why aren't all 2,696 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public
record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 148 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
Assertion Supported
Hertz-Shargel: Bitcoin mining raises Texas power bills by $1.8B annually
“So collectively, it's 1.8 billion conservatively per year. And that's sort of a run rate, I would say. And that represents around a five percent increase in costs of Texans, of, you know non-Bitcoin mining consumers. And that, that's across all the different s…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jenkins: Europe can viably eliminate 100% of Russian gas by winter 2022
“Europe's current plan is to cut natural gas use by about two thirds before this winter.
Can they actually go a hundred percent?
Can they cut if they needed to, or if they needed to make a credible threat on the global stage to Putin that we will cut our gas us…”
Assertion Contradicted
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.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tillis predicts utility rates will spike due to Biden retiring generation assets
“And now that the demand's going up, if we can't get these projects back online, I do want people to understand why some of these rates have spiked, and they will have spiked because this administration decided to take those generation assets offline.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2027
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Anthropic aims to add over 8 GW of power by 2027
“Anthropic, you know, one and a half gigs of capacity end of 20, 25. By 27, they won over 10 gigs, right? So they're going to build basically more than eight gigawatts in two years. That's the size of Google today.”
Assertion Supported
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Google deployed $50B in balance sheet backstops for Anthropic
“If you look at how much capital they have sort of indirectly deployed, it's already fifty billion dollars of sort of applications that they have on their balance sheets that are solely in sort of the goal of supporting Anthropix data center build out.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jun 2031
Chinese automakers will likely acquire vulnerable legacy brands like Nissan and Stellantis
“One is Nissan, and the other is Stellantis, the group that owns, you know, Fiat, and Maserati, and Jeep, and Chrysler brands. Those two are the most vulnerable, so what will happen is either they'll joint venture with the Chinese And eventually be taken over b…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sridhar: AI revolution cannot be powered without natural gas
“And without natural gas, we are not going to be able to power the AI revolution. That's a fact.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Behind-the-meter nuclear data centers have no credible case for decades
“I don't think there's a credible argument for behind the meter nuclear at a data center in the near future. And by near future, I mean, The next couple of decades.”
Assertion Supported
Friedmann: Gas with carbon capture beats nuclear cold in many markets
“In many markets, that's competitive with wind, solar, and batteries. In many markets, that just beats nuclear cold.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Huang: Nissan and Mitsubishi might not exist in 10 years
“Like, who knows? In 10 years, there might not be a Nissan out there. There might not be a Mitsubishi.”
TP Huang Jun 20, 2024 ▶ 36:03 Demystifying the Chinese EV market
Assertion Supported
Baglino: Nuclear capital cost per kilowatt exceeds highly curtailed renewables
“When you look at the capital cost per kilowatt of nuclear with everything that is known today, it's much more expensive than even highly curtailed renewables.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Faruqi: Utilities that fail to update rate structures will go bankrupt
“And if they don't change those utilities that don't change them, they'll go bankrupt.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shah: Existing grid capacity can handle load growth through 2034–2035
“The amount of load growth that we can handle, within the actual system that we've already paid for is gargantuan. It can easily take us through probably 2034, 20 35, right? Which, by which time we think nuclear will be more cost effective, enhanced geothermal …”
Assertion Supported
Cabiyo: Enviva turns whole, lumber-grade saw logs into wood pellets for export
“I have a colleague that has toured their facilities in the past and saw that they were pulling whole saw logs, which is, like, stuff you would turn into lumber, like, two-by-fours, pulling saw logs and turning it into pellets to be burned in the UK or elsewher…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fury: Forestry projects frequently claim credits for pre-funded government plantings
“Maybe your, maybe the field report was in China, and the Chinese government paid us fully to do that project as part of its, like, regional reforestation initiatives five years before the project even started, right? So, and this is, like, not a theoretical ex…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carbon auditor approved dead mangrove project because specific sample plots survived
“And we've seen that, for example, in a mangrove project where we were asking the auditor who's doing the verification, the MRV, hey, you know, what was going on in the project? We knew that most of the mangroves were dead, right? So, and they were like saying,…”
Assertion Supported
WattTime finds 85% of Bitcoin mining load is powered by fossil fuels
“And so Watt Time, that is the general methodology that they use. They found that 85% of incremental load from Bitcoin mining comes from coal and natural gas plants.”
Assertion Contradicted
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.”
Assertion Contradicted
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…”
Assertion Supported
Kugelmass: NuScale's NRC certificate is for a deprecated design they discarded
“The things that they got the certificate for are deprecated designs. So no, they don't have like, yeah, like everything that you're seeing is for something they submitted years and years and years ago, and they've totally thrown in the trash at this point also…”
Assertion Contradicted
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…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2030
Jenkins: IRA Will Cut U.S. Emissions by One Gigaton in 2030
“So our top line finding from the repeat project analysis of the bill is that it will cut annual U.S. Greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 by an additional one, roughly one billion metric tons below the current policy baseline. So an additional billion tons of emis…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kann: Electric vehicles will never discharge to the grid at scale
“I do not think we'll ever see vehicles discharging into the grid at scale.”
Assertion Supported
Kann: Sulfur injection could cool Earth 0.5°C for $2 billion
“Specifically, you might be able to get about a half a degree Celsius of global cooling out of stratospheric sulfur injection for a couple of billion dollars, which is nothing, basically, comparatively.”
Prediction Held up
Lipman: Most lab-grown meat startups will fail to reach commercial scale
“I'm anticipating that the vast majority will not be able to reach commercial scale and not be able to reach the market, so we'll either see a bunch of consolidation or a bunch of dead companies in the wake of whatever reckoning may be coming.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lubershain: Most utility service territories have no spare grid capacity left
“In most utility service territories, it's not the case that there's a lot of headroom left on the grid. There's no more headroom left in the grid. There's no more spare capacity in most places, which means that oftentimes you will have to build new power gener…”
Assertion Supported
Lubershain: EPRI found data centers already slightly lower average customer bills
“And when you do control for other variables that might bias the analysis Epri found that basically, on average, data centers are lowering customer bills a little bit already. So we are seeing, it's not a major impact, it's something like six percent, but data …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lubershain: Electricity rates will rise for most people in coming years
“Data centers are absolutely going to be pushing up rates, and other factors, right, in the supply chain. Rates are going up for most people in most places, I think, in the years to come.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Janous: US data center constraints will persist through 2030 and beyond
“All the stuff we thought we were going to build in this country, or thought we could build, a lot of that's not going to get built, because of all the things we've just been talking about. Like, I think that, and this problem is going to persist for the forese…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Janous: Vast majority of computation will remain in 100MW+ data centers
“I still believe that the vast majority of the computation is going to be done in large data centers. Large being defined as hundred megawatts or more in my world.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Aug 2029
Wang: Voya achieves direct fully delivered cost parity with diesel
“With U.S. Scrap, you're already at diesel parity when it comes to fuel costs. Which is a critical thing for us. We're not commanding a green premium or any other sort of premium. Direct cost parity with diesel for fully delivered cost, including all the proces…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wong: ThinkLabs cuts nine-month grid interconnection studies to under 10 minutes
“So studies that would take previously nine months, right, as I mentioned, interconnection studies, now it takes us only a matter of a couple of minutes, like 10 minutes or less.”
Assertion Supported
Tillis cast the lone Senate vote proposing a state AI regulation moratorium
“I was one against 99 in a vote on the Senate floor last year to place a moratorium on state-level AI regulations until we figured out a national framework.”
Assertion Supported
Tillis claims the federal government holds equity in ten public corporations
“We're at this place now where we've got equity stocks and 10 or so publicly traded corporations, a golden share that lets us veto board procedures for U.S. Steel.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2031
Hade: C&I battery storage will be fastest-growing storage sector by rate
“I think, you know, for reasons we'll talk about, there are some compelling reasons to believe that CNI over the next three to five years is going to be the fastest growing sector of the market.
[1717] Shayle Kann: Ooh, that's an ambitious, well, I guess from a…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2029
Hade: AI tooling will slash C&I battery transaction costs 90% in three years
“So my best guess is, you know, over the next three years, the transaction cost bucket will go from an average of about 200 dollars a kilowatt hour to maybe 20 dollars a kilowatt hour. I think there's going to be a 90% reduction in the cost in sort of transacti…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Quantum advantage over classical systems is three to four years away
“As quantum computing capability follows the trajectory that most people believe it's on, we're about three to four years away from the rolling out of systems that will be able to have performance gains that will lead any scientist or engineer or researcher to …”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Quantum algorithms are a bigger ten-year hurdle than hardware
“The algorithmic issue right now is probably the greater hill to climb in terms of general applicability of quantum systems in the next decade.”
Assertion Supported
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Meta modern AI data centers omit backup generator sets
“Another interesting thing they've done, for example, is more at the data center level than at the energy level, but no backup. You look at any one of the modern meta data, so they don't have any gensets, or they have, you know, like, 10 megawatts for a hundred…”
Prediction Held up
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Nvidia balance sheet support will unlock neocloud growth in 2H 2026
“I expect, you know, second half of 20 seconds, you'll see NeoCloud sort of growth be unlocked much more through the actions of NVIDIA as they provide their volunteer support.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Massive AI data center campuses will concentrate in West Texas
“I think the way big data centers, big data center campuses are going to look like a few years from now, again, like, obviously the scenario is we keep adding tens of gigawatts per year that keeps growing, so, you know, we're in this AI scenario. I'm, you know,…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Reliable developers are planning 5 GW data centers in West Texas
“I know of very reliable developers now that are planning five gigawatt data centers in West Texas. So I think it's really changing. We're at an inflection point, and I think you're going to see some pretty gigantic announcements.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Eliahu-Ontiveros: Gas turbine orders will peak this year
“We think gas turbine orders are going to pick this year.”
Assertion Contradicted
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…”
Assertion Open · timeframe Jul 2029
Yedvab: Stardust lab tests show its particle is highly chemically inert
“Lab tests that we've done show that our particle is, I'd say, at a very high level of inertness, but definitely better than any other alternative that it was provided so far.”
Assertion Open · timeframe Jul 2029
Yedvab: Stardust developed tagging technology to track particle batches globally
“We have developed a unique tagging technology which enables us to track in real time each batch of particles as they move across the globe.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Yedvab: 0.5 degrees of cooling costs $10 billion using Stardust particles
“So in, in terms of giving orders of magnitude or estimates, and we have a very detailed breakdown for every million tons of particles that will be Dispersed, the cost will be roughly ten billion dollars, and you'll get half a degree of cooling.”