5 ms·

Normally 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.

by jmclnx 12d ago

Normally 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 12d 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 12d ago
  China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online in 2025, but also 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind.
  - tonfa 12d ago
    And 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 12d ago
      China 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 12d ago
    Which is easy to do when you live an authoritarian state with plenty of vast desert wastelands to erect solar/wind farms. Was there a village there last week? Not anymore, it was in the way. And best of all they can build it all with Uyghur forced labor. Accolades for China all around!
    - harimau777 12d ago
      Yes, and? That's not really relevant to the topic at hand. No one has said that China is a utopia and paragon of human rights.
    - piva00 12d ago
      I don't see the USA building out that much solar in its vast desert wastelands.
  - consensus1 12d ago
    78 GW of coal is pretty damn near 78 GW. 315 GW of solar / wind capacity is nowhere near that level of utilization.
    - Timon3 12d ago
      Would you mind sharing your source? AFAIK the coal plants are only backups, so it'd be very surprising if they're utilized as much as the solar capacity.
- alexgieg 12d ago
  China is trying to become oil-independent by all means necessary. All their means of accessing oil go through geographic bottlenecks that could be weaponized against them in the event of military conflict. Coal, fissile materials, and sunlight are the alternatives they have access to, so they're going for all of those. With some luck, the net effect will be fewer greenhouse gases than keeping themselves oil-dependent, though that isn't necessarily the, or even a, goal. If it happens, it'll be as a side effect.
  - sippingabonedry 12d ago
    Are you saying China is doing whatever it needs to do to satisfy its power needs, hands forced by geopolitics, and not pure altruism? Say it isn't so.
    - alexgieg 12d ago
      In a saner world, they wouldn't need to be wary of a catastrophic oil shortage due to another power deciding to cut off their access to oil. A saner world is achieved when all countries agree to an international system of rules and conflict resolution and abide by agreements, so things are predictable in the long term. The less predictable things become, the faster everyone ramps up potential solutions to bad potential scenarios. Some are trying to bring that sanity back. Others are trying to increase the chaos as much as they possibly can, and preferably more.
      - consensus1 12d ago
        You can't bring back something that was never there
        AnimalMuppet 12d ago
        Not in an absolute sense, perhaps. But it was there enough to mostly function most of the time. And international life was more stable because of it.
  - 12d ago
- bayindirh 12d ago
  > China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that. Despite all of that, Electricitymaps predicts that they can generate 48% of their total energy from carbon-free sources at noon-hours. Now, this is impressive, despite building 50 new coal plants in 2025 alone.
  - leonidasrup 12d ago
    Last year France produced 94% of electricity from low-carbon sources, that is impressive. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/france#how-much-of-france-s-electricity-comes-from-low-carbon-sources https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/france#how-much-of... China produced 41% of electricity from low-carbon sources last year. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#how-much-of-china-s-electricity-comes-from-low-carbon-sources https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#how-much-of-...
    - bayindirh 12d ago
      For me, both are equally impressive actually. Europe has some great clean-energy countries. Interestingly Turkey passed 50% mark apparently. That's also an out of left field revelation for me.
      - matthewdgreen 12d ago
        This is not really very impressive in context, for two reasons. First, China generated 10,400 TWh in 2025 and France generated only 547 TWh. The 95% and 50% are being applied to different numbers, and the scales here just aren’t comparable. Second, nearly all of France’s power generation was built decades ago, and China’s was built very recently - and is still expanding rapidly in both nuclear and renewables. Comparing France to China is like comparing a 1970s solar powered bungalow to a gigafactory under construction.
        leonidasrup 12d ago
        Population of China is 1404 milions, population of France is 66 milion, so per capita France produces more electricity. 95% and 50% show that France has electric grid with much lower carbon emissions per unit of energy then China. France build most of its nuclear reactors in 1980s (54 reactors within 15 years), as a reaction to oil schocks in 1970s. This transformation was faster then what is currently in China (again when compared per capita).
- Hikikomori 12d ago
  Yet coal burning isn't going up in China. They also built more solar in 2025 than the US has in total. Also currently building 35+ reactors.
- counters 12d ago
  > China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that. China also invested significantly in technology like flue gas desulfurization 10-20 years ago, as well as other approaches which try to mitigate some of the impact of coal burning. So while bringing online coal power plants is obviously and can never be carbon neutral, a more appropriate comparison would be to measure the new plants' additional GHG and SLCP emissions, and compare that to the approach in the US.
  - 486sx33 12d ago
    [dead]
- dalyons 12d ago
  coal usage has declined there the last two years. Would have declined even more this year, except for a certain very smart war.
- throw0101a 12d ago
  > China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that. If China (and India and …) sees the US and other industrialized doing nothing, why should they do anything? The most straight-forward way of solving is either through cap-and-trade (like acid rain was dealt with) or 'carbon dividend' (which Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Volker, etc endorsed): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Carbon_Dividends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car... Then you put a 'carbon tariff' on imports for any country that does not have a similar system (e.g., EU's CBAM).
  - SanjayMehta 12d ago
    The US could help itself by reducing per capita energy consumption. Since they don't seem to consider this as an option, why indeed should China or India do anything?
    - deleted 12d ago
      [deleted]
    - RockIslandLine 11d ago
      Any nation is free to set a good example.
      - SanjayMehta 11d ago
        Let the self proclaimed leader of the free world lead by example.
- ZeroGravitas 11d ago
  And yet their coal usage dropped (for electricity) or was flat (when you include e.g. coal to chemicals) while both electricity use and GDP grew about 5% Half-coal powered electrification is cleaner, greener, cheaper and smarter than sticking to ICE cars and gas heating for homes and industry. China has gone from 10% of final energy being electricity to 30% this century while US and Europe went from around 20% to just above 20%
blooalien 12d ago
> It is to bad these people do not care how much of a sucky life they are handing their grandchildren. It's a cryin' shame these people don't care how much of a sucky life they are handing everyone's grandchildren, and not nearly enough people actually cared when we could have still done something about it...
- deleted 11d ago
  [deleted]
billfor 12d ago
According to Al Gores movie (shown to US students) we were already supposed to be beyond 2C by now. When the ClimateGate "hide the decline" emails were released that also raised a few eyebrows. So saying the world is now going to 3.5C rings on deaf ears. That's not science that's just the fact of what actually happened so far.
- Supermancho 12d ago
  Your narrative is repeated less and less because it isnt compelling. My narrative is substantially different because the trend was correct and 1.4 vs 2.0 does not prove a negative. The massive FUD and misinformation campaigns by industrialist operations, along with opportunist/capitalist denials and misdirection, has successfully confused enough of the US public to withold opinion on the matter. This has allowed politics to treat it as a marginal issue where there are 2 sides, rather than a morally catastrophic eventuality.
  - consensus1 12d ago
    1.4 vs 2.0 is a massive miss because that diff isn't starting from 20 years ago, but rather a pre-industrial baseline. So the actual diffs are something more like +0.2 (actual) vs +0.8 (predicted) over that 20 ish year interval, and the prediction of the warming trajectory is off several times. (that is if the movie actually said that, which I didn't check).
    - Timon3 12d ago
      Maybe you should check? Because we definitely weren't at +1.2°C warming in 2006.
- wat10000 12d ago
  Why are you getting your information from movies?

by jmclnx 12d ago

sippingabonedry 12d 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 12d ago
China brought 78 gigawatts of new coal power capacity online in 2025, but also 315 gigawatts of solar capacity and 119 gigawatts of wind.
- tonfa 12d ago
  And 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 12d ago
    China 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 12d ago
  Which is easy to do when you live an authoritarian state with plenty of vast desert wastelands to erect solar/wind farms. Was there a village there last week? Not anymore, it was in the way. And best of all they can build it all with Uyghur forced labor. Accolades for China all around!
  - harimau777 12d ago
    Yes, and? That's not really relevant to the topic at hand. No one has said that China is a utopia and paragon of human rights.
  - piva00 12d ago
    I don't see the USA building out that much solar in its vast desert wastelands.
- consensus1 12d ago
  78 GW of coal is pretty damn near 78 GW. 315 GW of solar / wind capacity is nowhere near that level of utilization.
  - Timon3 12d ago
    Would you mind sharing your source? AFAIK the coal plants are only backups, so it'd be very surprising if they're utilized as much as the solar capacity.
alexgieg 12d ago
China is trying to become oil-independent by all means necessary. All their means of accessing oil go through geographic bottlenecks that could be weaponized against them in the event of military conflict. Coal, fissile materials, and sunlight are the alternatives they have access to, so they're going for all of those. With some luck, the net effect will be fewer greenhouse gases than keeping themselves oil-dependent, though that isn't necessarily the, or even a, goal. If it happens, it'll be as a side effect.
- sippingabonedry 12d ago
  Are you saying China is doing whatever it needs to do to satisfy its power needs, hands forced by geopolitics, and not pure altruism? Say it isn't so.
  - alexgieg 12d ago
    In a saner world, they wouldn't need to be wary of a catastrophic oil shortage due to another power deciding to cut off their access to oil. A saner world is achieved when all countries agree to an international system of rules and conflict resolution and abide by agreements, so things are predictable in the long term. The less predictable things become, the faster everyone ramps up potential solutions to bad potential scenarios. Some are trying to bring that sanity back. Others are trying to increase the chaos as much as they possibly can, and preferably more.
    - consensus1 12d ago
      You can't bring back something that was never there
      - AnimalMuppet 12d ago
        Not in an absolute sense, perhaps. But it was there enough to mostly function most of the time. And international life was more stable because of it.
- 12d ago
bayindirh 12d ago
> China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that. Despite all of that, Electricitymaps predicts that they can generate 48% of their total energy from carbon-free sources at noon-hours. Now, this is impressive, despite building 50 new coal plants in 2025 alone.
- leonidasrup 12d ago
  Last year France produced 94% of electricity from low-carbon sources, that is impressive. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/france#how-much-of-france-s-electricity-comes-from-low-carbon-sources https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/france#how-much-of... China produced 41% of electricity from low-carbon sources last year. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#how-much-of-china-s-electricity-comes-from-low-carbon-sources https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china#how-much-of-...
  - bayindirh 12d ago
    For me, both are equally impressive actually. Europe has some great clean-energy countries. Interestingly Turkey passed 50% mark apparently. That's also an out of left field revelation for me.
    - matthewdgreen 12d ago
      This is not really very impressive in context, for two reasons. First, China generated 10,400 TWh in 2025 and France generated only 547 TWh. The 95% and 50% are being applied to different numbers, and the scales here just aren’t comparable. Second, nearly all of France’s power generation was built decades ago, and China’s was built very recently - and is still expanding rapidly in both nuclear and renewables. Comparing France to China is like comparing a 1970s solar powered bungalow to a gigafactory under construction.
      - leonidasrup 12d ago
        Population of China is 1404 milions, population of France is 66 milion, so per capita France produces more electricity. 95% and 50% show that France has electric grid with much lower carbon emissions per unit of energy then China. France build most of its nuclear reactors in 1980s (54 reactors within 15 years), as a reaction to oil schocks in 1970s. This transformation was faster then what is currently in China (again when compared per capita).
Hikikomori 12d ago
Yet coal burning isn't going up in China. They also built more solar in 2025 than the US has in total. Also currently building 35+ reactors.
counters 12d ago
> China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that. China also invested significantly in technology like flue gas desulfurization 10-20 years ago, as well as other approaches which try to mitigate some of the impact of coal burning. So while bringing online coal power plants is obviously and can never be carbon neutral, a more appropriate comparison would be to measure the new plants' additional GHG and SLCP emissions, and compare that to the approach in the US.
- 486sx33 12d ago
  [dead]
dalyons 12d ago
coal usage has declined there the last two years. Would have declined even more this year, except for a certain very smart war.
throw0101a 12d ago
> China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that. If China (and India and …) sees the US and other industrialized doing nothing, why should they do anything? The most straight-forward way of solving is either through cap-and-trade (like acid rain was dealt with) or 'carbon dividend' (which Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Volker, etc endorsed): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Carbon_Dividends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists%27_Statement_on_Car... Then you put a 'carbon tariff' on imports for any country that does not have a similar system (e.g., EU's CBAM).
- SanjayMehta 12d ago
  The US could help itself by reducing per capita energy consumption. Since they don't seem to consider this as an option, why indeed should China or India do anything?
  - deleted 12d ago
    [deleted]
  - RockIslandLine 11d ago
    Any nation is free to set a good example.
    - SanjayMehta 11d ago
      Let the self proclaimed leader of the free world lead by example.
ZeroGravitas 11d ago
And yet their coal usage dropped (for electricity) or was flat (when you include e.g. coal to chemicals) while both electricity use and GDP grew about 5% Half-coal powered electrification is cleaner, greener, cheaper and smarter than sticking to ICE cars and gas heating for homes and industry. China has gone from 10% of final energy being electricity to 30% this century while US and Europe went from around 20% to just above 20%

blooalien 12d ago

> It is to bad these people do not care how much of a sucky life they are handing their grandchildren. It's a cryin' shame these people don't care how much of a sucky life they are handing everyone's grandchildren, and not nearly enough people actually cared when we could have still done something about it...

deleted 11d ago
[deleted]

billfor 12d ago

According to Al Gores movie (shown to US students) we were already supposed to be beyond 2C by now. When the ClimateGate "hide the decline" emails were released that also raised a few eyebrows. So saying the world is now going to 3.5C rings on deaf ears. That's not science that's just the fact of what actually happened so far.

Supermancho 12d ago
Your narrative is repeated less and less because it isnt compelling. My narrative is substantially different because the trend was correct and 1.4 vs 2.0 does not prove a negative. The massive FUD and misinformation campaigns by industrialist operations, along with opportunist/capitalist denials and misdirection, has successfully confused enough of the US public to withold opinion on the matter. This has allowed politics to treat it as a marginal issue where there are 2 sides, rather than a morally catastrophic eventuality.
- consensus1 12d ago
  1.4 vs 2.0 is a massive miss because that diff isn't starting from 20 years ago, but rather a pre-industrial baseline. So the actual diffs are something more like +0.2 (actual) vs +0.8 (predicted) over that 20 ish year interval, and the prediction of the warming trajectory is off several times. (that is if the movie actually said that, which I didn't check).
  - Timon3 12d ago
    Maybe you should check? Because we definitely weren't at +1.2°C warming in 2006.
wat10000 12d ago
Why are you getting your information from movies?