Field Note · Climate · Media Economics Apocalypse When? Apocalypse When? is a field note on climate panic, media economics, and the people who quietly get the real work done. This Apocalypse When? field note explores how climate panic, media incentives and political branding have distorted climate discourse, while engineers, founders and operators keep doing the unglamorous work that actually cuts emissions and secures our future.

Field Note · Hydrogen · Industrial Strategy Funding the Past While the Future Goes Unbuilt BP’s retreat from H2Teesside shows how UK industrial strategy keeps underwriting yesterday’s energy models while the technologies that could define the 2030s are left unfunded. The Teesside X-Ray The collapse of BP’s H2Teesside project gives us an uncomfortably clear X-ray of how Britain allocates its…

BP Teesside Hydrogen: Why the Project Really Died — and Why AI Replaced It Executive Summary The public announcement framed BP’s withdrawal from its BP Teesside hydrogen project, H2Teesside, as a response to a planned “AI mega-campus” on the same site. But the full story is different: the project was already commercially dead. The proposed AI data centre simply offered a more attractive economic outcome for the site owners and government stakeholders.

Every December the newspapers fill up with lists: the best films of the year, the top ten gadgets you didn’t need, the ten ways everything changed forever and somehow stayed the same. By January, we’ve usually forgotten most of them. But one list from last year stuck with me — and not because it was especially well written. It made a simple point that often gets lost in the endless hype about “technology revolutions”: …

As the Northern Powerhouse continues to evolve, I’m often reminded that many of the most important breakthroughs in engineering and industry came from people who didn’t wait for permission, strategy documents or government initiatives — they just built things. One of the greatest examples is Henry Bessemer, the inventor whose process for manufacturing steel transformed global industry. Yet his story isn’t just about metallurgy — it’s about what happens when curiosity, experimentation and stubborn persistence collide.

Why Early-Stage Government Funding Matters: From Mobile Phones to Hydrogen | Field Notes Why Early-Stage Government Funding Matters: From Mobile Phones to Hydrogen Why the narrative of 'wasted taxpayer money' on hydrogen—and other breakthrough technologies—doesn't hold up to history. Recent commentary has criticised hydrogen project funding as wasteful government spending. The argument follows a familiar pattern: taxpayer money being squandered on unproven technology that may never deliver commercial returns.

UK Science Commercialisation: Why the UK Still Bleeds Its Best Science Overseas — And How To Fix It | Tim Harper UK Science Commercialisation: Why the UK Still Bleeds Its Best Science Overseas — And How We Fix It UK science commercialisation has always had a touch of tragicomedy about it. We do the hard part brilliantly — the blue-sky thinking, the elegant experiment, the breakthrough paper.