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China reduced sulphur dioxide emissions by more than two-thirds in past 15 years
- vouaobrasil 2y agoThat is absolutely great! But I will be really impressed if humanity as a whole ever "flattens the CO2 curve" -- still going up at a greater than linear rate!
- nopassrecover 2y agoAt face value I was inclined to agree with you (SO2 causing acid rain and being generally impactful to health through cardiovascular and respiratory issues, damaging mammalian DNA, impacting hormones like testosterone etc.). However given the strong role SO2 can play in reducing global warming, and that there are even proposals to introduce more SO2 to the atmosphere to achieve the Paris objectives, like most things in our complex interconnected world it gets a bit more complex. Of course one hopes there are better responses to the changing climate than reactively doubling down on polluting contaminants into the atmosphere when that has contributed to the current mess and we clearly have narrow and incomplete understandings of systemic intervention.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago[flagged]
- adrianN 2y agoOr, you know, continuously falling prices for generation and storage of renewable energy.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoRight. According to https://eandt.theiet.org/2024/12/20/predictions-2025-road-decarbonisation https://eandt.theiet.org/2024/12/20/predictions-2025-road-de...: > According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 2025 will see renewables surpass coal to become the largest source of electricity generation. It also predicts that the next five years will see almost 3,700GW of new renewable capacity come online. Looks like we got a good strategy. 3,700GW or 3.7TW versus the over 110,000TW provided by fossil fuels. Right on there...0.003% replacement in 5 years. Seems like a quick response to the climate crisis. /sarcasm.
- drawkward 2y agoTechnology adoption usually follows an s-curve. /earnestness
- _benedict 2y agoWhere does 110PW come from? Wikipedia quotes global energy production at 19.6TW which makes 3.7TW in five years not too bad?
- pfdietz 2y ago110PW is about the total amount of sunlight striking the Earth.
- wolfram74 2y agoPlease provide a source for 110E3 TW for all fossil fuels, the US electrical grid time averages over a year about 0.4 TW in generation [0]. Did you actually mean TWh over a year, comparing instantaneous generation with annual production? was such a choice deliberate or accidental? [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_of_the_Unit...
- vouaobrasil 2y agoAccidental. I made a mistake.
- jvanderbot 2y agoOne thing I love is the continuing comparison to coal, even though coal is being phased out mostly from the expansion of natural gas, not the expansion of renewables. (keyword: mostly). Natural gas has risen to almost half our energy. This is still a very good thing in terms of CO2 and air pollution. One can hope that renewables continue to expand at an exponential rate, eventually offsetting natural gas.
- pfdietz 2y agoRight; natural gas in the US has gotten cheap. This has been a progressive trend (with some pauses) since natural gas was deregulated under Carter. The nuclear renaissance here in the US was knifed in the cradle because of natural gas prices becoming so low after a misleading burp upwards.
- infecto 2y ago> I do hope, but I believe the only true hope is mass sabotage of fossil-fuel producing infrastructure. Can we ban this guy finally dang? He constantly posts about terrorist activities because he is against technology and the use of fossil fuels.
- metalman 2y agodefinitly a bent mind, mixing "true hope" and "mass sabotage", but overlooking the scale of infrastructure involved in producing fossil fuels and that destroying it would require a massive military industrial and technological base to do it with,hmmmmmmm That realy, realy is a call for random terror. I like to think of myself as 665, almost but not quite evil, but this guy goes that last bit, blithly.Concerning given the goings on. Takes all of the fun out of nibbling a bit at at the edge of (oh so) polite discourse. I will have to up my game, as the last thing I want to do is encourage actual muckers.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoWow you guys are sensitive. I was trying to underline the hopelessness of what we are doing. I'm not condoning any illegal activity....jeez. But I'll leave. The hostility here is incredible.
- DiggyJohnson 2y agoHow many people or nations should collapse as a means to that end? I do appreciate your candidness, I know it seems like a snarky question.
- HPsquared 2y agoIt's a bit like the tradeoff of diesel cars: more local pollutants that damage human health (particulates and NOx) but less global warming.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoPrepare to be impressed then, because 2025 emissions are expected to be lower than 2024 emissions.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago2025 emissions lower than 2024 emissions don't imply the flattening of the total ppm CO2 curve. It COULD result it that, but it's not a necessary outcome because of deforestation. Also, emissions accounting is sometimes wonky...
- blueflow 2y agoThis is like boasting that you are accelerating less while you are heading towards a wall.
- ceejayoz 2y agoLike when people took “two weeks to flatten the curve” with a silent “and then the pandemic is completely over” instead of the obvious “well then it has to go down later for it to mean anything”.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoExcept the wall might instantly appear if a volcano erupts or reappear a million miles away if the sun flux cools.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoIt's about 20 years later than it should have happened, and we've got a lot of speed to scrub, but late is a heck of a lot better than never. Climate change is accompanied by an incredible amount of doomerism. I've had lots of people tell me variations of "we're all doomed anyway, I'm going to vote for the drill drill drill party and party until the world ends". If we don't celebrate the wins we do have, everybody will give up.
- blueflow 2y agoYou are off by one derivation. Breaking would be putting the carbon from the atmosphere back into the ground, which we are not doing at all. Your doomerism argument is a strawman, it is fact that we are still accelerating the current temperature excursion. If it helps you, we are at one of the coldest moments in earth's history, so most of what climate change will cause will have been there before.
- alkonaut 2y agoPopulation is peaking soon which should be a good start for flattening that curve.
- piva00 2y ago> Population is peaking soon which should be a good start for flattening that curve. It might help but most of the world is still considered "in development", we need for that development to happen with sustainable energy sources, and for that it needs to be as simple and cheap to be harvested and used as it is for those countries to use fossil fuels today. If that doesn't happen then these countries will use fossil fuels to develop, and the population peaking won't be of much help when those countries start emitting more per capita like many developed countries.
- alkonaut 2y agoYes, it's important that the development of large groups of people who don't emit much at all, leapfrog directly to more modern energy. I think it's safe to say there is a large risk that a billion people in india will still use fossil fuel for a large part of their development. Their first cars will be internal combustion and so on. They'll use that increased wealth to eat more meat than they did before and so on. I'm not optimistic about our chances to change any of that.
- rcxdude 2y agoI think there's signs of that happening already, as well as precedent. A lot of developing countries just kind of skipped ahead to modern internet infrastructure, for example, and solar is booming in India, especially, at the moment.
- Gigachad 2y agoIf the developing world develops, there will be less exploitable cheap labor, so everyone in already developed countries will have to start consuming less when their wages aren’t so disproportionally high compared to where their iPhone gets made.
- Xmd5a 2y ago>"flattens the CO2 curve" There is no such thing as polluting substances, only an accumulation of those. The problem lies in the fact that our technological process graph has too many sinks leading to an accumulation of 'dead-end' by-products. There is almost never such occurrences in nature, and when it does (great oxygenation event), the system manages to circle it back into the process graph. Contrast this with current ecological recommendations: they boil down to reducing the production rate of such substances, which can only asymptotically delay the looming apocalypse.
- ramblenode 2y ago> There is almost never such occurrences in nature, and when it does (great oxygenation event), the system manages to circle it back into the process graph. It is actually recent earth's biosphere with its many negative feedback loops which is the exception here. Earth could have turned into a Venus or Mars if conditions were just slightly different, and it almost did several times.
- Xmd5a 2y agoI don't understand what point you're trying to make. Life never appeared on Venus or Mars as far as we know. The question I want to ask is: why is there almost no existential pollution problems in nature ? Why does the way civilization lays out its own process graph lends itself so easily to dead ends ?
- infecto 2y agoIgnore everything this guy states. Look at his comments, he is an eco terrorist at best who benefits and uses technology himself but then turns around and wants to sabotage human advancement and the use of any fossil fuels. "I believe the only true hope is mass sabotage of fossil-fuel producing infrastructure." Terrorism talk should not be part of HN.
- rishav_sharan 2y agoNeither should be personal attacks, but here we are
- infecto 2y agoHe is calling for terrorism in his posts and preaching his gospel. I personally don’t think terrorism should be tolerated in any form. Maybe it’s ok with you but not me. His gospel is hypocrisy and dangerous.
- bradfa 2y agoDoesn’t SO2 in the upper atmosphere help to prevent the sun from warming the Earth as much?
- TheOtherHobbes 2y agoYes. Some climate scientists believe that the unexpected increase in warming over the last couple of years is an unintended consequence of SO2 reduction.
- gloflo 2y agoAs climate warming impact from CO2 emissions was limited by SO2 emissions before?
- defrost 2y agoThe general quote from NASA climate scientists and others is that the recent years increase in warming is unexpected even after accounting for the reduction in marine fleet SO2 emmissions and the parallel increase in high atmosphere SO2 from a large volcanic eruption.
- CorrectHorseBat 2y agoIf they only took marine SO2 reduction in account it could still be because of other places where there was a reduction in SO2 pollution?
- defrost 2y agoSO2 sources are fairly well known, Acid Rain was first extensively studied back in the mid 1960s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain Marine fuels were the last remaining stronghold of anthropogenic SO2. The two large scale changes in recent years of atmospheric makeup were the SO2 generation reduduction from marine fuel phase outs and the unuual high altitude water vaper injection from a volcanic eruption. Atmospheric gas makeup changes are mapped from a number of global sites, and recently mutlispectral orbiting gas sensors have been fine scale mapping sources. * https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin... * https://research.noaa.gov/hunga-tonga-2022-eruption/ https://research.noaa.gov/hunga-tonga-2022-eruption/ * https://research.csiro.au/acc/capabilities/cape-grim-baseline-air-pollution-station https://research.csiro.au/acc/capabilities/cape-grim-baselin...
- sebtron 2y agoI visited China in 2014 and I have literally wondered out loud this morning whether air pollution has improved since then. I am gald to hear the answer is yes!
- nbevans 2y agoI've been visiting China every 1 to 3 years since 2014 and definitely in the last 4 years, on multiple visits, I've noticed that pollution is visibly lower. You can actually see the blue of the sky on most days. Everyone has noticed it. It's a massive change.
- PicassoCTs 2y ago[flagged]
- lm28469 2y agoWhat a deranged take on the story... The green washing mostly comes from the west btw, China doesn't give a fuck either way, they just go where it's cheaper and more efficient/convenient for them at a given time. If anything they have more reasons than the US to go green because they don't depend on decades of wars for and dependence on petrol https://www.statista.com/chart/9964/china-is-beating-the-us-in-the-renewables-race/ https://www.statista.com/chart/9964/china-is-beating-the-us-...
- PicassoCTs 2y agohttps://www.dw.com/en/how-a-chinese-firm-ran-a-billion-euro-carbon-credit-scam/a-71010148 https://www.dw.com/en/how-a-chinese-firm-ran-a-billion-euro-... Sure. Sure.
- lm28469 2y agoI can find the same for Europe and the USA... the carbon credit system is a scam by default. And regardless, it's not a "china = communism = Stalin = propaganda" problem, it's a money problem https://carboncredits.com/a-carbon-scam-bp-owned-and-us-largest-offset-companys-credits-are-80-dubious/ https://carboncredits.com/a-carbon-scam-bp-owned-and-us-larg... https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/carbon-credit-fraud-causes-more-5-billion-euros-damage-for-european-taxpayer https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/carb...
- PicassoCTs 2y agoIts a western perverse incentives to lie to yourself + money combined with eastern face culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept) and maoist reality is what the loudest person in power shouts combined into a hyper toxic mix of lies. That whole investment would be so much more productive if went straight into a state governed fusion lab instead of into some pretentious "lets pretend" circus of fraud.
- looseyesterday 2y agoEven more impressive given the scale of economic growth over the same time period.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]