- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.
- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?
- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.
- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.
This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
nine_k 15 hours ago [-]
The current wars in Europe and the Middle East paradoxically push the world towards non-fossil enery like few things did before. Both oil and natural gas prices have skyrocketed on global markets, and will likely rise more, as Ukraine continues to target Russian oil infrastructure, and Houtis continue to stymie Saudi oil exports.
Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
leonidasrup 14 hours ago [-]
The current wars in Europe and the Middle East could paradoxically push the world towards more domestic energy production, be it fossil or non-fossil energy.
For example in reaction to 1973 Arab oil embargo Carter boosted energy efficiency and solar and promoted coal.
"
"America indeed is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and my goal as President of the United States is to see on the world energy markets Arab oil replaced with Illinois coal," Carter told miners and employees of the Old Ben Coal Mine No. 25. He also boasted that the country would, "produce more coal in 1980 than has ever before been produced in the United States of America."
"
>The current wars in Europe and the Middle East could paradoxically push the world towards more domestic energy production, be it fossil or non-fossil energy.
Fossil fuel is still going strong and will probably stay so for the next 50 years. Like I just learned Taiwan makes most of its energy from coal and LNG and is set to denuclearize, which blew my mind given their cutting edge manufacturing economy, but kinda makes sense when you factor in their geography and geopolitics.
3eb7988a1663 11 hours ago [-]
Global fossil fuel usage fell last year. We are on a trajectory to massively cut out fossil fuels and replace them with renewables. This was before global petroleum movement was blocked through the Strait. Check out the juicy details in the Ember 2026 report[0].
Some highlights:
Driven by record solar growth, low-carbon power generation increased by 887 TWh in 2025, outpacing electricity demand growth of 849 TWh. Solar power alone met 75% of the net increase in electricity demand. Together with wind, the two sources met almost all (99%) demand growth. For the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and only the fifth time this century, fossil generation did not rise, recording a small fall of 38 TWh (-0.2%).
The global fall in fossil generation was driven by a historic reversal in fossil trends in China and India, the largest and third-largest fossil power countries globally. 2025 was the first year this century when fossil generation fell in both countries. In China, it fell by 56 TWh (-0.9%), marking the first decline since 2015.
For the first time in 100 years, renewables (33.8%, 10,730 TWh) overtook coal power (33.0%, 10,476 TWh) in the global electricity mix as continued rapid growth in solar and wind pushed the share of renewables above a third of global generation. Coal power dropped 63 TWh (-0.6%) in 2025, marking the first fall since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Combined with continued electricity demand growth, this meant coal fell below a third of global generation for the first time in history.
Fossil fuels are not used only for electricity production, they are also used for heating (low temp, high temp), feed stock for chemical proceses, combustion engines.
phatfish 11 hours ago [-]
It's fun watching the right wing try to square this circle. Especially in the UK where we import most of our fossil fuels.
We could have sovereign control over our energy supply with renewables and electrification. Yay, we become a great sovereign nation free to do whatever we want with our great British energy supply!
But no, the right wing answer is to develop a couple of gas fields in the north sea that would supply a tiny amount of actual energy requirements, and do nothing for prices as it all goes into a global trading platform.
I know the reason, it's hard to say no to all that money from the fossil industry, and walk back decades of indoctrinating your base at their behest. Even if it means making your country energy independent...
throwaway473825 10 hours ago [-]
It's really sad comparing the UK with Norway. The latter did "drill baby drill" before it was cool, but almost exclusively for exports. Some of that money has been invested in rapid electrification - so that Norway can export even more!
Meanwhile, the left in the UK doesn't want to drill (so less money for electrification) while the right in the UK doesn't want to electrify (so less money due to more imports). Why doesn't anyone want to copy the Norwegian model?
rightnutwingjob 9 hours ago [-]
> We could have sovereign control over our energy supply with renewables and electrification
No, you could not.
PorciiVorbesc 12 hours ago [-]
>Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
Except you know, all the actual mining and manufacturing of those things, which isn't in the west but mostly in China.
nine_k 12 hours ago [-]
Before, say, 2022 or 2026 for that reason, oil, coal, lithium, silicon, iron, etc were mined, processed, and shipped as usual. By now, the production and shipping of oil and oil-based fuels, and, to a lesser extent, LNG is hampered by wars. The production and shipping of what is required to build solar, wind, and even nuclear power sources continues, mostly unaffected by the wars, which makes these power sources relatively (even) more attractive.
Sadly, it does not mean that EU or USA grew less dependent on China for solar panels, industrial chemicals, or a lot of other things. OTOH, they did not grow more dependent either.
dalyons 12 hours ago [-]
so what if theyre made in china?
PorciiVorbesc 12 hours ago [-]
So what if all our oil comes from the middle east?
So what if all our gas comes from Russia?
So what if all chips are made in Taiwan?
So what if all mobile platforms are from the US?
Hopefully the penny will start to drop. Any minute now.
nazgul17 12 hours ago [-]
But we are not buying oil or gas. We are buying hardware that will generate electricity for decades.
I do hope the US turns around. As I see it, we (western countries) have aligned values and it's better for us all (US included) to stick together.
3eb7988a1663 12 hours ago [-]
You burn a barrel of oil once. A solar panel lasts for 20+ years. After you have installed it, if China announces they will no longer sell new ones - you have two decades of lead time to start building your own domestically.
xethos 10 hours ago [-]
Either the panels are purchased piecemeal, in which case some have to be replaced every year as your rolling stock fail, or they're replaced in large batches - which would be incredibly predictable, suggesting China would not fill one massive order and then say "No more", assuming they're trying to inflict pain
Either way though, you don't have 20 years to get up to speed.
rightnutwingjob 9 hours ago [-]
No you don’t.
You have 20 years minus one day, as every day elapses.
Existing installed solar capacity is degrading at one day per day.
thelastgallon 7 hours ago [-]
They have 25 year warranty with performance guarantee of 92%. After 25 years, it will continue to work fine, 8% lower output is perfectly acceptable. Most likely will last 50 years or more.
There is no product on the planet that has a a multi decade warranty with this kind of performance guarantee.
thatfrenchguy 12 hours ago [-]
Except you burn the oil once and keep the solar panel and batteries for one or two decades
rightnutwingjob 9 hours ago [-]
You burn a battery only once, too.
jaybrendansmith 11 hours ago [-]
Yup. The best thing Trump did for Climate Change was to start a war with Iran.
jiggawatts 12 hours ago [-]
> Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though;
For now.
The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.
PorciiVorbesc 12 hours ago [-]
>and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years
Can you share your sources for that valuable intelligence? Military analysts would really be interested to learn that. Or is that form the same manufactured scaremongering genre as "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons" and "Iraq has WMDs" to justify endless defense spending, military interventions and warmongering.
> at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production
You can't just commandeer semi fabs like you're carjacking a Hyundai for a joyride. Semi fabs need constant parts and on-prem staff and always-on telemetry from ASML & friends to run. If that's gone, you're left with a very expensive warehouse that can't do shit.
pjc50 2 hours ago [-]
The fabs will not survive a ground invasion. If they're not hit accidentally someone will blow them up to deny them to the enemy, whether that's a Taiwanese nationalist or the US.
It feels like MAD is eroding, because at one point the reaction to China invading Taiwan would obviously have been a nuclear exchange.
rightnutwingjob 9 hours ago [-]
Iran being x weeks away from a working nuclear weapon and Iran not currently having a nuclear weapon are not mutually exclusive scenarios.
Your second paragraph assumes China doesn’t have all the espionage necessary, and hasn’t proven their capabilities on their own labs.
Like the Chinese are just sans neocortex or something.
jiggawatts 11 hours ago [-]
You don't build out a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft, mobile piers, and other similar Navy ships that can only be used for invading another country via the sea... for self-defense. These have one purpose, and China is mass-producing them.
> "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons"
It is the breakout time, not the schedule.
It is incredible to me how pervasive the misunderstanding of this statement is!
I've had real-life conversations with project managers just like this:
PM: "How long would this project take?"
Me: "One month."
... two weeks later ...
PM: "How long would the project take to finish?"
Me: "One month."
PM: "You said that two weeks ago! It should only take two weeks to finish!"
Me: "Why would you think that? We never started the project! It wasn't approved. You didn't approve it, personally. The effort is four weeks. If you approve and we start today, it will still take that long to complete."
... two more weeks later ...
PM: "Why isn't the project finished!? You said one month a month ago!"
Me: "... wat?"
amenhotep 10 hours ago [-]
They obviously want to be able to invade Taiwan, yes, nobody serious would assert that they're developing amphibious capacity for self defence.
That's not the same thing as planning to invade in 2027, though. Militaries can need a capability without an imminent specific plan to actually use it. See the US's amphibious capacity. See nukes.
PorciiVorbesc 10 hours ago [-]
>You don't build out a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft, mobile piers, and other similar Navy ships that can only be used for invading another country via the sea... for self-defense.
Firstly, this take is poorly thought out from a facts perspective, needlessly alarmist and mostly just FUD.
The fact is that China has thousands of islands in its territory already. So how else would their military be able to DEFEND those islands WITHOUT "a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft" capable of landing troops and material on islands that they own? It doesn't mean they 100% WILL invade Taiwan just because they have them, like you claim.
Secondly, the three news sources you then quoted are just your typical clickbaity mainstream media with nothing to lose if they are wrong in their alarmist predictions or just blatantly lie like they often do to manipulate people and financial markets, especially given their incentives and ties to politics and the wealthy elite.
So telling people on HN with 100% certainty China will invade Taiwan in the near future just because you read something about China's drills of Taiwan invasion in the MSM, just gets you more egg on your face that nobody can take your takes on this seriously. I'm 100% sure that the US Navy also regularly has drills on nuking China and Russia from their submarines, that doesn't mean they're actually planning to do it anytime soon with no provocation. So please, stop turning what is bland vanilla news into alarmist FUD.
jiggawatts 9 hours ago [-]
> thousands of islands in its territory already
Chinas has hundreds (not thousands) of islands in its territory, which has increased from 287 in 2019 to 431 in 2026. This is not "defense".
> nobody can take your takes on this seriously.
Russia moved mobile crematoriums up to the Ukraine border in February 2022, and people still dismissed the chances of their invasion as vanishingly unlikely.
Dismissing an obvious military buildup from a country that has plainly stated their intentions is an error.
rainsford 12 hours ago [-]
But the solar panels we already have don't suddenly stop working, which is an important difference between sourcing solar panels from a potential enemy and sourcing raw fossil fuels from one. There's also nothing stopping the US or other trading partners from making solar panels, China is just the most convenient and cheapest source as it is for many other things. And to that point, the end of trade between the US and China would be incredibly damaging to both countries whether or not we buy solar panels from them now.
nine_k 11 hours ago [-]
I asked Claude, and now I know that there are nice, basically undetectable, plausibly deniable ways to render solar panels useless within months, or, with some preparation, days. It seems that open-source, carefully scrutinized panel controller firmware may be critically important.
overfeed 11 hours ago [-]
Your Claude may have been hallucinating - solar panels have no microcontrollers or microprocessors, and hence have no need for firmware. Battery Charge controllers -- that are downstream of panels do have firmware, but even if a booby-trapped firmware were to short-circuit the panels, they'd be undamaged.
nine_k 10 hours ago [-]
Solar panels are usually connected to inverters or other power circuits that make the variable voltage they provide usable as a stable source downstream.
During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).
overfeed 2 hours ago [-]
I will not use any more of my time arguing with Claude via a meat puppet.
seanmcdirmid 12 hours ago [-]
Taiwan cannot make chips without western inputs and spare parts, so China taking over Taiwan or Korea or Japan doesn’t really give them access to making those chips.
nine_k 12 hours ago [-]
Rather, in a case of such an acute confrontation, it denies their adversaries access to the highest-end chips, too.
beloch 15 hours ago [-]
At least they haven't relaxed restrictions on sulfur dioxide emissions, etc.. yet. Making rain acidic again would be completely on brand for this administration.
12 hours ago [-]
actionfromafar 15 hours ago [-]
We might want to at least on the high seas to combat global warming a bit.
selectodude 15 hours ago [-]
The Gulf countries paid handsomely to get Trump in there to keep the United States as the buyer of last resort once the rest of the world goes renewable.
Problem is that installing a bunch of sick sons of bitches to do your bidding can backfire when those some morons lose a war to Iran in a matter of months.
juujian 14 hours ago [-]
Fossil fuel power plants are unfortunately still profitable for their owners (billionaires...). The cost of building them has mostly been written off a long time ago. None of this is about what is good for America in the long run...
thelastgallon 7 hours ago [-]
Most big businesses don't run on competition or profits. They run on free money supply by the Govt.
leptons 13 hours ago [-]
I have to wonder if this is a play towards coal miners, who are part of the conservative base - and they need every vote they can get. Coal is an awful source of power, and a really big source of pollution.
bunderbunder 12 hours ago [-]
I doubt they really care about coal miners’ actual votes. The US coal mining industry employs fewer than 50,000 people. I live in a major coal producing state and while it was an important industry in my grandparents’ time, these days it isn’t a particularly noteworthy share of our economy.
I would say if it’s specifically about coal at all, it’s more because of the GOP’s tendency toward weird nostalgic obsessions.
pjc50 2 hours ago [-]
Entirely seriously, but stupid: it's gender politics. Coal mining is manly coded, renewables are feminine coded and therefore deemed bad by the right.
actionfromafar 14 hours ago [-]
But is it stupid if you want to sell some fossil fuels in the short to medium term?
cubefox 13 hours ago [-]
> - Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it
That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind
That's false. Coal power is cheaper than all of those. Solar and wind include costs for expensive battery backups since they are highly volatile.
And to make it clear: Climate change is very bad so coal plants are very bad. But that doesn't mean you can go around and claim that coal isn't cheap compared to things like solar+batteries. The fact that something is good doesn't imply that it is cheap.
importantstuff 12 hours ago [-]
This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
The levelized cost of electricity for solar (including batteries) and wind is cheaper than coal [2].
> Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it
> That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
1) Am I missing something or the link you provided contradicts your claim? On a chart #2 in the article you can see Germany has only 24% of the times price of electricity set by gas, 24% is not "most of the time", right?
2) Even if that is true, and electricity prices in Germany are set by the price of gas most of the time, it seems like you didn't address the point in a previous message. If the goal is to have lower prices and the goal(outcome) is what really matters not just the process and renewables is the path to get there then why Germany electricity prices rose at the end? And were not all of those because of this ... because of that ... supposed to be a part of that path(plan)? They did the thing, invested in solar, what have they missed and why?
cubefox 6 hours ago [-]
> This price of electricity is high because gas,
Not true. Gas backups are only needed for solar and wind. Gas replaces only battery backups here, which would be even more expensive.
> which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
That's why solar and wind are expensive.
> The levelized cost of electricity for solar (including batteries) and wind is cheaper than coal [2].
Not true. You have to include the required gas backups during the night or calm winds.
consensus1 12 hours ago [-]
I will believe it when I see it. The only countries with both cheap and clean electricity are those that built out extensive nuclear or got lucky enough to have access to other forms of cheap base load like hydro / geothermal.
As an Australian I can say that for me personally the free energy periods have been amazing and are an example of the functional free markets making life better for the average person.
PorciiVorbesc 12 hours ago [-]
Australia hasn't shot itself in the foot like EU's self inflicted policies.
mjmas 12 hours ago [-]
Becaude, as we all know, taxpayer-funded == free.
And we banned nuclear, since it's scary.
tapoxi 12 hours ago [-]
It's not taxpayer funded, the grid has an overabundance of daytime solar that exceeds their capacity to store it.
mjmas 12 hours ago [-]
Here in Queensland the state owns the regional electricity company, Ergon. ∴ most of what they do that doesn't generate money (such as doing free electricity rather than charging for it) is taxpayer-funded.
anenefan 11 hours ago [-]
Even though the power here (North Central Queensland) isn't too expensive, Ergon is run with an aim to make a profit [1] [2] even if the last few years more infrastructure seems to be needing repairs due to changes in weather conditions and or replacing ancient old or relatively new poor quality wooden poles.
Given the power here has periods where it barely goes a day without blinking out, or line repairs that can take almost 2 days now after a somewhat mild storm, there's been a large uptake of solar power panels, those that knew hooked up Island style where they can feed in their own small generator to take advantage of the panels during the day if there was no grid power, more recently batteries have become more affordable, making installation worthwhile.
The Company’s profit after income tax equivalent expense was $80.919 million for the year (2023: $225.754 million loss).
Revenue from sales of electricity is higher when compared to 2023 due to an increase in notified prices as published by the
Queensland Competition Authority in 2024. Residential and small business tariff rates increased significantly for 2024 with price rises of 29 percent and 27 percent respectively. Large business tariff rates rose between seven and 17 percent. Expenses are marginally lower compared to 2023 predominantly due to a reduction in fair value losses. More stable electricity trading conditions contributed to lower market movements on forward electricity derivative contracts.
tadfisher 12 hours ago [-]
Germany's decommissioned nuclear, and subsequent concentration of base load in Russian gas-fired plants, is certainly a lede your post is doing its best to bury.
3eb7988a1663 12 hours ago [-]
Or that Germany shares electricity with the EU, so that everyone is getting subjected to those pains with fuel sources being cut.
cubefox 4 hours ago [-]
> Germany's decommissioned nuclear, and subsequent concentration of base load in Russian gas-fired plants, is certainly a lede your post is doing its best to bury.
Nuclear is good (no CO2 emissions and stable energy supply), but it's not cheaper than coal. Moreover, that the requirement for gas plants went up because of the volatility of solar and wind is certainly a lede your post is doing its best to bury.
XorNot 12 hours ago [-]
Coal isn't cheap. Specifically coal powerplants are not and it's got nothing to do with emissions. One of the pinch points in the Australian power grid has actually been that a bunch of coal plants are aging out and no private enterprise wants to even bother financing their replacement because it's a money loser compared to renewables build out.
Fortunately this is well on it's way to being solved by the massive battery build out which has happened which means evening peak electricity usage has declined enormously[1] - i.e the primary "sun not shining" point of the day is rapidly turning into an energy use low point for the grid (which makes sense: business powers down, people go home and their batteries which have been charging cover cooking - I have an induction cook top and a 10kw inverter covers everything).
There could be other regulatory and tax hurdles to an Australian coal build-out. We know that coal is at least as cheap as nuclear, and that the electricity prices went up sharply when Germany replaced much of its nuclear energy with solar energy. Therefore coal is cheaper than solar. The mistake that most people make is that they don't include the highly expensive battery or gas backups during the night in the cost of solar.
bjourne 13 hours ago [-]
You are 100% right but I think your arguments will fall on deaf ears. Someone bribed Trump or one of his cronies to revoke pollution limits and they got it. What to do when rationality just isn't a factor in politics anymore?
maxnevermind 12 hours ago [-]
> - Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
Is not Germany an example of the opposite? I mean their decision to shut down nuclear plants while getting dependant on Russian supply of energy sources?
A thought is that from 'their' perspective the potential loss of power and status on the tip top of things is to them existential. Consider a certain Senator being wheeled into the Senate to vote. Why even subject ones self to that. Because to step down is annihilation. There was another Senator in 2023 being wheeled around the same way.
So all of this is performative asserting power in order to punish anyone seen as a threat to the current system.
reactordev 16 hours ago [-]
Full steam ahead towards greenhouse gases, climate change, and +5degree temperatures. Why not?
bayindirh 16 hours ago [-]
Because 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.
throw0101a 11 hours 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:
Lobbyists lies a foot. “We can’t provide more power with these pesky regulations”
cyanydeez 15 hours ago [-]
Disaster capitalism is pretty much current AI is to future AI use
tosapple 16 hours ago [-]
define 'climate pollution', this is all fine and well until they apply it to nuclear shielding.
harimau777 14 hours ago [-]
I'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 14 hours 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 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah, 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?
The 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 15 hours ago [-]
There’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.
pjc50 15 hours ago [-]
Well yes, every piece of industry ends up contributing to climate change, but data centers are the one that's having a massive expansion in the west.
bayindirh 15 hours ago [-]
> Climate Change is a big industrial-complex.
Can you tell us more about it, honestly, sounds interesting.
jmclnx 15 hours 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.
blooalien 15 hours 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...
8 hours ago [-]
sippingabonedry 15 hours 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.
alexgieg 15 hours 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 15 hours 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 15 hours 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 12 hours ago [-]
You can't bring back something that was never there
AnimalMuppet 12 hours 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.
486sx33 12 hours ago [-]
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121789 15 hours ago [-]
is this supposed to refute the parent comment's point?
alexgieg 15 hours ago [-]
Complement.
layer8 15 hours 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 15 hours ago [-]
And coal is mostly flat, while electricity demand is going up.
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.
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!
piva00 14 hours ago [-]
I don't see the USA building out that much solar in its vast desert wastelands.
harimau777 14 hours 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.
consensus1 12 hours 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 12 hours 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.
counters 13 hours 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 12 hours ago [-]
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bayindirh 15 hours 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 14 hours ago [-]
Last year France produced 94% of electricity from low-carbon sources, that is impressive.
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 13 hours 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 10 hours 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).
matthewdgreen 2 hours ago [-]
This is HN. This is a site for engineers. We’re discussing one of the largest and fastest energy buildouts in the history of humanity, larger by orders of magnitude than anything that’s come before. You can hate China if you want, but then you should be scared and worried. Minimizing the scale of what they’re doing isn’t interesting.
throw0101a 11 hours 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):
Then you put a 'carbon tariff' on imports for any country that does not have a similar system (e.g., EU's CBAM).
SanjayMehta 10 hours 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?
RockIslandLine 2 hours ago [-]
Any nation is free to set a good example.
9 hours ago [-]
dalyons 12 hours ago [-]
coal usage has declined there the last two years. Would have declined even more this year, except for a certain very smart war.
Hikikomori 13 hours 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.
billfor 14 hours 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 12 hours 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 12 hours 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 12 hours ago [-]
Maybe you should check? Because we definitely weren't at +1.2°C warming in 2006.
wat10000 12 hours ago [-]
Why are you getting your information from movies?
0xy 14 hours ago [-]
US 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.
tzs 6 hours ago [-]
It 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.
Timon3 13 hours ago [-]
Since 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.
nxm 14 hours ago [-]
Don't forget India as well
tzs 6 hours ago [-]
India 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.
SanjayMehta 10 hours ago [-]
India increased renewables drastically in the last 10-12 years.
And 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).
JungleGymSam 13 hours ago [-]
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warumdarum 15 hours ago [-]
Because 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.
sippingabonedry 16 hours ago [-]
Sorry 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.
toast0 15 hours ago [-]
> WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power.
Have a closer look at the hydro dams that have been removed for salmon habitat.
From what I've seen capacity was tens of MegaWatts [1] and some were just for irrigation. Meanwhile, large dams [2] are doing gigawatts.
Large dams also have negative environmental effects and maybe one day they'll get removed too, but accepting the tradeoff for large amounts of power makes more sense than destroying samon fishing to get irrigation water or a piddly amount of power.
Especially at a time when electrical power use was trending down due to efficiency gains and offshoring manufacturing, and samon fisheries were in danger of failing, it made sense to remove dams that weren't terribly productive. And start considering actually doing the work to make the larger dams fish friendly, eventually.
There’s no way for you to know that. You don’t do the math. People like me, who work in the clean energy industry, do the math. The math works fine. You should try working as hard as the math does, instead of complaining.
reactordev 15 hours ago [-]
Solar and wind is extremely reliable. What isn’t reliable is deployment of it.
Energy storage is required along with solar farms.
sippingabonedry 15 hours ago [-]
Until 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.
alexgieg 15 hours ago [-]
There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example. It consists of heating something very big that holds a lot of heat and releases it slowly, then using that stored heat to generate electricity while it cools down. This isn't suitable for home use, but at the city scale, or larger, it's quite efficient:
> There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example.
Yeah, there's also pumped water storage, and other forms of gravity/kinetic storage, various means of chemical energy storage, and all kinda other neat battery-like ideas folks have been trying/using.
aaronmdjones 12 hours ago [-]
The UK has Dinorwig power station, a pumped hydro station capable of storing over 9 GWh of energy. This alone rivals the entire combined 10.5 GWh of battery storage across the whole country. It certainly seems much more feasible when you have the terrain to allow it.
WarmWash 15 hours ago [-]
Enough 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 15 hours ago [-]
Fear really IS the mindkiller! Stop being afraid and start educating yourself. You are on HN, you are supposed to be smart.
sippingabonedry 15 hours ago [-]
Smart people understand pragmatism, which means not throwing the baby out with the bath water in the name of ill thought-out feel-good measures.
rainsford 14 hours ago [-]
You're not being pragmatic, you're being myopic. Our current energy systems are the result of deliberate complex work. It seems shortsighted to think it's somehow the only system that can ever be built just because other systems have new challenges to overcome.
harimau777 14 hours ago [-]
That is literally what you are doing right now.
outside1234 15 hours ago [-]
Fox brain alert!
We have batteries for this. See Texas and California.
watwut 15 hours ago [-]
This gets tiring. No, china has no electricity problem in the night and their share of solar is off the roof.
UncleMeat 11 hours ago [-]
Oh yes, as opposed to the famously free from abuse oil and gas industry.
jsbisviewtiful 15 hours ago [-]
What an opinion to have when thus far evidence has concluded the opposite. Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors doesn’t make the anti-renewable parrots correct. There are situations where —at minimum- hybrid solutions are far more viable options but for many locations just those two solutions work very well.
sippingabonedry 15 hours ago [-]
> Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors
Speaking of infrastructure, how about pushing a mass rollout of EVs before giving a single consideration as to where the charging infra would come from?
rainsford 14 hours ago [-]
That seems like a pretty bad example considering the rising popularity of EVs has coincided with an enormous grown in available charging infrastructure to service the EV customer base. It's almost like human society can handle complex, interdependent systems as they change, either through deliberate organization or natural market incentives.
It's not like the current mix of electrical generation and fossil fuel distribution is some naturally occurring phenomenon or alien technology. It's an enormously complex and interdependent system we built. I'm pretty confident we can build new and different things.
piva00 14 hours ago [-]
Charging infra would only exist if there's demand for it, if you have a better solution for this catch-22 I'm all ears.
Though it looks like rolling out EVs before the charging network existed worked, there are thousands upon thousands of chargers now that there are enough vehicles to use them.
wat10000 12 hours ago [-]
Are you from the past?
lemmetellya 14 hours ago [-]
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phtrivier 14 hours ago [-]
From the wording, it's not clear if the ruling (from 2024) had any impact on power plant running today, or newly built one (it seems like it was mandating carbon capture eventually.)
The "good" news is that coal plants are already suboptimal, economically. This is delaying the closure of existing plans, which is just absurd, but completely on brand for the political party that people voted in office, with complete knowledge of what would happen.
I suppose they also voted for "cheaper groceries" and "no more endless wars", but that will come any time soon.
tialaramex 12 hours ago [-]
I know HN has lots of American readers, so maybe they can explain.
Why aren't the vast majority of America's suburban single family dwellings using rooftop solar? Huge numbers of Americans live in these homes - they're not so much a thing, especially to this degree, in other countries and they seem basically ideal for rooftop solar.
Am I missing something here?
thelastgallon 7 hours ago [-]
1) The Roof Explanation
US homes are stick built. The roofs are not concrete, they are shingles. This is the single biggest bottleneck. On concrete, its super easy to add a simple steel frame, add panels and done.
Shingles have a shelf life of ~25 years. Most people buy old homes. And the roof is somewhere in the middle of its life. Its usually better to replace the roof and add solar at the same time.
The people who buy new homes have already maxed out their budget (people buy the biggest home they can afford, maxing out the downpayment) and they aren't thinking of adding solar rightaway.
2) Americans are pro fossil fuel (thanks to fossil fuel shills). Installers spend a third to half the money on door to door salesmen. This cost is absent in other countries.
3) US govts make solar unbelievably costly, by regulatory capture, tarriffs, banning panels from China. And they create perverse incentives of subsidies which make the installation costlier because it has to go through licensed installer to avail of the subsidy. The licensed installers always charge top dollar because its a captured market.
apexalpha 4 hours ago [-]
Virtually all roofs in the Netherlands aren't concrete but wood frames with ceramic tiles. The PV is just attached to the wooden frame, not the shingles or tiles.
Shingles have a shelf life of ~25 years. Most people buy old homes. And the roof is somewhere in the middle of its life. Its usually better to replace the roof and add solar at the same time.
You can just take off the PV when replacing a roof, costs a few hundred if you don't want to do it yourself. Trivial compared to the cost of a new roof and probably less than the savings in the meantime they're on the old roof.
rainsford 12 hours ago [-]
Rooftop solar in the US is incredibly expensive from most installers even as panel prices have come down and energy prices are typically low enough that the payoff time and up-front cost are seen as not worth it for many people. The US also has a lot of homes where (cheap) natural gas is used for cooking, heating, and hot water, which you'd have to continue paying for even after you installed solar panels or pay a lot of money to convert to electrical equivalents.
That said, I know a lot of people who have recently installed solar panels on their roof and it's increasingly worth it from a financial perspective. The other thing worth noting though is that while cool, rooftop solar really isn't the best approach to installing solar capacity compared to grid scale solar farms on land which also tends to be abundant in the US.
oxag3n 11 hours ago [-]
Most houses are old and many in shit condition, you'd want at least replace shingles before installing solar.
Everything becomes harder and expensive - no more standard gutter cleaning fee (200-300 bucks per average roof). For damp subclimates no more moss treatment possible.
For many houses you'd need structural engineer assessment to make sure roof can add such a load.
Many vents and outlets need to be relocated to cover large and nice area with the panels.
Dealing with contractors on standard things is such a pain already in US - expensive, many unskilled, trying to get more money out of your pocket. When they see someting expensive or non-standard their attitude changes even more.
kileywm 12 hours ago [-]
The data that I've seen shows that the barriers to solar adoption for the average American home are high installation cost, low grid power cost, unfavorable net metering agreements for grid interconnect, and even some pushback from neighborhood committees (homeowners association aka HOA).
There are exceptions such as Hawaii where grid power is expensive and sunshine abundant, but the US is big, geographically diverse, and because of that adoption varies greatly on regional dynamics.
ButlerianJihad 12 hours ago [-]
Tech workers located in South Africa and nearby regions suffer, because the power grid there is unreliable at best. Therefore, those workers may be required by employers to prove that they have arranged for reliable backup power and network connections in order to stay connected (nearly to the antipodes) and ensure that their performance is competitive with workers located in stable regimes with robust power grids and network backbones.
It may seem unfair or unnecessary for US employers to require US employees to have a UPS, solar array, a redundant network connection, etc. But if employers required these things up-front, surely some tech workers could step up to the challenge and perhaps even be distinguished from those who don't get it.
newAccount2025 12 hours ago [-]
It’s expensive? We were quoted 60k last year. Maybe a scammy company but that’s a lot up front.
kg 12 hours ago [-]
Some speculative answers based on what I know:
1. A lot of single family dwellings are occupied by renters. In this scenario, the renter has no ability to install rooftop solar, and the owner has no incentive to install rooftop solar because the renter is paying the energy bills. (The same goes for things like installing high-efficiency heat pumps etc.)
2. HOA regulations can block things like rooftop solar depending on where you live.
3. The up-front investment involved in rooftop solar can be prohibitive for many people. Things like tax incentives can help but we've been getting rid of those under the current administration, and tax incentives only go so far if your tax return is 6+ months away.
infamia 15 hours ago [-]
This headline is rather sweeping considering the modest nature of the change, which is merely rolling back regulations to 2024 levels.
davmar 15 hours ago [-]
you're comparing years, not standards. i hope you're just foolish and not intentionally disingenuous.
"The 2024 standards required existing coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of carbon emissions or shut down by 2039, which would have reduced carbon pollution by an estimated 1.38 billion metric tons through 2047"
Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all.
infamia 14 hours ago [-]
My point is that after a large change, reversion to the mean should not be treated breathlessly, but viewed in a measured manner.
> Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all.
This is an exaggeration that stretches credulity, since there have been strict limits for decades around secondary outputs that are required by power plant energy production effectively limiting production and emissions (which is the entire point).
davmar 12 hours ago [-]
The 2024 plan would have reduced annual CO₂ emissions by about 533 million metric tons by 2040. That's roughly equivalent to taking half of all U.S. passenger cars and light-duty trucks off the road.
With the rollback, that reduction will no longer occur. So, this is significant.
wat10000 12 hours ago [-]
Imagine you’re driving headlong toward a cliff. Someone turns the steering wheel a little, not nearly enough, but it’s a small part of an attempt to steer away from the cliff.
Then somebody else comes along and steers back.
How measured should the reaction to this be?
14 hours ago [-]
deepfriedchokes 15 hours ago [-]
If everyone votes, this will be overturned in a couple years.
eapressoandcats 15 hours ago [-]
The good news is the war with Iran has done more to curtail greenhouse gas emissions than basically anything domestically Trump can do.
Violently demonstrating the geopolitical liability of relying on Greenhouse Gasses is more compelling than more climate conferences apparently.
rayiner 15 hours ago [-]
I don't see the point of trying to redefine "pollution" to include CO2. We have been discussing climate change for decades, but it was only recently that people tried to shoehorn CO2 into category of "pollution." It just takes a category where society has some consensus and then shoehorns some new disputed idea into existing category. It's an end-run around the process of building consensus around the new thing.
Rygian 15 hours ago [-]
The first ever version of the "Greenhouse gas" wikipedia page lists CO₂ as the first such gas (besides water vapor, obviously disregarded).
Don't be so sure about "obviously" when they start talking about "water vapor emissions"...
rayiner 15 hours ago [-]
I'm talking about redefining the term "pollution," not the term "greenhouse gas."
applfanboysbgon 15 hours ago [-]
Carbon dioxide atmospheric pollution has been acknowledged since literally the 1800s. What era are you from? Are you 200 years old?
rayiner 14 hours ago [-]
Did we call it “pollution” back then or something else? That is, did we lump CO2 conceptually into the same category as soot from coal plants and things like that?
Society uses labels to group things together so that we can treat similar things similarly for various purposes. For example, when we talk about “education” we usually mean teaching kids in schools or colleges. Of course, there’s lots of other things you can call “education.” But if the Department of Education comes in and says it’s going to regulate technical presentations at software conferences because that’s also “education,” then you’d say: “that’s not what people mean by the word education in this context.” That is, we have a consensus about what “education” encompasses and what it doesn’t for purposes of government regulation, and seminars at conferences falls outside that understanding.
pjc50 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, labels matter; so let's take a step back and ask why you're fighting this argument? Why does it matter which of the harmful emissions from a smokestack count as "pollution"?
rayiner 13 hours ago [-]
> Why does it matter which of the harmful emissions from a smokestack count as "pollution"?
Because society uses labels to delineate the boundaries between different legal regimes and sources of authority, and adhering to those boundaries is important. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) can't point to the traffic on a fiber cable within a data center and say it falls within their jurisdiction because that's also "communications."
It's especially important in this context, because the half-century-old laws and regulations designed to control soot emissions from factory smokestacks is ill-suited to managing CO2 emissions. The fundamental premise of the Clean Air Act is that pollution can be controlled at the source with control technologies (RACT, BACT, etc.).
This focus on control technologies puts well-defined guardrails on the EPA. The EPA can't go around making big decisions about how factories work or what people produce. They can simply tell you to put the best reasonably available scrubbers on your factory. That approach completely breaks down when it comes to CO2, because there is no such thing as a "CO2 scrubber." Treating CO2 as a pollutant puts the EPA into a role of supervising the energy sector that the agency simply was never designed to do.
pjc50 15 hours ago [-]
IPCC first report was 1990, and the basic arithmetic of the atmosphere goes even further back.
It uses the term “greenhouse gas” to refer to CO2 and uses the term “air pollution” to refer to what people traditionally think of as air pollution. For example, in one place of says: “Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g., by air pollution).” So that’s treating “CO2 enrichment” (emissions) as distinct from “air pollution.”
throwyawayyyy 14 hours ago [-]
I was battling global warming in Civ endgames in 1991...
AnimalMuppet 15 hours ago [-]
I think you miss rayiner's point. He's not disputing whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas. He's saying that doesn't make it a "pollutant" as the term was understood at the time, say, the EPA was created. There was no congressional legislation that said that it was something the EPA was empowered to regulate. Then the EPA decided to regulate it anyway (and, yes, won the court case about whether it could). But it was still shoehorned in, as it was not considered a pollutant in the way that NO2 or particulates or chlorine were.
henearkr 12 hours ago [-]
It is not weird at all.
A completely useful (and consistent with the modern usage of the word) definition of "pollution" can be worded as:
"anthropogenic alteration of the open environment with negative consequences on ecosystems or society".
Have you heard about noise pollution? Match it with the definition above.
CO2 emitted by combustion from human activities is orders of magnitude more than what any natural biological process emits.
Now you can see why CO2 emitted by fossil fuels combustion is, by any logic, pollution.
rayiner 11 hours ago [-]
So should the EPA be able to regulate noise pollution?
The problem with your definition is that it encompasses basically all of society. Everything humans do alters the environment, mostly for the worse. By embracing such an expansive definition of “pollution,” you’d turn the EPA into a super-regulator of vast swaths of the economy.
Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules. You don’t put logic for process scheduling inside a file system module. It’s the same problem with treating CO2 as an air pollutant. Power generation is 1/6 of the economy. The mix of power generation sources the country should have isn’t just an environmental question. It cuts across society—it implicates the economy, national security, industrial policy, etc. Consider, for example, how Germany’s over-reliance on Russian gas turned into a national security problem for them after Russia invaded Ukraine. An environmental regulator isn’t at the right level to be making that decision.
henearkr 10 hours ago [-]
Yes the EPA should be able to regulate noise pollution too, unless maybe if another agency is doing that job.
No, there is no issue to have that definition encompassing all of what in society causes damage to the open environment[1].
Note that your wording, "encompasses [...] all of society", does not correspond to my stance. It only encompasses what causes negative externalities in the way I defined.
It is crucial that there exist such an agency (EPA) that examines these environmental negative externalities (let's just call it pollution now, as it is so defined), and considers ways to limit it.
Each agency has its own axis, and it is the combination of them that is effective: if you only leave the energy sector to e.g. the USEA (US Energy Association), they won't have the incentive, definition, or analysis axis in the direction of looking at human health or forests decline, purely because it is not in their definition or their statuses.
Similarly, if you are left with just the EPA, they won't provide the expertise to evaluate if this or that type of electricity generation is feasible and with which kind of technology.
It just the division of expertise, the division of labor, and that's why scientists and engineers work together across domains!
[1]: damage should be defined relative to a severely detrimental impact to the biosphere or to human society. The environment is understood to be open as defined by not having clear boundaries that may, for example, keep the impact strictly contained within the limits of a volume property of the agent of this impact. Air is typically not contained in such a delimited volume, and is thus open environment. Water also flows freely and is connected to e.g. big bodies of water. And so on.
---
About "modules":
"Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules."
The "energy" module cares about the watt-hours produced but doesn't care about the cancer caused by the smoke!!
(or, for CO2, about the planet-scale extinction event caused by raising temperatures, or the multiplying forest fires)
Thus you need the "pollution assessment and mitigation" module!
There. Proved to you that I am a SE :))
watwut 15 hours ago [-]
This is ridiculous. There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition. Seriously. The only end run around consensus are lies like "CO2 as polution is a novel thing".
rayiner 15 hours ago [-]
> There is no redefinition, it was always part of definition.
Source?
wyre 15 hours ago [-]
You need a source showing you that greenhouses gasses aren't pollution?
The thing that is also known as "air pollution"?
I want to tell you to stop being a moron, but its against this site's TOS.
rayiner 14 hours ago [-]
In the 1990 IPCC report it talks about “greenhouse gasses” and also about “air pollution” but treats those as two distinct things: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/ipcc_90_92_a.... For example, on page 97, it says “CO2 enrichment” may “enhance plant growth,” but that “enhanced levels of air pollution could also reduce this positive effect.” There’s it’s clearly talking about CO2 and air pollution as two different things that have opposite effects on plant growth.
Is the IPCC also “morons?”
wyre 14 hours ago [-]
Do you have zero critical thinking skills?
CO2 can be pollution while still allowing plants to grow, plants use CO2 in their growth cycle, if you didn't know, they don't use other greenhouse gases to grow.
Page 9 lists CO2 as the first item in a list of greenhouse gases. I don't want to spend all day read this 37 year old report.
In what world are greenhouse gases not air pollutants?
rayiner 13 hours ago [-]
You don't have to read the whole report, just search for how it uses the words "greenhouse gases" and "air pollution." The IPCC treats those as being two distinct things.
For example, on p. 55.
> "Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution)"
That clearly refers to "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors"--something different from "CO2 enrichment" (rising CO2 levels). The report uses the same terminology on pp. 88 and 97. Throughout the report, it treats "greenhouse gasses" as it's own category that can interact with "air pollution"--but is different from air pollution.
Greenhouse gas refers to any type of gas that makes up our atmosphere. Air pollution are substances entering the atmosphere that degrade air quality and human health.
Therefore air pollution is always going to be a greenhouse gas, but not every greenhouse gas is going to be air pollution.
CO2 is the principle man-made GHG that all the others are compared against. CO2 is what the IPCC refers to as long-lived climate forcer, which are gases that have a warming effect on the scale of decades, fitting the definition of air pollution.
CO2 is a pollutant and has been for as long as humans have been pumping out tons of it into the atmosphere.
xyzzyz 14 hours ago [-]
In a world as of a couple years ago, when nobody called CO2 “air pollutant”.
henearkr 12 hours ago [-]
It's a pollutant in quantities such as emitted by human activities, always orders of magnitude more than what any terrestrial life form emits through respiration.
This GHG is emitted (alongside methane, by the way), by humans, in such quantities that it severely impacts the thermal balance of the planet, and threatens an extinction-event comparable to what only large asteroids are usually capable of.
watwut 14 hours ago [-]
But that is a lie. CO2 was air polutant 30 years ago 20 years ago and basically forever.
It is only in the post-truth society of right wing anti-climate influencers that apparently someone tries to redefine the terms to exclude it.
card_zero 13 hours ago [-]
I have also vaguely noticed that it started being called pollution sometime this century. "Huh, that's new", I thought. Not particularly surprising, though. Of course that timespan is almost 30 years, so my concept of recent change might be getting stretched.
But yeah, more familiar pollutants are dirty or caustic or radioactive, and chew holes in things or give you lung diseases or poison the wildlife, things like that, so it was a little jarring. Though I suppose we had CFCs, they didn't do anything directly harmful either.
rayiner 13 hours ago [-]
If it was always this way, explain why the IPCC's seminal report on climate change uses the phrases "CO2 enrichment" (rising CO2 levels) and "air pollution" as if they're two different categories?
> 2.2.4 Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution).
Help me parse this according to your understanding that "CO2 was an air pollutant 30 years ago." If CO2 is a subcategory of "air pollution," then it makes no sense to list "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors." It wouldn't be grammatical. The report uses this basic sentence structure, referring to "CO2 enrichment" as one thing in distinction to "other environmental factors" including "air pollution" several times. Explain to me how that's consistent with your position?
henearkr 11 hours ago [-]
Yes (I agree with you, I am just trying to rephrase to make your point even more punchy).
It has been a pollutant as soon as it has started to be emitted at large scale through combustion, in particular of fossil fuels.
People who deny it are usually very brain-washed by far-right/alt-right propaganda, which tries to hammers into their brains that "it's just the same stuff that you exhale when you breathe".
They don't understand (or rather, they haven't been told!) that the scales are incommensurate.
thomasjeff1 6 hours ago [-]
Why keep the planet habitable for these peasants. We have our space stations soon. Let the peasants suffer and die.
thelastgallon 7 hours ago [-]
Soon we'll see a Manhattan Project for a coal powered car. Followed by coal powered Fridge and AC.
outside1234 15 hours ago [-]
Can’t wait for this to cost us 10 times more in bailing out underwater Florida
bentt 13 hours ago [-]
Crazy idea: Power Plants could still do the right thing.
bdangubic 13 hours ago [-]
Power Plants answer to the shareholders, hence…
tavavex 14 hours ago [-]
This comment thread shows that, if anything, the Americans want this. If they released exhaust fume inhalers, the majority of the US population would willingly buy one and take hit after hit to disprove the myth of weird, alien things like "caring about the environment" while quietly wheezing about "but China..." to themselves.
sbseitz 12 hours ago [-]
Certainly this will benefit the citizens!
mbgerring 15 hours ago [-]
This is cope. Oil, gas, and coal are dead, and with them, America’s control over the global financial system, and its political hegemony.
America is actively ceding the future to China, and our ruling class have no ideas left other than looting the place as it’s burning to the ground.
> By 2025, coal accounted for approximately 54.6% of China's electricity generation
mbgerring 11 hours ago [-]
The linked article doesn’t say what you think it does.
It says that China’s use of coal this year is increasing after a multi-year trend of leveling off or decreasing, mainly because China is using coal in place of LNG imports made more expensive due to the U.S. attacks against Iran.
The overall trend is very clear — China is expanding both its supply of electricity, and generation from renewable sources, at the same time. Which we should also be doing in the United States.
dmix 10 hours ago [-]
Leveling off means it's declining as a percentage share of all energy usage... but China's total energy usage has grown massively during that time, and so has investment in coal business which has kept up with demand. See in chart form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_China#/media/...
> 2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024, even though India operates the world’s second-largest coal power fleet. https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/built-peak-coal-pow...
The last time the US built a large new coal operation was 13yrs ago. China has done great things with renewables and nuclear, but that's because they build absolutely everything available, which is why their energy is so much cheaper in China than North America and Europe. Which translates into manufacturing plants being much cheaper to run.
thelastgallon 5 hours ago [-]
Coal in China has many applications beyond simply burning it to produce electricity.
NFTs never made sense. You're buying a short URL on a blockchain in the hopes that it'll somehow retain value. The URL could go bad, it could be pointed at something else, etc. But what NFTs did was induce demand for crypto, particularly Ethereum. That was the point.
For a long time I thought we went to war for oil. No, that's backwards. Our oil dependence exists to induce demand for weapons. I will once again refer to the article No one goes to war over a solar panel [1].
So when you see things like pollution limits being lifted on power plants because of data centers, know that the ultimate driving force is the sale of weapons.
Let me give a concrete example. If I drill a well in West Texas that produces, say, 1000 barrels per day ("bpd"). It doesn't produce that forever. As the pressure goes down, the daily production goes down. In the industry this is called the decline rate. For the Permian Basin, the decline rate of any oil well is typically 15-20% per year. So in year 2, that well will produce 800-850bpd. In year 3, it'll be ~650-700. In year 4 it'll be 500-550.
So if you rely on oil you constantly need to be building new wells to maintain your same production level. For the US, which produces 13-15Mbpd of oil, that means you need to add 2Mbpd of new wells every year just to maintain that level of production.
Oil wells, like any form of resource extraction, are excellent wealth concentrators. They make people rich. If I put up 1GW of solar panels then, apart from some cleaning and general maintenance, they're going to produce 1GW of electricity every year (with some variance for sunshine). Nobody gets rich from that. And nobody needs to go to war for that. Which means nobody gets rich from selling weapons to secure that oil.
nfts were about trying to make inherently not scare things scarce, and to try to get people involved in a ponzi scheme
the oil being drilled and mined is exceptionally useful, and people buy it even when you dont need to go to war or get weapons. War would still be happening in the middle east without oil, its a key trade route between Europe and Asia.
the oil dependence exists because it lets people get work and labour done without hiring labourers.
if you put up 1GW of solar panels, you will definitely get rich off of that, and whenever people start building giant solar farms in borth africa, we will see armed militas conquering each other for control over the profits
tialaramex 12 hours ago [-]
> if you put up 1GW of solar panels, you will definitely get rich off of that
You're going to spend maybe a billion dollars to build your solar farm, maybe you get somebody to lend you the billion dollars at 4% annual interest for 10 years,
Your panels make maybe 1.5 TWh of electricity each year, you can sell that for maybe $50 per MWh, so that's $75M per year. But the interest on your loan was $40M, so after year one your owe $965M, after the ten year loan finishes you still owe almost $600M and your panels are now ten years old.
It's just a normal business venture, if you've got people who can execute and a favourable environment it should work, like if you opened a fast food chain, or a dry clean business or a distillery. This is completely different from resource owners, who instead are just granted ownership of a finite natural resource.
EgregiousCube 16 hours ago [-]
Worth noting that the limits being revoked have only been in place less than two years.
ourmandave 16 hours ago [-]
Also worth noting that they are being revoked.
AlecSchueler 16 hours ago [-]
Why is that notable?
mathisfun123 15 hours ago [-]
Because how else would you plant the seeds of doubt that this decision is fucked.
AnimalMuppet 15 hours ago [-]
Because without noting that, "revoked" sounds like all limits are being removed, rather than that we're back to the 2024 limits.
lemmetellya 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Grimeton 14 hours ago [-]
I'm so tired of this.
Please someone bring back people with critical thinking abilities.
nxm 14 hours ago [-]
Like the greens in Germany who decided it's best to shut down nuclear power plants?
Timon3 13 hours ago [-]
It's eerie how often this lie gets repeated here.
It wasn't the Greens that decided this for Germany. It was our conservatives, the CDU/CSU. The latter had high-ranking officials literally threaten to step down, unless Germany exits nuclear energy production.
Grimeton 6 hours ago [-]
The greens could have stopped it, especially after the invasion started, but they did it anyway.
Ideology > common sense.
Timon3 1 hours ago [-]
How? Most of the power plants had already been decommissioned! The CDU had years and years to stop it. The Greens only had the option to prolong the lifetime of the last power plants, which they did.
Ideology > critical thinking
bamboozled 13 hours ago [-]
What does this have to do with being a fat, dumb, greedy asshole with no brains?
mathh 15 hours ago [-]
This is deeply outrageous and criminal. Every American should be ashamed.
csto12 15 hours ago [-]
I mean we elected an outrageous criminal into office. I think we are in a post-shame society.
bamboozled 13 hours ago [-]
How “conservative”, revolting people.
ck2 15 hours ago [-]
well, for the next 800 days
or can a dictator president do this at all without congress?
btw how many gallons of crude oil do you think the Epstein Memorial Ballroom can hold?
because we're going to need a new strategic oil reserve, he destroyed the current system by bottoming it out
yongjik 15 hours ago [-]
The real irony is that, despite all this, Trump may accidentally become the greenest US president by driving up the price of oil for the whole world. For years to come.
I mean, anyone can say they're for the environment, but are you willing to start a war, lose a midterm, and murder a school full of kids to reduce your carbon footprint? /s
zaik 14 hours ago [-]
He should be awarded the FIFA Environment Protection prize.
14 hours ago [-]
JungleGymSam 14 hours ago [-]
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behole 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tifik 16 hours ago [-]
I think it will be downvoted for being unnecessarily inflamatory.
totallymike 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nxm 14 hours ago [-]
Nothing like trying to be the tough guy on an message board....
Hikikomori 13 hours ago [-]
Feeling called out huh
userbinator 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Razengan 15 hours ago [-]
You should go live in the vicinity of an area polluted by a factory or power plant.
totallymike 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
userbinator 13 hours ago [-]
You're the idiot for believing the propaganda. The doomers were screaming about this shit decades ago. So many predictions that never actually happened.
totallymike 11 hours ago [-]
God you’re just adorable
bethekidyouwant 16 hours ago [-]
The 2024 standards required existing coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of carbon emissions or shut down by 2039.
- wow 2039. So this already had no teeth. We can just pass this law again in 2029.
SomeHacker44 16 hours ago [-]
Not a law. A regulation. If it were a law, it would have required Congress to change. Not that that would likely have stopped this administration.
fakedang 16 hours ago [-]
That's because the technology is already there, if plants were willing to run at a bit of a higher OpEx and add some CapEx. Amine scrubbing coupled with decades-old technology like Rotary Packed Beds Reactors can already capture 90% of CO2 at minimum. The UAE's Ruwais facility already does this onsite and uses the captured CO2 for Enhanced Oil Recovery (aka fracking for the last bits of oil in wells). This has the benefit of sequestering CO2 while also not using water for fracking as an option.
rassimmoc 16 hours ago [-]
I think this is good idea. I am not against combating climate change, but it can't come at the expanse of our economy. If you disagree stop using whatever device you are reading this on.
berofeev 13 hours ago [-]
Do you have children?
GreenVulpine 15 hours ago [-]
Good to see some action away from "climate" regulations ruining the energy sector and making everything downstream more expensive. You can't have a booming industrial economy without cheap energy. And no, having strict regulations that just end up moving production offshore doesn't solve anything. It just moves to pollution to China or India or whatever.
dumberquestions 15 hours ago [-]
We're already paying for and will continue to pay more for the downstream effects of climate change some way or the other, you just refuse to or are unable to look at the bigger picture.
nxm 14 hours ago [-]
Tell China and India to stop building coal plants first, and also ban private jets, and then we can talk.
dumberquestions 13 hours ago [-]
Taxing carbon will affect everything, including private jets, and China is doing more for solar power than any other place in the world and they're also investing heavily in renewables and nuclear.
In any case, the solution to other countries not doing their parts is figuring out ways to incentivise and coordinate better outcomes, not giving up completely, giving up only makes sense if someone is in denial regarding the consequences.
sailfast 15 hours ago [-]
How does one move power plant pollution offshore to China?
Phelinofist 14 hours ago [-]
> a booming industrial economy
Nothing more important than that!!
collinmcnulty 15 hours ago [-]
This is absurd. The cheapest energy available is solar, which is becoming more true every day. If truly the goal was just to have cheap energy, solar buildout would be a huge component of the strategy.
efnx 15 hours ago [-]
So now as a planet we have to curb greenhouse gasses in the US _and_ China or India or whatever.
Rendered at 10:42:27 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
- Investing in alternatives has led to massive new industry that is improving the economy of those countries that do it. If your argument is an economic one then jump onto the solar, wind and battery bandwagon.
- There are virtually no real short medium or long term gains economically here. Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind and its costs are rising while solar and wind continue to fall. Building new maximum pollution plants would drop that internalized cost but who in their right mind would fund something so obviously DOA?
- Obviously the externalized costs of greenhouse gas emissions are deeply undervalued in this move. Even if they are 'fake news' in the US, the rest of the world is finally starting to take them seriously. The US's diminished soft power means it won't be able to easily bully the world into allowing it to pollute without consequence and such an obviously hostile move means it will loose even more of its soft power by taking this position. So on the international level this means we burn a lot of political capital and gain nothing but decades of distrust and anger.
- Current events show that energy security is dominated by decoupling from fossil fuels. This weakens the US strategically and continues to set it up to be manipulated by exceptionally hostile actors.
- Oh yeah and, of course, climate change is real.
This continues the US down the path of being the best buggy whip maker in the world. Worse than that, the US is becoming an obnoxious buggy whip maker who's neighbors are starting to hope fails horribly and will help make that happen as moves like this continue. This is stupid at every scale and in every dimension.
Nothing hampers solar, wind, and batteries though; at worst it takes longer to ship the key components from China to Europe around Africa.
For example in reaction to 1973 Arab oil embargo Carter boosted energy efficiency and solar and promoted coal.
" "America indeed is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and my goal as President of the United States is to see on the world energy markets Arab oil replaced with Illinois coal," Carter told miners and employees of the Old Ben Coal Mine No. 25. He also boasted that the country would, "produce more coal in 1980 than has ever before been produced in the United States of America." "
https://www.npr.org/2024/12/29/1158426645/jimmy-carters-envi...
New coal gasification projects in India
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-clears-4-billi...
Fossil fuel is still going strong and will probably stay so for the next 50 years. Like I just learned Taiwan makes most of its energy from coal and LNG and is set to denuclearize, which blew my mind given their cutting edge manufacturing economy, but kinda makes sense when you factor in their geography and geopolitics.
Some highlights:
[0] https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-...This year, oil and gas are projected to fall as a whole, although coal is still expected to grow:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-global-fossil-fuel-emis...
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2026/co2-em...
Fossil fuels are not used only for electricity production, they are also used for heating (low temp, high temp), feed stock for chemical proceses, combustion engines.
We could have sovereign control over our energy supply with renewables and electrification. Yay, we become a great sovereign nation free to do whatever we want with our great British energy supply!
But no, the right wing answer is to develop a couple of gas fields in the north sea that would supply a tiny amount of actual energy requirements, and do nothing for prices as it all goes into a global trading platform.
I know the reason, it's hard to say no to all that money from the fossil industry, and walk back decades of indoctrinating your base at their behest. Even if it means making your country energy independent...
Meanwhile, the left in the UK doesn't want to drill (so less money for electrification) while the right in the UK doesn't want to electrify (so less money due to more imports). Why doesn't anyone want to copy the Norwegian model?
No, you could not.
Except you know, all the actual mining and manufacturing of those things, which isn't in the west but mostly in China.
Sadly, it does not mean that EU or USA grew less dependent on China for solar panels, industrial chemicals, or a lot of other things. OTOH, they did not grow more dependent either.
I do hope the US turns around. As I see it, we (western countries) have aligned values and it's better for us all (US included) to stick together.
Either way though, you don't have 20 years to get up to speed.
You have 20 years minus one day, as every day elapses.
Existing installed solar capacity is degrading at one day per day.
There is no product on the planet that has a a multi decade warranty with this kind of performance guarantee.
For now.
The majority of solar panels are made in China (85%), and they plan to invade Taiwan in just a few years, possibly as soon as 2027, at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production or defend Taiwan and cut ourselves off from the source of almost all manufactured products, and especially solar panels.
Can you share your sources for that valuable intelligence? Military analysts would really be interested to learn that. Or is that form the same manufactured scaremongering genre as "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons" and "Iraq has WMDs" to justify endless defense spending, military interventions and warmongering.
> at which point either we let them take control of AI chip production
You can't just commandeer semi fabs like you're carjacking a Hyundai for a joyride. Semi fabs need constant parts and on-prem staff and always-on telemetry from ASML & friends to run. If that's gone, you're left with a very expensive warehouse that can't do shit.
It feels like MAD is eroding, because at one point the reaction to China invading Taiwan would obviously have been a nuclear exchange.
Your second paragraph assumes China doesn’t have all the espionage necessary, and hasn’t proven their capabilities on their own labs.
Like the Chinese are just sans neocortex or something.
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-CHINA/TAIWAN-INVASION/z...
https://www.ft.com/content/36a00ba4-6178-4267-9786-3e0b59abe...
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-taiwan-military-naval-...
> "Iran is 6 weeks away from building nuclear weapons"
It is the breakout time, not the schedule.
It is incredible to me how pervasive the misunderstanding of this statement is!
I've had real-life conversations with project managers just like this:
PM: "How long would this project take?"
Me: "One month."
... two weeks later ...
PM: "How long would the project take to finish?"
Me: "One month."
PM: "You said that two weeks ago! It should only take two weeks to finish!"
Me: "Why would you think that? We never started the project! It wasn't approved. You didn't approve it, personally. The effort is four weeks. If you approve and we start today, it will still take that long to complete."
... two more weeks later ...
PM: "Why isn't the project finished!? You said one month a month ago!"
Me: "... wat?"
That's not the same thing as planning to invade in 2027, though. Militaries can need a capability without an imminent specific plan to actually use it. See the US's amphibious capacity. See nukes.
Firstly, this take is poorly thought out from a facts perspective, needlessly alarmist and mostly just FUD.
The fact is that China has thousands of islands in its territory already. So how else would their military be able to DEFEND those islands WITHOUT "a massive fleet of amphibious landing craft" capable of landing troops and material on islands that they own? It doesn't mean they 100% WILL invade Taiwan just because they have them, like you claim.
Secondly, the three news sources you then quoted are just your typical clickbaity mainstream media with nothing to lose if they are wrong in their alarmist predictions or just blatantly lie like they often do to manipulate people and financial markets, especially given their incentives and ties to politics and the wealthy elite.
So telling people on HN with 100% certainty China will invade Taiwan in the near future just because you read something about China's drills of Taiwan invasion in the MSM, just gets you more egg on your face that nobody can take your takes on this seriously. I'm 100% sure that the US Navy also regularly has drills on nuking China and Russia from their submarines, that doesn't mean they're actually planning to do it anytime soon with no provocation. So please, stop turning what is bland vanilla news into alarmist FUD.
Chinas has hundreds (not thousands) of islands in its territory, which has increased from 287 in 2019 to 431 in 2026. This is not "defense".
> nobody can take your takes on this seriously.
Russia moved mobile crematoriums up to the Ukraine border in February 2022, and people still dismissed the chances of their invasion as vanishingly unlikely.
Dismissing an obvious military buildup from a country that has plainly stated their intentions is an error.
During operation a string of solar cells is under a pretty high voltage. It makes sodium ions from the covering glass infiltrate slowly into the silicon, potentially ruining the p-n junction ("potential-induced degradation", PID). Usually an industry-grade panel controller applies a reverse voltage during night time, to drive the sodium ions back from the silicon. A rogue controller might instead apply the same voltage, accelerating PID instead of reverting it (and kill it in several months). A really insidious producer might add a strip of extra sodium-rich material near the normal electric conductors, which would be triggered by voltage higher than normal operation to flood the silicon with sodium (and kill it in several days).
Problem is that installing a bunch of sick sons of bitches to do your bidding can backfire when those some morons lose a war to Iran in a matter of months.
I would say if it’s specifically about coal at all, it’s more because of the GOP’s tendency toward weird nostalgic obsessions.
That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> Gas is the only thing still competitive with solar/wind
That's false. Coal power is cheaper than all of those. Solar and wind include costs for expensive battery backups since they are highly volatile.
And to make it clear: Climate change is very bad so coal plants are very bad. But that doesn't mean you can go around and claim that coal isn't cheap compared to things like solar+batteries. The fact that something is good doesn't imply that it is cheap.
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of... [2] https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/...
> That's a baseless claim. For example, Germany has invested massively in solar but its electricity prices went up, not down.
> This price of electricity is high because gas, which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
1) Am I missing something or the link you provided contradicts your claim? On a chart #2 in the article you can see Germany has only 24% of the times price of electricity set by gas, 24% is not "most of the time", right?
2) Even if that is true, and electricity prices in Germany are set by the price of gas most of the time, it seems like you didn't address the point in a previous message. If the goal is to have lower prices and the goal(outcome) is what really matters not just the process and renewables is the path to get there then why Germany electricity prices rose at the end? And were not all of those because of this ... because of that ... supposed to be a part of that path(plan)? They did the thing, invested in solar, what have they missed and why?
Not true. Gas backups are only needed for solar and wind. Gas replaces only battery backups here, which would be even more expensive.
> which is still expensive, sets the price of electricity most of the time [1].
That's why solar and wind are expensive.
> The levelized cost of electricity for solar (including batteries) and wind is cheaper than coal [2].
Not true. You have to include the required gas backups during the night or calm winds.
And we banned nuclear, since it's scary.
Given the power here has periods where it barely goes a day without blinking out, or line repairs that can take almost 2 days now after a somewhat mild storm, there's been a large uptake of solar power panels, those that knew hooked up Island style where they can feed in their own small generator to take advantage of the panels during the day if there was no grid power, more recently batteries have become more affordable, making installation worthwhile.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergon_Energy
[2] https://www.energyq.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/20658... [pdf]
>Operating and financial review
The Company’s profit after income tax equivalent expense was $80.919 million for the year (2023: $225.754 million loss). Revenue from sales of electricity is higher when compared to 2023 due to an increase in notified prices as published by the Queensland Competition Authority in 2024. Residential and small business tariff rates increased significantly for 2024 with price rises of 29 percent and 27 percent respectively. Large business tariff rates rose between seven and 17 percent. Expenses are marginally lower compared to 2023 predominantly due to a reduction in fair value losses. More stable electricity trading conditions contributed to lower market movements on forward electricity derivative contracts.
Nuclear is good (no CO2 emissions and stable energy supply), but it's not cheaper than coal. Moreover, that the requirement for gas plants went up because of the volatility of solar and wind is certainly a lede your post is doing its best to bury.
Fortunately this is well on it's way to being solved by the massive battery build out which has happened which means evening peak electricity usage has declined enormously[1] - i.e the primary "sun not shining" point of the day is rapidly turning into an energy use low point for the grid (which makes sense: business powers down, people go home and their batteries which have been charging cover cooking - I have an induction cook top and a 10kw inverter covers everything).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/15/austr...
Is not Germany an example of the opposite? I mean their decision to shut down nuclear plants while getting dependant on Russian supply of energy sources?
So all of this is performative asserting power in order to punish anyone seen as a threat to the current system.
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.
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
you're definitely not clear on the meaning.
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.
And now that the Data Centre Industrial Complex has come along it’s somewhat sidelined the Climate Change Industrial Complex*.
Funny how that happens.
Can you tell us more about it, honestly, sounds interesting.
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.
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...
China brought 50 new coal plants online in 2025 alone but keep telling yourself that.
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.
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.
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/09/China-Energy-Tr...
(Page 14)
https://www.mining.com/web/chinas-coal-output-hits-record-in...
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-top-coal-regi...
That's not really relevant to the topic at hand. No one has said that China is a utopia and paragon of human rights.
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.
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.
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-...
Interestingly Turkey passed 50% mark apparently. That's also an out of left field revelation for me.
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).
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_Car...
Then you put a 'carbon tariff' on imports for any country that does not have a similar system (e.g., EU's CBAM).
Since they don't seem to consider this as an option, why indeed should China or India do anything?
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.
China builds hundreds of coal plants a year while they are exempt from scrutiny.
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.
If this trend keeps going for a decade+, China might begin to approach US per-capita emissions.
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.
https://mnre.gov.in/en/year-wise-achievement/
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.
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.
Have a closer look at the hydro dams that have been removed for salmon habitat.
From what I've seen capacity was tens of MegaWatts [1] and some were just for irrigation. Meanwhile, large dams [2] are doing gigawatts.
Large dams also have negative environmental effects and maybe one day they'll get removed too, but accepting the tradeoff for large amounts of power makes more sense than destroying samon fishing to get irrigation water or a piddly amount of power.
Especially at a time when electrical power use was trending down due to efficiency gains and offshoring manufacturing, and samon fisheries were in danger of failing, it made sense to remove dams that weren't terribly productive. And start considering actually doing the work to make the larger dams fish friendly, eventually.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161221064310/http://www.water....
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam
There’s no way for you to know that. You don’t do the math. People like me, who work in the clean energy industry, do the math. The math works fine. You should try working as hard as the math does, instead of complaining.
Energy storage is required along with solar farms.
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
Yeah, there's also pumped water storage, and other forms of gravity/kinetic storage, various means of chemical energy storage, and all kinda other neat battery-like ideas folks have been trying/using.
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.
We have batteries for this. See Texas and California.
Speaking of infrastructure, how about pushing a mass rollout of EVs before giving a single consideration as to where the charging infra would come from?
It's not like the current mix of electrical generation and fossil fuel distribution is some naturally occurring phenomenon or alien technology. It's an enormously complex and interdependent system we built. I'm pretty confident we can build new and different things.
Though it looks like rolling out EVs before the charging network existed worked, there are thousands upon thousands of chargers now that there are enough vehicles to use them.
The "good" news is that coal plants are already suboptimal, economically. This is delaying the closure of existing plans, which is just absurd, but completely on brand for the political party that people voted in office, with complete knowledge of what would happen.
I suppose they also voted for "cheaper groceries" and "no more endless wars", but that will come any time soon.
Why aren't the vast majority of America's suburban single family dwellings using rooftop solar? Huge numbers of Americans live in these homes - they're not so much a thing, especially to this degree, in other countries and they seem basically ideal for rooftop solar.
Am I missing something here?
US homes are stick built. The roofs are not concrete, they are shingles. This is the single biggest bottleneck. On concrete, its super easy to add a simple steel frame, add panels and done.
Shingles have a shelf life of ~25 years. Most people buy old homes. And the roof is somewhere in the middle of its life. Its usually better to replace the roof and add solar at the same time.
The people who buy new homes have already maxed out their budget (people buy the biggest home they can afford, maxing out the downpayment) and they aren't thinking of adding solar rightaway.
2) Americans are pro fossil fuel (thanks to fossil fuel shills). Installers spend a third to half the money on door to door salesmen. This cost is absent in other countries.
3) US govts make solar unbelievably costly, by regulatory capture, tarriffs, banning panels from China. And they create perverse incentives of subsidies which make the installation costlier because it has to go through licensed installer to avail of the subsidy. The licensed installers always charge top dollar because its a captured market.
Shingles have a shelf life of ~25 years. Most people buy old homes. And the roof is somewhere in the middle of its life. Its usually better to replace the roof and add solar at the same time.
You can just take off the PV when replacing a roof, costs a few hundred if you don't want to do it yourself. Trivial compared to the cost of a new roof and probably less than the savings in the meantime they're on the old roof.
That said, I know a lot of people who have recently installed solar panels on their roof and it's increasingly worth it from a financial perspective. The other thing worth noting though is that while cool, rooftop solar really isn't the best approach to installing solar capacity compared to grid scale solar farms on land which also tends to be abundant in the US.
Everything becomes harder and expensive - no more standard gutter cleaning fee (200-300 bucks per average roof). For damp subclimates no more moss treatment possible.
For many houses you'd need structural engineer assessment to make sure roof can add such a load.
Many vents and outlets need to be relocated to cover large and nice area with the panels.
Dealing with contractors on standard things is such a pain already in US - expensive, many unskilled, trying to get more money out of your pocket. When they see someting expensive or non-standard their attitude changes even more.
There are exceptions such as Hawaii where grid power is expensive and sunshine abundant, but the US is big, geographically diverse, and because of that adoption varies greatly on regional dynamics.
It may seem unfair or unnecessary for US employers to require US employees to have a UPS, solar array, a redundant network connection, etc. But if employers required these things up-front, surely some tech workers could step up to the challenge and perhaps even be distinguished from those who don't get it.
1. A lot of single family dwellings are occupied by renters. In this scenario, the renter has no ability to install rooftop solar, and the owner has no incentive to install rooftop solar because the renter is paying the energy bills. (The same goes for things like installing high-efficiency heat pumps etc.)
2. HOA regulations can block things like rooftop solar depending on where you live.
3. The up-front investment involved in rooftop solar can be prohibitive for many people. Things like tax incentives can help but we've been getting rid of those under the current administration, and tax incentives only go so far if your tax return is 6+ months away.
"The 2024 standards required existing coal plants and new gas plants to capture 90 percent of carbon emissions or shut down by 2039, which would have reduced carbon pollution by an estimated 1.38 billion metric tons through 2047"
Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all.
> Before the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, the federal limits were much weaker—and for existing power plants, there was effectively no operative federal CO₂ limit at all.
This is an exaggeration that stretches credulity, since there have been strict limits for decades around secondary outputs that are required by power plant energy production effectively limiting production and emissions (which is the entire point).
With the rollback, that reduction will no longer occur. So, this is significant.
Then somebody else comes along and steers back.
How measured should the reaction to this be?
Violently demonstrating the geopolitical liability of relying on Greenhouse Gasses is more compelling than more climate conferences apparently.
That page is from 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&ol...
Don't be so sure about "obviously" when they start talking about "water vapor emissions"...
Society uses labels to group things together so that we can treat similar things similarly for various purposes. For example, when we talk about “education” we usually mean teaching kids in schools or colleges. Of course, there’s lots of other things you can call “education.” But if the Department of Education comes in and says it’s going to regulate technical presentations at software conferences because that’s also “education,” then you’d say: “that’s not what people mean by the word education in this context.” That is, we have a consensus about what “education” encompasses and what it doesn’t for purposes of government regulation, and seminars at conferences falls outside that understanding.
Because society uses labels to delineate the boundaries between different legal regimes and sources of authority, and adhering to those boundaries is important. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) can't point to the traffic on a fiber cable within a data center and say it falls within their jurisdiction because that's also "communications."
It's especially important in this context, because the half-century-old laws and regulations designed to control soot emissions from factory smokestacks is ill-suited to managing CO2 emissions. The fundamental premise of the Clean Air Act is that pollution can be controlled at the source with control technologies (RACT, BACT, etc.).
This focus on control technologies puts well-defined guardrails on the EPA. The EPA can't go around making big decisions about how factories work or what people produce. They can simply tell you to put the best reasonably available scrubbers on your factory. That approach completely breaks down when it comes to CO2, because there is no such thing as a "CO2 scrubber." Treating CO2 as a pollutant puts the EPA into a role of supervising the energy sector that the agency simply was never designed to do.
It uses the term “greenhouse gas” to refer to CO2 and uses the term “air pollution” to refer to what people traditionally think of as air pollution. For example, in one place of says: “Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g., by air pollution).” So that’s treating “CO2 enrichment” (emissions) as distinct from “air pollution.”
A completely useful (and consistent with the modern usage of the word) definition of "pollution" can be worded as:
"anthropogenic alteration of the open environment with negative consequences on ecosystems or society".
Have you heard about noise pollution? Match it with the definition above.
CO2 emitted by combustion from human activities is orders of magnitude more than what any natural biological process emits.
Now you can see why CO2 emitted by fossil fuels combustion is, by any logic, pollution.
The problem with your definition is that it encompasses basically all of society. Everything humans do alters the environment, mostly for the worse. By embracing such an expansive definition of “pollution,” you’d turn the EPA into a super-regulator of vast swaths of the economy.
Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules. You don’t put logic for process scheduling inside a file system module. It’s the same problem with treating CO2 as an air pollutant. Power generation is 1/6 of the economy. The mix of power generation sources the country should have isn’t just an environmental question. It cuts across society—it implicates the economy, national security, industrial policy, etc. Consider, for example, how Germany’s over-reliance on Russian gas turned into a national security problem for them after Russia invaded Ukraine. An environmental regulator isn’t at the right level to be making that decision.
No, there is no issue to have that definition encompassing all of what in society causes damage to the open environment[1].
Note that your wording, "encompasses [...] all of society", does not correspond to my stance. It only encompasses what causes negative externalities in the way I defined.
It is crucial that there exist such an agency (EPA) that examines these environmental negative externalities (let's just call it pollution now, as it is so defined), and considers ways to limit it.
Each agency has its own axis, and it is the combination of them that is effective: if you only leave the energy sector to e.g. the USEA (US Energy Association), they won't have the incentive, definition, or analysis axis in the direction of looking at human health or forests decline, purely because it is not in their definition or their statuses.
Similarly, if you are left with just the EPA, they won't provide the expertise to evaluate if this or that type of electricity generation is feasible and with which kind of technology.
It just the division of expertise, the division of labor, and that's why scientists and engineers work together across domains!
[1]: damage should be defined relative to a severely detrimental impact to the biosphere or to human society. The environment is understood to be open as defined by not having clear boundaries that may, for example, keep the impact strictly contained within the limits of a volume property of the agent of this impact. Air is typically not contained in such a delimited volume, and is thus open environment. Water also flows freely and is connected to e.g. big bodies of water. And so on.
---
About "modules":
"Software people should be able to understand the importance of separation of modules."
The "energy" module cares about the watt-hours produced but doesn't care about the cancer caused by the smoke!! (or, for CO2, about the planet-scale extinction event caused by raising temperatures, or the multiplying forest fires)
Thus you need the "pollution assessment and mitigation" module!
There. Proved to you that I am a SE :))
Source?
The thing that is also known as "air pollution"?
I want to tell you to stop being a moron, but its against this site's TOS.
Is the IPCC also “morons?”
CO2 can be pollution while still allowing plants to grow, plants use CO2 in their growth cycle, if you didn't know, they don't use other greenhouse gases to grow.
Page 9 lists CO2 as the first item in a list of greenhouse gases. I don't want to spend all day read this 37 year old report.
In what world are greenhouse gases not air pollutants?
For example, on p. 55.
> "Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution)"
That clearly refers to "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors"--something different from "CO2 enrichment" (rising CO2 levels). The report uses the same terminology on pp. 88 and 97. Throughout the report, it treats "greenhouse gasses" as it's own category that can interact with "air pollution"--but is different from air pollution.
Greenhouse gas refers to any type of gas that makes up our atmosphere. Air pollution are substances entering the atmosphere that degrade air quality and human health.
Therefore air pollution is always going to be a greenhouse gas, but not every greenhouse gas is going to be air pollution.
CO2 is the principle man-made GHG that all the others are compared against. CO2 is what the IPCC refers to as long-lived climate forcer, which are gases that have a warming effect on the scale of decades, fitting the definition of air pollution.
CO2 is a pollutant and has been for as long as humans have been pumping out tons of it into the atmosphere.
This GHG is emitted (alongside methane, by the way), by humans, in such quantities that it severely impacts the thermal balance of the planet, and threatens an extinction-event comparable to what only large asteroids are usually capable of.
It is only in the post-truth society of right wing anti-climate influencers that apparently someone tries to redefine the terms to exclude it.
But yeah, more familiar pollutants are dirty or caustic or radioactive, and chew holes in things or give you lung diseases or poison the wildlife, things like that, so it was a little jarring. Though I suppose we had CFCs, they didn't do anything directly harmful either.
> 2.2.4 Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution).
Help me parse this according to your understanding that "CO2 was an air pollutant 30 years ago." If CO2 is a subcategory of "air pollution," then it makes no sense to list "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors." It wouldn't be grammatical. The report uses this basic sentence structure, referring to "CO2 enrichment" as one thing in distinction to "other environmental factors" including "air pollution" several times. Explain to me how that's consistent with your position?
It has been a pollutant as soon as it has started to be emitted at large scale through combustion, in particular of fossil fuels.
People who deny it are usually very brain-washed by far-right/alt-right propaganda, which tries to hammers into their brains that "it's just the same stuff that you exhale when you breathe".
They don't understand (or rather, they haven't been told!) that the scales are incommensurate.
America is actively ceding the future to China, and our ruling class have no ideas left other than looting the place as it’s burning to the ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China
> By 2025, coal accounted for approximately 54.6% of China's electricity generation
It says that China’s use of coal this year is increasing after a multi-year trend of leveling off or decreasing, mainly because China is using coal in place of LNG imports made more expensive due to the U.S. attacks against Iran.
The overall trend is very clear — China is expanding both its supply of electricity, and generation from renewable sources, at the same time. Which we should also be doing in the United States.
> 2025 also saw China commission 78 GW of new coal power capacity, which is more than India’s net coal power additions over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2024, even though India operates the world’s second-largest coal power fleet. https://globalenergymonitor.org/research/built-peak-coal-pow...
The last time the US built a large new coal operation was 13yrs ago. China has done great things with renewables and nuclear, but that's because they build absolutely everything available, which is why their energy is so much cheaper in China than North America and Europe. Which translates into manufacturing plants being much cheaper to run.
leonidasrup https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49290234
https://canada.citizensclimatelobby.org/media-release-ccl-ca...
NFTs never made sense. You're buying a short URL on a blockchain in the hopes that it'll somehow retain value. The URL could go bad, it could be pointed at something else, etc. But what NFTs did was induce demand for crypto, particularly Ethereum. That was the point.
For a long time I thought we went to war for oil. No, that's backwards. Our oil dependence exists to induce demand for weapons. I will once again refer to the article No one goes to war over a solar panel [1].
So when you see things like pollution limits being lifted on power plants because of data centers, know that the ultimate driving force is the sale of weapons.
Let me give a concrete example. If I drill a well in West Texas that produces, say, 1000 barrels per day ("bpd"). It doesn't produce that forever. As the pressure goes down, the daily production goes down. In the industry this is called the decline rate. For the Permian Basin, the decline rate of any oil well is typically 15-20% per year. So in year 2, that well will produce 800-850bpd. In year 3, it'll be ~650-700. In year 4 it'll be 500-550.
So if you rely on oil you constantly need to be building new wells to maintain your same production level. For the US, which produces 13-15Mbpd of oil, that means you need to add 2Mbpd of new wells every year just to maintain that level of production.
Oil wells, like any form of resource extraction, are excellent wealth concentrators. They make people rich. If I put up 1GW of solar panels then, apart from some cleaning and general maintenance, they're going to produce 1GW of electricity every year (with some variance for sunshine). Nobody gets rich from that. And nobody needs to go to war for that. Which means nobody gets rich from selling weapons to secure that oil.
[1]: https://www.theenergymix.com/no-one-goes-to-war-over-a-solar...
nfts were about trying to make inherently not scare things scarce, and to try to get people involved in a ponzi scheme
the oil being drilled and mined is exceptionally useful, and people buy it even when you dont need to go to war or get weapons. War would still be happening in the middle east without oil, its a key trade route between Europe and Asia.
the oil dependence exists because it lets people get work and labour done without hiring labourers.
if you put up 1GW of solar panels, you will definitely get rich off of that, and whenever people start building giant solar farms in borth africa, we will see armed militas conquering each other for control over the profits
You're going to spend maybe a billion dollars to build your solar farm, maybe you get somebody to lend you the billion dollars at 4% annual interest for 10 years,
Your panels make maybe 1.5 TWh of electricity each year, you can sell that for maybe $50 per MWh, so that's $75M per year. But the interest on your loan was $40M, so after year one your owe $965M, after the ten year loan finishes you still owe almost $600M and your panels are now ten years old.
It's just a normal business venture, if you've got people who can execute and a favourable environment it should work, like if you opened a fast food chain, or a dry clean business or a distillery. This is completely different from resource owners, who instead are just granted ownership of a finite natural resource.
Please someone bring back people with critical thinking abilities.
It wasn't the Greens that decided this for Germany. It was our conservatives, the CDU/CSU. The latter had high-ranking officials literally threaten to step down, unless Germany exits nuclear energy production.
Ideology > common sense.
Ideology > critical thinking
or can a dictator president do this at all without congress?
btw how many gallons of crude oil do you think the Epstein Memorial Ballroom can hold?
because we're going to need a new strategic oil reserve, he destroyed the current system by bottoming it out
I mean, anyone can say they're for the environment, but are you willing to start a war, lose a midterm, and murder a school full of kids to reduce your carbon footprint? /s
- wow 2039. So this already had no teeth. We can just pass this law again in 2029.
In any case, the solution to other countries not doing their parts is figuring out ways to incentivise and coordinate better outcomes, not giving up completely, giving up only makes sense if someone is in denial regarding the consequences.
Nothing more important than that!!