The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 94 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Kann: Software engineering is the only job category truly displaced by AI to date
“And in fact, the only jobs that have been lost really because of AI to date are like software engineers.”
Song: Make Sunsets received FAA clearance and a NOTAM for balloon launch
“So we got, got clearance by the FAA. Like, we just got issued a NOTAM.”
Kugelmass: Global SMR sector is entirely PR, with zero physical construction
“Well, there's virtually nothing actually being built globally anywhere for anything other than the traditional reactors. There's a lot of press announcements. Our company is building stuff, but we can get to that later. And then everything else is very theoret…”
Kugelmass: Any NRC administrative assistant can trigger a two-year project shutdown
“Like, any single person, you could be an administrative assistant at the NRC, at any point can raise a safety flag on any project and shut that project down for two years. This could be someone with no technical training whatsoever. If they come across a piece…”
Yedvab: Background stratospheric levels make small-scale sulfate testing impossible
“One of the problems with sulfates, apart from what we've been discussing, is the fact that you cannot do testing at small scale of sulfates. And the reason for this, since this is something sometimes people overlook, is the very high background that you have c…”
Cohen: No regular driverless highway trucking service operates today
“There's not a regular driverless service for trucking on highway that exists today. And that's 10 years after we've really put serious effort into the space.”
Black: Fission, fusion, and fracking were all invented in New Mexico
“Fission, fusion, and fracking were all invented in New Mexico.”
Bullard: China's apparent oil demand likely peaked in 2023
“In terms of apparent demand, which is what the statistic is called, and it's basically looking at refinery runs in, in China, it's, looks like it's peaked at some point in 23 and the new data that was published as of yesterday morning shows that actually, stat…”
Fernandez: $70B infrastructure funds hold 15-year zero-loss records across all projects
“There is 70, 60, seventy billion dollar infrastructure funds that have a 15 year track record that have never lost money on any project they've invested in.”
Scheyder: Direct lithium extraction has never worked at commercial scale
“Which has never actually worked on a commercial scale but there's a lot of money being poured into it by researchers across the globe.”
Cabiyo: High-quality wood pellets require whole logs, not just waste residues
“You can't make good pellets out of treetops and branches and sawmill residues. You need whole logs to do that well.”
Inflation Reduction Act erases green premiums across most heavy industrial sectors
“In all of our different sectors now, cement, steel maybe not aviation fuels entirely, in almost all of our sectors, it is now as inexpensive to build the clean alternative as it is the dirty one, thanks to the IRA.”
Chase: No perovskite lab product can last ten years in the field
“You still don't have a perovskite lab product that would really last 10 years in the field. And bear in mind that silicon solar modules are under warranty for 25 years, and a lot of developers are talking about forty-year lifetimes being assumed these days.”
Reed: External Transmission Can Support Under 1% of ERCOT Load
“And then ERCOT is incredibly isolated. So there's one or two ERCOT has some minimal Back to back and some minimal AC at sort of very low voltage, but incredibly isolated. I think less than one percent of their load or something is available via transmission. C…”
Shah: Developers finding US sites with sub-$35/MWh power 90% of the year
“They are finding many, many, many locations across this country where you can average less than 35 dollars a megawatt hour for 90% plus of the hours of the year on the LMP.”
Lubershain: Home Gas Appliances With Upstream Leaks Are Worse Than Coal
“If you are to burn natural gas in in an appliance in a home, for example, like a home boiler or in, in, in an oven And you take that two and a half percent leak rate upstream as a given, then it's actually even a little bit worse in the next 20 years from a gl…”
Hawkins: Electrician costs have tripled over the last decade
“Without a doubt. Yeah, the electrician the cost for electricians You know, I'm going to give you a, you know, estimate has tripled in the time I've been in the business. Yeah. In the last decade.”
McGinnis: Current NEC Guidance Permits Behind-the-Meter Plug-In Batteries
“At the sort of electrical code level, these are, this is already allowed under the current guidance, and there are many products that support that. So from that lens, you could say in most places you can go out and buy these things and plug them in in whatever…”
Matthew: Constellation CEO says current power prices cannot support new gas plants
“If you look at the, like the last two earnings calls, right, you have the folks like the CEO of constellation talking about the fact that, you know, energy prices actually aren't supportive of building new gas plants, which may or may not be true.”
Black: New Mexico leads the US in R&D spend density and PhDs per capita
“While we have the highest density of R&D spend in the U.S. Here in New Mexico, We also have the most PhDs per capita in the United States, live here in New Mexico.”
Sivaram: Data center power demand has more than doubled annually
“The power demand from data centers has more than doubled. Every year, the last several years, and that trend shows no sign of abating.”
Gariman: No heavy rare earth deposits in Brazil or elsewhere are mined today
“Some of the deposits in, let's say, Brazil and other countries do carry a good amount of heavy rare earth elements, but none of those deposits are being mined today.”
Fernandez: Post-COVID, large EPC contractors no longer offer lump-sum turnkey contracts
“The reality is the EPC CapEx world changed dramatically after, after COVID, right? Things that used to be very secured, large scale EPC companies that used to be able to give you a, you know, lump sum turnkey contract are just not doing that anymore in, in con…”
Dell: Steelmaking emits more greenhouse gases than anything except electricity
“Making steel emits more greenhouse gases than anything else except making electricity.”
Dell: Electrifying a single standard steel mill requires four gigawatts of power
“If you were to fully electrify this process, that might be something like four gigawatts of electricity. Average load. Not peak load. Average load. So we're talking about, like, four nuclear power stations to run one normie steel mill.”
Baglino: High-voltage underground cables are comparable in size to fiber bundles
“Those fiber bundles are not that much smaller or different in size than what you would bury for a high voltage transmission line”
Reinhart: Non-CO2 greenhouse gases drive 55% of current global warming
“What is often not understood is that warming today, only 45% of warming today is from carbon dioxide. The other 55% of warming today is from a host of other greenhouse gases.”
Ellis: Sublime's process yields pure CO2 for under $10 a ton
“This means that we can use calcium carbonate, in which case, when the calcium is extracted, we're left with pure, cold, compressed CO₂, so inherently captured CO₂ that's ready to go into a pipeline or to be used in food grade applications, a very low cost of c…”
Visioni: There are zero active solar geoengineering field experiments globally
“So there are absolutely no small scale or large scale experiments going on anywhere on the planet.”
Rivest: Air conditioning is the leading cause of electrical grid blackouts
“I don't know if ice solves the electricity consumption and CO two emissions part of the problem, but it certainly solves a really important problem about air conditioning, which is that air conditioners are the number one cause of blackouts on the electrical g…”
Rivest: Indoor CO2 levels above 700 PPM impair strategic decision-making
“People were looking at how CO₂ levels were impacting the cognitive function of building occupants, and seeing that strategic decision making and deep thinking were really impeded by Higher levels of CO two. And by higher, I mean like, 700 or 800 PPM. Not reall…”
Rutherford: Airbus plans build/no-build decision on hydrogen planes in 2025
“They are planning to make a build, no build decision in 2025. So they're going to review the technologies between now and twenty-twenty-five, decide whether or not to build these planes, and then it becomes sort of a rush to mature and deploy all the technolog…”
China has auto overcapacity in every powertrain, not just electric vehicles
“EVs, PHEVs, hybrids, gasoline, they have overcapacity in every powertrain, and we're seeing exports to last year, half of them were EVs, half of them were gasoline-powered vehicles.”
Moskowitz: Nearly all solar panels purchased in the US are domestically assembled
“And, you know, we're at a point now where, you know, if you're a buyer of solar panels in the United States, pretty much every panel you're going to get is at least domestically assembled.”
Kann: Australia installed 40,000 residential battery systems monthly in late 2025
“Over the course of the past, what is it, five months, or July through November, 25, Australia was installing 40,000 residential storage systems per month.”
Under 20% of leading solar suppliers from a decade ago survived
“We've been insuring PV module manufacturers for nearly 15 years, and if you look back a decade, fewer than 20% of the leading solar suppliers from that time are still around today.”
Lacey: Nearly all 2007 GOP presidential candidates favored climate action
“During the 2007 presidential campaign, nearly all the GOP candidates were aligned toward action.”
Bullard: China accounted for nearly 40% of global automotive production in 2023
“China in 2023 was just a little bit under 40% of the globe's automaking production, not capacity, but actual production.”
Grunwald: Only 5% to 7% of Irrigable Farmland Remains Unirrigated
“Only five to, maybe five to seven percent of the world's agriculture that could be irrigated still needs to be irrigated which is a sort of wonky way of saying that it's going to be a lot harder to increase yields, you know, now that most farmland is irrigated…”
McGavis: Data centers are currently the largest consumer of cooling
“Today, the biggest consumer of cooling is data centers. So as we talk about AI and all the AI applications, all that doesn't exist without a significant amount of cooling to keep those servers warm and keep those data centers operating.”
Kann: Startups are proposing spray-on catalytic coatings for wind turbines
“I've seen a couple of startups proposing this exact thing. Surface treatment with some kind of spray-on catalyst that you put either on wind turbine blades or something else that, in principle, would oxidize methane in the atmosphere.”
Leah Ellis: Labor represents 80% of concrete's total installed cost
“The total installed cost of concrete is, is 80% labor, and so even if there's a premium on the cement part, once you roll that into concrete, and then concrete's a very small part of the building, and then, you know, but it is a big part of the carbon footprin…”
Charlotte Johnson: Great Britain is the world's second-largest battery market outside California
“GB outside of CAISO or outside of California is the kind of second largest, most mature battery market.”
Berdichevsky: Solar has 10x higher value per kilo than batteries
“There's like a 10 X difference in the value per kilo of the good between batteries and solar. So it's still a lot more efficient and effective and faster to ship solar around the world than it is with batteries.”
Belady: Microsoft's 2016 Cheyenne grid-interactive power model was never duplicated
“That was in 2016 that was done. It's almost a decade later, and I don't think it's ever been duplicated.”
Friedmann: Hundreds of companies convert CO2 into building materials
“Now there's hundreds of companies that turn CO₂ into those kinds of products.”
Friedmann: German pipeline opposition forces CO2 transport onto Rhine river barges
“We're seeing that happening right now in Europe, where basically, instead of doing pipelines, they're doing barges. They're putting CO₂ on boats and shipping it down the Rhine, and the reason why is because they can't get a pipeline through Germany. Like, Germ…”
Steingart: Pyrometallurgy represents majority of battery recycling in China
“In my experience, or at least in my conversations with Chinese recyclers in, in China, where there are fewer local restrictions on having pyro in certain provinces. Pyro is, as I understand it now the majority of recycling methods.”