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Basically the oceans are way way way too hot which is melting even the most ancient ice and that can never be undone in our lifetimes (well maybe from a nuclear
by ck2 8mo ago
Basically the oceans are way way way too hot which is melting even the most ancient ice and that can never be undone in our lifetimes (well maybe from a nuclear winter)
USA is about to have another El Nino summer which will be scorching from overheating oceans
But don't worry, USA is solving the problem by Biden banning cheap electric cars and Trump ending electric subsidies entirely, forcing coal plants to restart
- leetharris 8mo ago[flagged]
- monkaiju 8mo agoThankfully none of the serious solutions are nation-specific. Also they do not emit "orders of magnitude more" https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025 https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025
- progval 8mo ago> India and China burn orders of magnitude more They don't, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#Fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... > and they aren't going to slow down. China already did, according to https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/china-co2-emissions-flat-or-falling-for-past-18-months-analysis-finds https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/china-co2-emis...
- siilats 8mo agoyeah all these charts you need to read the footnotes, this wikipedia is co2 from fossil fuels not land changes which probably is some random fraction
- topaz0 8mo agoSome fraction that will not be enough to produce "orders of magnitude more"
- tjnaylor 8mo agoFossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas account for approximately 90% of all human-produced carbon dioxide. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/fossil-fuels-are-the-biggest-source-of-co2-emissions-in-most-countries-but-there-are-a-few-exceptions#:~:text=November%2022%2C%202024-,Fossil%20fuels%20are%20the%20biggest%20source%20of%20CO2%20emissions%20in,there%20are%20a%20few%20exceptions&text=Around%2090%25%20of%20the%20world's,very%20little%20coal%20and%20gas. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/fossil-fuels-are-th...
- kreyenborgi 8mo agoActually it would matter. Less CO2 would be released. It just wouldn't stop all the CO2 being released - but we don't need nor want to stop it all for it to matter.
- ck2 8mo agoThat an often repeated old lie even if out of ignorance China now has 51% electric vehicles, they are switching the whole country to electric USA won't do that for many decades https://electrek.co/2025/08/29/electric-vehicles-reach-tipping-point-china-surge-51-market-share/ https://electrek.co/2025/08/29/electric-vehicles-reach-tippi... Canada is now allowing Chinese cheap electric car imports which will be a fascinating experiment
- rcruzeiro 8mo agoAmerica could set the standard and then use its soft power (or sanctions if it came to that) to make India and china follow suit. The problem is that America is now hellbent on burning the world, and its soft power is all but gone.
- giwook 8mo agoChina has actually been leading the charge in terms of green energy lately, at least in terms of making solar power equipment more accessible by way of driving down cost. I have no idea however if they're just exporting this to other countries or if they're also pushing renewable energy domestically. From what little I've read on this topic in recent years though they seem to realize that all of that smog is coming from somewhere and are taking meaningful action to remedy it, which is in stark contrast to what we're doing in the states these days with stifling clean energy and promoting coal.
- _heimdall 8mo agoChina has continued to rapidly increase their use of coal for power generation. Just a few days ago there was an article about them hitting an 18-year high of new coal power installations [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/chinas-new-coal-power-installations-reach-18-year-high/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/ch...
- wat10000 8mo agoChina's coal consumption has been pretty much flat for the past decade. That's certainly not ideal, but it's not a rapid increase.
- _heimdall 8mo agoWhere are you seeing their coal use as flat? Even the related wikipedia page[1] shows a pretty steady increase over time. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China
- wat10000 8mo agoWhere do you see a steady increase on that page? There’s one fairly unreadable graph at the top. Clicking through to the source for that graph, we can see that consumption was 22.8TWh in 2014 and 25.6TWh in 2024, a pretty modest increase.
- swiftcoder 8mo ago> India and China burn orders of magnitude more The US accounts for significantly higher emissions than India[1], despite having only a quarter the population. > and they aren't going to slow down There's a pretty good case to be made that China is slowing down[2], albeit not as fast as any of us need to be. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions#Fossil_carbon_dioxide_emissions_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... [2]: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
- wat10000 8mo agoStopping 100% of emissions from the US would not be enough, but it would absolutely matter. We're still the #2 CO2 emitter. China is only about 3x more, not anything like "orders of magnitude." India is quite a bit less than the US.
- _heimdall 8mo agoWhy so blatantly lean into Jevans paradox? In this case, there is no ceiling on global emissions. If one country reduces to zero there would absolutely be less emissions than if they hadn't. There's no incentive for China and India to pick up the slack and create more pollution just to cover what the US stopped making.
- triceratops 8mo agoIt's not real. Even if it's real it doesn't matter what I do. Any more lies?
- _heimdall 8mo agoSorry I don't follow your point here. What are you trying to say?
- triceratops 8mo agoEDIT: I misunderstood and thought you said China and India would simply pollute more. Sorry about that.
- redwall_hp 8mo agoChina outpaced the US for renewable energy rollout years ago, and isn't stopping now, because it's seen as energy security. It's not even close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_United...
- 4fterd4rk 8mo agoRight on schedule folks, it's a climate topic and we will now have the traditional recitation of the lies.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- mitthrowaway2 8mo agoOrders of magnitude more? Do you have a citation for that tremendous claim?
- azan_ 8mo agoUSA burns orders of magnitude more per capita. And if you take historical emission (and you should!) then the disproportion is absolutely absurd.
- WorldMaker 8mo agoThat's a bit defeatist, and kind of a whataboutism. Sure, it is the greatest tragedy of the commons in history playing out as a slow motion trainwreck, but you don't solve the tragedy of the commons by continuing to make it tragic "because everyone else is doing it". You focus on your own impact and you also focus on diplomacy with your neighbors. You don't just stop, you put in twice the work. It's also somewhat easy to shift that viewpoint a little, too, right now: China's emissions numbers have started a rapid deceleration downward. They are doing more about their emissions faster than the US. Does the US want to lose to China that badly that we shouldn't even try to align US policy to more of the emissions reductions that China is already succeeding at today? (Much less their robust plans for future emissions reductions?)
- boudin 8mo agoOur behaviour is also responsible for China's and India emissions. We've exported lot of our production to those countries and are importing it back. If we were to measure emissions not by the country of the producer but the country of the consumer, our numbers (USA and Europe) would look dramatically different. As consummer we are responsible for the whole world emissions in the end. Changing those habbits, can impact things far beyond borders. But that's a political choice which goes against a constant growth based economy and it seems that not many people in our countries are ready to accept this. We want to buy and travel as much as we always did but bear no reponsibilities for the impact it has.
- myrmidon 8mo agoDisagree with this perspective entirely. Not only is it factually wrong (US emissions are much higher than Indian ones despite India being like 4x as many people), it also ignores second order effects of sane environmental policy completely: By demonstrating that emission reduction is feasible, smaller wealthy western nations can have giant effects on billions of people living in poorer states. Not only does this demonstrate that wealth and environmental concerns are compatible, it also allows "follower-nations" to emulate such efforts cost effectively by picking proven technologies and avoiding technological dead-ends. Just consider wind/solar in China: I would argue that the whole industry and growth rates only got to the current point so quickly is thanks to research, development and investment done in western nations in the decades prior. Countries like Germany (<100M) had a huge effect on energy development in China (>1b people). If they had just kept using fossils until now, Chinese electricity might well be >90% coal power as well. Geoengineering is a naive pipedream in my view because all proposals are either the height of recklessness and/or completely financial lunacy: CO2 capture for small individual emitters like cars is never gonna be even close to cost competitive with just reducing those emissions in the first place (but I'm always curious about any novel approaches).
- wereHamster 8mo agoChina is already slowing down the addition new fossil fuel power plants. Yes, they still build new ones, yes they generate a lot of emissions. But they are also adding more than the rest of the world combined of renewable (solar, wind) electricity generation each year. Realistically, if China stopped 100% of emissions tomorrow, they'd be in much better position to replace it with clean alternatives than most other countries.
- miroljub 8mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 8mo ago> Because of climate activists and their small-scale geoengineering, thousands of people lost their lives in floods in Spain last year. What small-scale geoengineering are you referring to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Spanish_floods#Environmental_factors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Spanish_floods#Environmen...
- Gabrys1 8mo agonot per capita though
- mrlonglong 8mo agoBiden?!
- TimorousBestie 8mo agoThey’re referring to this: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/bidens-car-tech-ban-is-powerful-new-weapon-against-chinese-evs-2024-09-24/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/bidens... The Republicans are even more protectionist and sinophobic, however. Nobody ever had the option to vote for importing Chinese EVs.
- mrlonglong 8mo agoI might buy one just to annoy them then.
- whynotmaybe 8mo agoIt reminds me of what I used to say whenever I've completed a contract for a client. "And remember, now that I'm gone, every problem that occurs is my fault. So stop looking for the culprit, find a solution"
- FrustratedMonky 8mo agoRemember when Republicans blamed 9/11 on Obama, not remembering that it happened when Bush was president?
- _heimdall 8mo agoElectric cars aren't a magic bullet. We need to drive less, not scrap ICE vehicles and buy new electric vehicles made on the other side of the planet with globally sourced materials and shipped to the US.
- bojan 8mo agoDo they have to be a magic bullet? Switching from ICE to electric is a much smaller ask than switching from personal cars to... bicycles?
- bluGill 8mo agoIf there was some investment most of us could switch to public transit. The problems people have with transit are mostly around there isn't enough of it to be useful - when /where it is useful people use it.
- alberto467 8mo agoThat's not the full story, you're right that they "could switch", but would they actually? Good, working and efficient public transit still means having significantly less comfort compared to having your private vehicle. Pretty much the only exception is using the metro in a congested downtown area at peak traffic (still, your metro experience will also be degraded by the peak traffic), or perhaps if parking your vehicle will be very difficult. And i say this as someone in a rather big city in Europe who is currently only using public transit. And there is a lot of stuff that i'd like to do but i can't do since i currently don't have access to a car or motorbike. People don't just want "useful", at least the majority of people in developed countries also want "comfortable", and "nice", and "easy", and "enjoyable". A peak-hour metro ride or missing your tram by one minute is none of that.
- bluGill 8mo agoIf the next bus/tram isn't almost there when you miss the previous then it isn't nearly as useful. there are things you can't do with transit. However nearly everyone is living in a family - so keep the truck to tow the boat, but get rid of the other cars that you won't need if transit is good. That is a much more reasonably goal that transit can aim for. A few like you won't own a car/truck at all, but most won't need to go that far
- everdrive 8mo ago>But don't worry, USA is solving the problem by Biden banning cheap electric cars and Trump ending electric subsidies entirely, forcing coal plants to restart People really think if they just buy the right products we'll solve this problem. People are really fundamentally unable to solve global warming issues. There are a few fundamental problems: - Broad, collective action is not possible in just any direction. People can broadly get behind causes that are related to some fundamental human motivation, but generally cannot be guided towards nuanced political topics except via general tribalism and coalitions. (eg: you can go to the moon, but there's only broad support for this in the sense that it has consequences for national pride. You didn't have a whole nation helping the the logistics; you just had broad coalitional support.) - People think that merely buying the right product will help, but major impacts to climate would require a serious modification in quality of life and material wealth. This will never have broad support. People will always scrape out the most comfort and most material wealth that is possible, and will only allow themselves to be constrained by hard limits. Technology can help here to a degree, but once technology helps, people just advance to the next hard limit. For instance the use of insecticides, industrial fertilizer, and large-scale factory farming just allowed for more population boom. Rather than arriving at a place where where had near infinite abundance, we just ate up the gains with expanded population and luxury products. (sort of how computers don't get faster; once the computer is made faster, the software does more and the actual UI responsiveness just stays in the same place.) - People would need to intentionally decrease population and find healthy limits with the environment. No living thing does this. If you watch population curves in predators and prey, they occur because the hard limits force starvation and population decline. (ie, if the wolves eat too many deer, then the wolf pups starve, the wolf population declines, and then the deer can rebound.) In other words, nature is not "wise and balanced" but instead the balance is a mere fact of competition and death. The moment we produce an abundance, we use up that abundance. This may not be true in the case of some individuals, but broadly this is true for any population. - No political body, even an authoritarian regime could force these things. People would revolt. Authoritarians themselves often get into power by promising abundance they can never actually deliver on. No authoritarian has gained power by promising to reduce abundance and material wealth.
- bobson381 8mo ago
- pcthrowaway 8mo agoI suspect the reason Trump is talking about annexing Canada is because of our vast swathes of land which have historically been too cold for settlement, which are going to become much more temperate in the near-ish future.
- hnfong 8mo agoThat explains the 300 IQ attempt on claiming Greenland.
- ActorNightly 8mo agoI really wanna know the kind of person you are that thinks that Trump makes logical decisions.
- pcthrowaway 8mo agoI didn't say it was logical, I said there was some kind of rationale.
- willhslade 8mo agoSoil is generally garbage though. Just saying.
- e1ghtSpace 8mo agoMaybe we can nuke a handful of countries and try to go for just a light nuclear winter to get everything cooled down again.