5 ms·
Full steam ahead towards greenhouse gases, climate change, and +5degree temperatures. Why not?
by reactordev 6d ago
Full steam ahead towards greenhouse gases, climate change, and +5degree temperatures. Why not?
- bayindirh 6d agoBecause it'll create value. Value which won't bring anything to anyone. I mean, a couple of people can be more richerer, but we and them won't have a planet to spend or enjoy these theoretical riches at the end. So, no biggie.
- reactordev 6d agoLobbyists lies a foot. “We can’t provide more power with these pesky regulations”
- tosapple 6d agodefine 'climate pollution', this is all fine and well until they apply it to nuclear shielding.
- harimau777 6d agoI'm not clear what you mean. While nuclear waste is certainly a thing that could hurt the environment if mismanaged, impacting the climate isn't really a way that it does so. The shielding also seems like an unusual thing to focus on as opposed to the waste itself.
- tosapple 6d ago'shielding', is applied to both the energy extraction process of fission activity AND the remnants. you're definitely not clear on the meaning.
- plorkyeran 5d agoYeah, I'm definitely not clear on what you're trying to mean. How about you actually state your point rather than vaguely alluding to something?
- tosapple 5d ago[dead]
- cyanydeez 6d agoDisaster capitalism is pretty much current AI is to future AI use
- throw0101a 6d ago> Because it'll create value. The New Yorker published Tom Toro's one-panel comic/cartoon in 2012, and here we are in 2026: * https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995 https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
- jeroenhd 6d agoThe USA is already holding the record for greenhouse gas pollution per capita and they elected the lunatic that raved about climate change being a hoax. I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier. The fact these regulations didn't make it through the normal law making progress (senate/house) doomed it before it even took shape. With presidents like Trump undoing everything his predecessor(s) did just to feel powerful, legislation like this is doomed from that start.
- rightnutwingjob 6d agoThere’s no denying Climate Change is a big industrial-complex. And now that the Data Centre Industrial Complex has come along it’s somewhat sidelined the Climate Change Industrial Complex*. Funny how that happens.
- sippingabonedry 6d agoSorry but you can't have EVs everywhere, WA and CA banning natural gas for heat and cooking, WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power. The math does not add up. Solar and wind output is not constant or reliable. NIMBYs sabotaged nuclear years ago. It takes how many years to bring a new plant online? A lot of feel-good rules and regs were passed, pushing a massive shift to electric power, with no consideration as to where the additional power would come from. You can't wave your arms like a Peanuts cartoon and have all that extra power appear, which is the logic that was used in passing many of these impractical regulations.
- reactordev 6d agoSolar and wind is extremely reliable. What isn’t reliable is deployment of it. Energy storage is required along with solar farms.
- sippingabonedry 6d agoUntil the sun goes down at night or the wind stops blowing. You ignored the word "output". > Energy storage is required along with solar farms How many batteries are we going to need for that? They literally just figured out how to get the child slaves in the Congo out of the supply chain with a shift to LFP.
- WarmWash 6d agoEnough to store the energy between gaps, plus a buffer? Batteries aren't exactly made from gold. Grid scale batteries especially, where weight and size doesn't matter as much, are totally viable on a mass scale.
- Propelloni 6d agoFear really IS the mindkiller! Stop being afraid and start educating yourself. You are on HN, you are supposed to be smart.
- jmclnx 6d agoNormally I would be concerned, but these days, we are well on our way to 3.5C. All this will do is cancel out progess China and Europe is making on renewals. It is to bad these people do not care how much of a sucky life they are handing their grandchildren. Wait to see what happens when millions of desperate people living south of the 40th parallel start heading north in mass. No wall will stop that.
- sippingabonedry 6d ago> All this will do is cancel out progess China and Europe is making on renewals China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that.
- layer8 6d agoChina brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online in 2025, but also 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind.
- tonfa 6d agoAnd coal is mostly flat, while electricity demand is going up. https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/09/China-Energy-Transition-Review-2026.pdf https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/09/China-Energy-Tr... (Page 14)
- leonidasrup 6d agoChina mined more coal in 2025 then ever, but burned less in coal plans. Coal is slowly shifting from electricity production to synthetic oil and chemical production. https://www.mining.com/web/chinas-coal-output-hits-record-in-2025-even-as-it-burns-less/ https://www.mining.com/web/chinas-coal-output-hits-record-in... https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-top-coal-region-expand-coal-to-oil-output-energy-security-push-2026-06-12/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-top-coal-regi...
- sippingabonedry 6d ago
- layer8 6d agoAprès nous, le déluge!
- warumdarum 6d agoBecause it stops society falling apart and regressing. Humanity is not some angelic, monolith stoic super species, which is just programmed wrong. Its half-sane monkeys which fall apart in a regression as soon as the surplus bribery stops and then try to sew the bakeries oven apart, so everyone has something to eat. One can not create policies that destroy the thing they want to protect from a crisis to come, by inducing a different crisis by ignoring the material you work with. Trump is your doing, you brought this guy forth, by deindustrializing the west, by making western buisnesses unable to compete. Stop working with idealized paper-cut outs of people- and actually engage, with the species you got. And no, your good intentions and noble goals, do not entitle you to wing it.
- dyauspitr 6d agoAnd when there are cheaper, faster built, renewable sources of energy that the whole world is building out. I don’t think the lost time can be fixed post Trump (if he even gives up power that is).
- amiga386 6d agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_cruelty_is_the_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_cruelty_is_the_point
- 0xy 6d agoUS energy usage is flat in real terms since 2000 despite skyrocketing population growth. In per capita terms, it's plummeting. China builds hundreds of coal plants a year while they are exempt from scrutiny.
- nxm 6d agoDon't forget India as well
- SanjayMehta 6d agoIndia increased renewables drastically in the last 10-12 years. https://mnre.gov.in/en/year-wise-achievement/ https://mnre.gov.in/en/year-wise-achievement/
- tzs 5d agoIndia emits 30% less total CO2 than the US and 84% less per capita than the US, and is massively expanding renewables. For their population even without the renewables they are using far less than their share of any fair way to allocate whatever we decide we have to limit worldwide emissions to.
- Timon3 6d agoSince 2000, how much production did the US offshore to China? If this trend keeps going for a decade+, China might begin to approach US per-capita emissions.
- Hikikomori 6d agoTheir coal burning isn't going up though.
- tzs 5d agoIt is usage of plants that matters, not number of plants. Most of the new Chinese coal plants mostly have have low capacity factors. They are being built as backups and peakers rather than baseload, designed (or retrofitted in the case of existing plants being upgraded) to be able to cycle up and down to balance wind and solar. Many are idle so much that their owners have financial difficulty keeping them open, and the government has had to start paying them for their idle time so they won't go under. Many are also built to replace existing plants that cannot not yet be replaced with renewables, so are at worst neutral on coal usage and are usually actually more efficient than the old plants so there is a reduction.
- JungleGymSam 6d ago[dead]