Posted by tcp_handshaker 2 hours ago
DW also, similar stuff, but the guest is quite good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcl5Mn373Oc
Anton Petrov covered it from a much more science lens a couple months back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRoU3whzX_Q
https://abcnews.com/US/solar-generates-energy-coal-us-1st-ti...
"Solar and storage provided 90% of all new power added in the U.S." is mind blowing. How about we give the US credit for this?
Fossil fuel extraction is not the problem. The problem is fossil fuel usage. Given the world consumes fossil fuel I prefer they use American fossil fuel vs. Russian or Saudi fossil fuels. I don't understand why we are dwelling on the wrong metric here. Also consider the US has just removed a sh~tload of fossil fuels from the world economy. How about some extra credits there?
Similarly data centers are going to get built somewhere. If they're already built I'd rather they are built in places like the US.
Instead of politics and blame we need to focus on markets and let them take care of the problem. This is already happening with solar. Where I would be critical about US policy is that I think they are introducing more tariffs on imported solar panels. This might fit into governments make things worse and hopefully everyone regardless of their political affiliation can push back on this specific item.
The world all going to act together stronger than the markets is not going to happen. You can argue that is unfortunate but it's also where we are.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-a...
1.5% is a //huge// amount. If it was a “drop” in your bucket, it would only hold 67 more of those drops.
In fact, I'm unaware of any new AI data center also being built with 0 carbon generation. Do you have a source?
1.5% of global energy use would be a shocking amount. Aviation is at about 3%. 1.5% of global electricity is about 0.2% of global energy use, a much more manageable figure
that would be 0.3% of global energy use
Why would this not be the energy of running an LED light for 15 minutes?
Doesn't matter what side you're on, it's always "enough water to irrigate 27 soccer fields" or "as much energy as 1/5th of the average hamburger"
June 2026: New coal-fired plants in Anchorage, Alaska, and Mt. Storm, West Virginia, would total 2.85 GW. They would be the first new U.S. coal plants to come online since 2013.
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-announces-850m-moderniz...
Meanwhile in China (from 2023):
China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.
"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...
Meanwhile in India (2026):
India plans to increase its coal production by nearly 100m tonnes to 1.15bn tonnes in the 2025-26 fiscal year to help meet the country’s rising demand for electricity to support economic growth and contend with heatwaves, which have become more severe and more frequent because of the climate crisis.
The planned increases come despite signs that the world is beginning to turn its back on coal in favour of renewable electricity, Global Energy Monitor said.
The US could switch every ICE vehicle to EV's and install solar and wind turbines in every inch of the country and it won't combat what's going on in China, India and other developing countries that rely on coal for cheap energy.
Not according to the federal government's data. BTUs from fossil fuel production set a record last year and is on a faster pace this year. Your bringing up a few coal plants is only tangentially relevant.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec1_3.pdf
> The US could switch every ICE vehicle to EV's and install solar and wind turbines in every inch of the country and it won't combat what's going on in China, India and other developing countries that rely on coal for cheap energy.
Are you familiar with the concept of necessary but not sufficient?
In any event the war with Iran is speeding up the future that was coming anyway. China's EV and solar exports are surging throughout the world. Both China and India have said for many years that their emissions would rise and then fall.
A more fair metric would be Co2 emissions/person and I’m getting
USA 14.3 t, China 8.8 t, EU 5.5 t, India 2.2 t
We don't care about that notion of "fair": the cold hart truth is that China has 1.4 billon people.
Another way to put it: China has one billion more people than there are in the US.
Or another way to put it: 4.1x more people.
Which means China is emitting nearly 3x more Co2 than the US.
Our only hope is that China is using coal and fossil fuels only has a mean to sustain its insane growth while they transition to solar and nuclear (which they also do, at an amazing speed).
Hillbillies and redneck with their gigantic pick-up trucks in the US are really the least of worries.
China's 2025 five year plan targets peak coal before 2030 and might have already reached it in 2026. https://energyandcleanair.org/china-energy-and-emissions-tre...
And FWIW, I don't buy the "but the countries that bred like rabbits for the past few decades are owed their due reserved quota". Having a massive population isn't something you need to be rewarded for, not to mention that the math doesn't even make sense. For China and India to get their "per quota" backlog, we're basically so firmly in self destruction territory that it makes no sense for anyone else to even bother.
Economics is what makes this country work. If converting to renewables makes more money, that's what will happen and the people making the money will find a way to justify it politically.
But in reality entrenched market players have access to political influence that lets them stay entrenched. They’ve spent a lot of money since the Industrial Revolution to make sure we need them.
It’s not a perfect free market. There’s no such thing. Politics has a huge influence in economics and vis versa. They’re intertwined.
Texas is doing something right, that’s for sure. But it’s not so clear what that thing is that the topic can be considered settled without debate.
Serious question.
Climate change is Schroedingers extinction event. It's only bad when you can solve it with solar panels and wind. It's nothing to worry about when you can solve it with fission and eventually fusion.
This criticism would hold more weight if environmentalists held a shred of power.
I am glad that I live far away from the effects but it is sad to think of people losing all kinds of things for the lack of respect of Mother Earth!
Are you not on planet earth? Unless you're on Mars, you're not far away from any effects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycrisis
edit: To be clear, I still think there is time to react, and stop the worst impacts. We just need to get way off the rails of the route that we are currently on. If we put half of the heroic engineering + global capital that we put into fossil fuel extraction into better things, we could get most of the way to the goal. Fossil fuel extraction is like many simultaneous Manhattan Projects. It's nuts what we put into that.
Would be super cool if some of the breakout sessions titled "surviving WWIII," were replaced by "avoiding WWIII."
Ice age was only 6 degrees less than now, half of Europe was under ice
The current estimate is that we're heading for +3C warmer, which is gonna have some big impacts.
If I tell you the Earth is going to get 2 degrees C warmer, Americans are going to think, "2 degrees, not that much, barely noticeable." If you tell them it's 4 degrees F, they'll think, that's not a ton, but it's definitely noticeable.
I thought this too, feeling a bit more smug living in southern Ontario, safer than my family in BC and Alberta next to raging forest fires and potential drought.
But seems we now get a few weeks of forest fire smoke every year even down here in lush green great lakes land.
And the number of tornadoes and ice storms seem to increase every year.
Plus watching the Children of Men style xenophobia and callous disregard for climate refugees set in all over the world.
Blech. I love my kids but I think my perspective would be much different and positive if I'd just remained childless.
Maybe this helps: Think about when we have a fever of "a few degrees", say, instead of 37 degree Celsius, we have 40. It shows that also a few degrees can make a huge difference.
It's like boiling a cup of water vs an Olympic sized swimming pool. The latter is going to take a lot more energy than the former.
Nobody (well, almost nobody, I guess) considered it an explanation or model of climate change.
Turns out humans will always choose status symbols and vanity over facts. Oh well
It's everywhere else that'll be getting record breaking heat/drought and snow, which have been far more damaging. The disaster radius of hurricanes reaches far more inland than just the coast.
Beef production in the US is already down from 30 years ago. At some point you won't be able to raise cows anywhere, less alone feed them. Corn and wheat have seen tremendous fluctuations in the past and will likely continue to fall. Imagine corn yields dropping by more than 80% in the US [1]. Of course MAGA people will probably only notice once the shelves aren't being restocked.
And then they'll blame Obama.
Too often the words are whatever they have to say in order to secure continued membership in the group: The Emperor's New Clothes are a glorious blue today.
P.S: Also, we have always been [about to start|recently victorious] in the [undeclared war|minor excursion] against Irania, and the tariff-free chocolate ration has been raised to twenty grammes per week.
You cannot outrun agriculture and crop failures, infrastructure failures, insurance costs accelerating to properly price the risk, wild fires, etc. US cattle herds are at record lows from climate related input costs. Romanian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian nuclear reactors no longer have enough water to operate. The Colorado River Basin will only continue to dry out. And so on.
Some will be impacted more than others, but everyone will feel some impact, and it potentially will only worsen over time. If you believe in climate change, do your best to mitigate the impact for the remainder of your lifetime. If you don't believe, oh well, good luck.
https://x.com/ZackBornstein/status/1877055187241594986
Londoners Find ‘Horrendous’ Cracks in Their Homes After Successive Heat Waves - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-23/londoners... | https://archive.today/koMaT - August 23rd, 2026
> “The impact that climate change is having is undeniable.” -- Laura Hughes, Head of general insurance at the Association of British Insurers.
> 20%-25%: The average property devaluation as a result of subsidence, according to the Federation of Master Builders
The Age of Unstoppable Wildfires Has Reached Europe - https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-europe-summer-wildfi... | https://archive.today/OjDZH - July 30th, 2026
Climate Change Is Already Showing Up in the Cost of Living - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-24/climate-c... | https://archive.today/EYTqo - April 24th, 2026
Heat Strains US Power Grids That Need Off-Season Repairs - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-19/rising-he... | https://archive.today/K9VF0 - May 19th, 2026
US Spending on Climate Damage Nears $1 Trillion Per Year - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/us-spendi... | https://archive.today/9IJWo - June 17th, 2025
(Texas night time temps are staying high enough [~78F] that the utility equipment does not get time to cool off and cycle, leading to more faults, for example, and the manufacturing supply chain for transformers has a backlog measured in years)
For example, a science model might predict only a 5% drop in global food production. That is easy to ignore because we waste so much food. But that 5% might be enough to trigger countries to impose food export bans, and some dominoes falling later, there are localized famines in particular places with 50% loss of food supply. That then triggers wars. It's impossible to predict if and when such types of event chains will happen. The only way out is to be very conservative, and aggressively defend against failure.
What other endorsement could one possibly need?
Sadly, there is no way to counter a conspiracy theorist because if you question or counter then you are just part of the conspiracy too. Governments know that they need to do stuff but they also know that ignorant voters who read trash tabloid newspapers will vote them out next time because they might have to pay a little more for their electricity or cars.
As we are at or nearing +1.5C now, with global emissions at an all time high [ perhaps peaking soon ] theres a good chance we are headed toward +2.6C by ~2060.
Keep in mind the CO2 stays up there for a long time, centuries, so when we get to net-zero its max-CO2 and therefore max-heat.
There are still ~4 months till peak El Niño, and then some months to spread effects.
Personally, I don't put much faith in weather predictions that are more than a week away.
Unfortunately for where I'm at, the prediction due to el nino is more drought, which sucks because we are already desperately dry. Hopefully the following la nina year will bring us some moisture.