Rishika Pardikar
rishpardikar.bsky.social
Rishika Pardikar
@rishpardikar.bsky.social
Environment and climate reporter covering science, law & policy | Drilled, Article-14, AGU's Eos, African Arguments, The Hindu, The Continent

📍Bengaluru, India
Pinned
🚨 New report on how ExxonMobil and Shell filed *four* separate investor-state claims #ISDS against the Dutch government. These are highly secretive, private tribunals where no residents who suffered through earthquakes for years have ever been called to give testimony.

drilled.media/news/groningen
Exxon and Shell Sue The Netherlands in Secret Tribunals for Closing Europe’s Biggest Gas Field
Following billions in profits and over a thousand gas extraction-related earthquakes, the oil and gas giants filed claims against the Dutch state in four separate investor-state disputes concerning co...
drilled.media
Currently reading. One about Palestinian refugees travelling across the Iraqi desert, hoping to find work in the then-booming oil industry in Kuwait. The other about India's early oil exploration efforts post-independence from British rule, aimed at development and saving forex on oil imports
February 10, 2026 at 10:43 AM
Palestine & climate are true litmus tests of democratic governance. Countries like Australia, UK, Germany & of course the US (remember the attacks on student camps at universities under Biden?) fail miserably. Drilled has a whole series on repression of climate protest drilled.media/investigatio...
February 10, 2026 at 6:37 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
Airborne sensor shows that methane emissions from oil- and gas-producing areas can be five times higher than reported

go.nature.com/4tqWi4e
Super-sniffer aeroplane finds oil fields’ hidden emissions
Airborne sensor shows that methane emissions from oil- and gas-producing areas can be five times higher than reported.
go.nature.com
February 9, 2026 at 2:07 PM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
Inside Africa’s high stakes push for mineral sovereignty; Liberia’s foreign affairs minister tells us why her country is pivoting to economic diplomacy; and how to run a smarter job search in 2026.
Devex Newswire: Africa’s bid to take charge of its critical minerals
Devex Newswire: Africa’s bid to take charge of its critical minerals
www.devex.com
February 5, 2026 at 10:26 PM
💯

An example of machine learning used for down-scaled weather forecasting from an earlier report of mine (eos.org/articles/new...). Now compare the benefits to whatever one might call a benefit of LLMs
February 5, 2026 at 9:06 AM
Former chairperson of Indian Oil Corporation Limited (the country's largest government-owned oil and gas company) writes an op-ed calling for a focus on industrial decarbonisation

www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead...
India’s next industrial shift — electrons over molecules
The age of being powered by molecules, or oil, coal and gas, is now giving way to one where competitiveness is increasingly written in electrons in the form of clean and reliable electricity
www.thehindu.com
February 5, 2026 at 8:40 AM
Good time to learn about and support truly independent media. And the hard work it takes to keep small media organisations running
February 5, 2026 at 8:07 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
PT Vale Indonesia, operator of the country’s longest-running nickel mine, plans to expand as EV battery demand surges.

But in Sulawesi, farmers fear the move could swallow forests and farmlands rich in endemic wildlife.
Worries grow for Sulawesi farmers as nickel mining company plans expansion
LOEHA RAYA, Indonesia — The road to the headquarters of the Loeha Raya Farmers’ Cooperative is inundated from the monsoon, and a baby cayman splashes around in a puddle formed in a natural crater by…
news.mongabay.com
January 31, 2026 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
Today, as Gaza continues to be stuck in a bloody limbo, we are turning our website over to Gaza and its people in an initiative we are calling “A Day for Gaza.” There will be no pieces published on our website today that do not come directly from Gaza.
A Day for Gaza
Today, The Nation is turning over its website exclusively to stories from Gaza and its people. This is why.
www.thenation.com
February 3, 2026 at 3:40 PM
Around 2/3rd of fossil fuels produced in Australia are exported. So, from a climate perspective all the talk about RE generation and a clean grid matters less
February 3, 2026 at 3:14 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
A 60% jump in EU LNG imports from the U.S. in 2025 managed to drive up greenhouse gas emissions on both sides of the Atlantic - in the EU from the burning of the gas, and in the U.S. by prompting a shift to coal-fired generation as prices rose.
January 31, 2026 at 5:31 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
Methane pollution from US oil and gas infrastructure causes more climate change than the entire economies of all but seven nations on earth.

(This is with methane's climate impacts conservatively evaluated over a 100-year time frame. Evaluated over shorter time frames, methane's impacts are worse.)
Accounting for methane from natural gas infrastructure in United States greenhouse gas emission estimates
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that United States net greenhouse gas emissions have declined over the last two decades and are no…
www.sciencedirect.com
February 1, 2026 at 11:50 PM
Coal power plants in India, which take a long time to ramp-up because they were historically designed to provide baseload power, will likely take on a new, variable role in the future. Analysis based on the new draft National Electricity Policy (NEP) shreyajai.substack.com/p/is-this-th...
February 2, 2026 at 4:27 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
I cannot tell you how much doubt was consistently directed at the Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty numbers and how much pressure was put on news organizations to couch those numbers as unreliable.

Biden himself said they were fabricated!

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
IDF accepts Gaza Health Ministry death toll of over 71,000 Palestinians killed in the war
Although Many International Experts Have Accepted the Health Ministry's Data as Reliable, and Even Conservative Relative to the True Death Toll, Israel Had Refused to Accept the Health Ministry's Coun...
www.haaretz.com
January 29, 2026 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
In our latest article we argue that the problems with carbon offsets can't be fixed. The problem is causal complexity which observational methods can't sort out. open access link in the second post. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Why carbon offsets may fail in complex systems: A causal inference perspective
Social-ecological system dynamics present a fundamental challenge to the attribution of changes in carbon stocks to actions taken by carbon offset sel…
www.sciencedirect.com
January 29, 2026 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
Posts on X that are critical of scientific research can act as early warning signs of problematic articles

go.nature.com/4qGhiCq
Critical social media posts linked to retractions of scientific papers
Online discussions can catch errors or fraud in articles that can be missed in peer review.
go.nature.com
January 29, 2026 at 9:22 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
New from us: EU CO2 emissions fell only 0.8% in 2025, the second year in a row that the bloc has fallen short of its targets. Adverse weather played a big role but underlying issues are slow progress on transport and buildings electrification and wind power buildout.
January 29, 2026 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
One of the many benefits of working with a global team @drilledmedia.bsky.social is learning so much from climate reporters in other parts of the world. This story was fascinating!
Japan is not getting nearly enough attention in the global media for locking in fossil fuels in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania. Here, @rishpardikar.bsky.social looks at the latest megaproject Japanese development agencies are pushing in Bangladesh drilled.media/news/japan-b...
Debt and import dependency in Japan’s fossil financing for Bangladesh
With promises of Singapore- and Shanghai-style ports and businesses, Japan’s development agencies are pushing fossil fuel projects in Bangladesh
drilled.media
January 28, 2026 at 4:28 PM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
Japan is not getting nearly enough attention in the global media for locking in fossil fuels in South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania. Here, @rishpardikar.bsky.social looks at the latest megaproject Japanese development agencies are pushing in Bangladesh drilled.media/news/japan-b...
Debt and import dependency in Japan’s fossil financing for Bangladesh
With promises of Singapore- and Shanghai-style ports and businesses, Japan’s development agencies are pushing fossil fuel projects in Bangladesh
drilled.media
January 28, 2026 at 4:23 PM
Sharp analysis. Enjoyed the sass too. Many lessons here for other developing countries. Simply building power capacity does not guarantee energy security (or even supply, in this case). And when politics-business nexus is strong, it encourages rent-seeking behaviour www.tbsnews.net/thoughts/pow...
How Bangladesh engineered a power crisis it can no longer afford
BPDB's annual losses have exploded from Tk5,468 crore in FY15 to Tk50,565 crore in FY25, nearly a tenfold increase in a decade.
www.tbsnews.net
January 29, 2026 at 5:58 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
It's worth a mention to that this is part of a pattern, with Japanese and South Korean public finance critical to massive new fossil fuel developments in Australia, including Santos' Barossa gas development.
Australia’s Clean Energy Transition Partnership a ‘huge win’ on climate
Australia will soon seal an agreement with a group of Western nations to end public subsidies for fossil fuel export projects, drying up a key source of finance for new oil, gas and coal fields.
www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au
January 28, 2026 at 3:09 AM
Reposted by Rishika Pardikar
Important story from @rishpardikar.bsky.social about how Japan continues to finance massive fossil fuel developments with promises of wealth - even when the reality is somewhat more sour.
January 28, 2026 at 3:00 AM
Mega infrastructure projects that include high-capacity gas and coal plants and entail large land acquisitions, all financed via foreign loans. A ground report from Bangladesh about the various perils. For @drilledmedia.bsky.social

drilled.media/news/japan-b...
Debt and import dependency in Japan’s fossil financing for Bangladesh
With promises of Singapore- and Shanghai-style ports and businesses, Japan’s development agencies are pushing fossil fuel projects in Bangladesh
drilled.media
January 28, 2026 at 2:49 AM
Ground report from Bangladesh about mega infrastructure projects financed via foreign loans that rely heavily on fossil fuels. Issues range from non-consultative land acquisitions and pollution to high-cost foreign currency debt and dependency on fossil fuel imports

drilled.media/news/japan-b...
Debt and import dependency in Japan’s fossil financing for Bangladesh
With promises of Singapore- and Shanghai-style ports and businesses, Japan’s development agencies are pushing fossil fuel projects in Bangladesh
drilled.media
January 27, 2026 at 2:29 PM