsdaily.com/post/t…
Foxconn - maker of iPhones and electronics. Moved from phones to EVs. Tony Seba, 15 years ago, said EVs are computers on wheels!
Two announcements - both with Foxconn as the primary builder. A new Mitsubishi. First in 15 years. And a new Saudi Ceer
drive.com.au/news/mitsubishi…
Saudi startup Ceer unveiled its first two fully electric vehicle models and said it will launch five more models by 2030 as part of Saudi Arabia's goal to create a viable auto industry to curb the country's dependence on oil.
carexpert.com.au/car-news/ce…
The vexxed case of Aukus submarines. $380 billion of outdated, outgunned, out-relationshipped old-fashioned defense. No lessons learned from Iran or Ukraine.
Malcolm Edgar writes a rational, well-researched paper at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He says real-time monitoring and real-time production ensure Australian sovereignty. It works now and could be fully in place by 2030. Would cost 10% of the submarines.
aspistrategist.org.au/how-au…
Transport and household energy costs can fall 70-80% when electrotech and infotech are deployed together. Electricity and electrons collapse costs. Electrify a household then optimise its usage by AI, and running costs fall by up to 80%. Electrify motion and automate driving, and freight and taxi costs fall by up to 70%. Combine electrification with advanced automation, and manufacturing costs fall by 40-70%. We are in the Age of Power from Ember.
H hot El Nino? Images by Zeke Hausefather @hausfath and Jeff Berardelli @weatherprof show the likely range is up 4°C, biggest variation since 1880. Just starting.
August 2026. More EVs sold than petrol cars in Australia
bit.ly/4gNCST7
Hugh Butler retweeted
China's EV fleet displaced an estimated 1 million barrels of oil per day in 2024 🔒
Over a single year, that avoided demand is roughly DOUBLE the government-held strategic oil reserves of OECD Europe (179 million barrels at the end of 2025).
ember-energy.org/latest-insi…
Hugh Butler retweeted
Thread: Each week I run a simulation of Australia’s main electricity grid using rescaled generation data to show that it can get very close to 100% renewable electricity with 24GW/120GWh of storage (5 hrs at av demand)
Results:
Last week: 100.0% RE
Last 263 weeks: 98.5% RE (1/5)
