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@DPerwani Like a war zone.

Hello people how does it feel to live in #karachi ? #pakistan

@politicalmath Textile education is diminishing globally, including in Pakistan (a large and growing producer of textiles). Students are aspiring for other, non-traditional, career paths.

This reminds me that, when I was at Georgia Tech, the textile engineering school was so desperate for students, it offered a free ride to an astonishingly lucrative career

@faraz_r_khan Next hobby could be to get into the wormhole of cabinetry and joinery.

@abido The interior / cabinets / furniture will still be the same in a concrete home so I’m guessing the problems would remain? 😭

I’m convinced that something in my house is causing me to get sick. Is there someone I can hire who specializes in finding this out? It’s not black mold or common vocs. Every time I leave for a few days my nose and throat get instantly fixed - only to be scratchy and blocked when I return home. The pattern is too hard to ignore. House is a new construction made in 2019.

@faraz_r_khan Could be anything in a new construction. Glues, insulation, cabinets (from fiber board)…. Time to move to a new, but old, place? Made from old fashioned concrete?

@abido I think so too. How I can test what’s off gassing and remove that?

@antea04 @OurWorldInData An opportunity for a citizen science group? @CitSciAsia @realCSF @TakagiFund

I'm a data scientist @OurWorldinData and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Professor Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

@YouJiacheng @deliprao What about the learning outcomes, which students score better on international tests like math olympiads?

@deliprao nah, it's genuinely better than the vague as fuck Chinese textbooks. "changing reaction condition can change chemical equilibrium to some extent" and that's all.

Holyshit, India's high school textbooks are crazily good. It makes China's high school textbooks look like trash. It is clearer and contains deeper and broader knowledge. ebooks.ebalbharati.in/pdfs/120303041…

This is not an April Fool’s announcement! 🤡 Hawanama has been dream, ten years in the making. Thanks to the PAQI team, especially Mahad Naveed and Rehan Ahmad it’s finally becoming real. 🚀 Hawanama, a state-of-the art data platform, not just for air pollution, but also for climate intelligence. With an AI chatbot to query the data, understand the sources, and evaluate the mitigation options. Let us know what you think!

Solving Pakistan’s air pollution requires three things: 1️⃣ Identifying the sources. 2️⃣ Weighing the cost-benefit of mitigation actions. 3️⃣ Evidence-based policy implementation. Meet *Hawanama* : PAQI’s new climate intelligence platform built to map the sources, forecast pollution, and model the solutions. 🚗 Live Now: The Alpha Release (Transportation) We are starting with the largest polluting sector. Because this crisis is too urgent to wait behind closed doors, our early-stage prototype is live. We are currently verifying the data, Emission Factors, and VKTs, but this baseline is here to start a conversation. Take a look at your district's transport footprint. What stands out to you? Let us know your thoughts. 🔗 Explore and download the data from our Alpha prototype here: emissions.web.app Stay tuned for more from the PAQI team.

@hibasameen @AzeemaCheema @PBSofficialpak That is a very noble motivation. We are doing work on open data also, and about to release something similar on emissions @PakAirQuality Good to see your work.

Many weekends and a lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into building an interactive district-level map of Pakistan's census and survey data. All open data from @PBSofficialpak. 🇵🇰 hibasameen.github.io/datadarbar/

@rogueonomist There’s a quasi monopoly on setting up such industries in Pakistan. Even though the equipment is cheap, the system won’t let them operate. Until we open this sector to the free market, it will stay the way it is.

Who is in, lets get it

@adam_tooze Pakistan seems to be managing this risk: A Pakistani ‘Aframax’ vessel has made its way through the Strait of Hormuz. More would surely follow.

Pakistan looks like the Asian energy importer that is most at risk because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. More at today's Chartbook Top Links:

@kyleichan The way to good outcomes is paved with ill intentions.

This is the way

@laurimyllyvirta A ‘small’ rooftop solar installation.

It’s not thanks to the solar boom, rather it was thanks to new gas pricing which made ‘captive power’ generation prohibitively expensive, even more than than the grid supply, which drove an expensive transition to the grid (CAPEX was forced onto the buyer), and with an unreliable grid supply (breakdowns and fluctuations), and incredibly high 18 month ROI for solar, it drove a solar boom.

New from us: how Pakistan's solar boom is dampening the impact of the Hormuz crisis on the country. Solar power allowed LNG&diesel imports to fall after the previous gas crisis in 2021-22, with the solar boom set to avoid $7bn in fossil fuel import costs this year.

@laurimyllyvirta A wind energy plant on the outskirts of Karachi.

For the short term, it’s a bitter pill, but over the mid- and long-term, this transition will result in very competitive industry, and with the green benefit of being low carbon or zero carbon industrial clusters. Quite amazing how the side effect of a distorted policy decision can lead to excellent outcomes.

This has not only driven this shift from gas to grid to renewables (industry is adding wind power when possible in the wind corridor), but also the startup of large scale BESS adaption. Without self sufficiency, industry cannot be competitive with currently distorted grid energy pricing. So it’s more economics rather than anything else driving this transition.

Bangkok