this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
31 points (97.0% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5450 readers
198 users here now

Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
silence7@slrpnk.net
31
Why China’s new climate targets matter for everyone | Semafor (www.semafor.com)
submitted 1 day ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

China isn’t the biggest emitter per capita. Why would you suddenly shift the goalposts between sentences?

Why do you have a problem with multiple facts? It is rather simple: People look at China, because it is the largest emitter in the world. Then you claimed that countries like India and Indonesia are dirtier then China, which is looking at emissions per capita, just plain and simply wrong.

The big difference being that Chinese emissions per capita have finally started falling,

Again problems with facts. China has had a slight growth in emissions this year and the population is falling. There have been some months and quarters with emissions dropping, but it is still probably stable.

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-off-track-emissions-goals-energy-demand-offsets-renewables-push-2024-11-27/

Even when you look at consumption China is by far the largest emitter in the world. In 2022 the OECDs combined emissions were only 30% higher then those of China, when looking at consumption. When you look at per capita emissions, those are close to EU level and the data is from 2022, so it might have crossed by now.

https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2

Also China had insane emissions growth for decades from a low level due to producing for the West. Interesting that you seem to want to deny countries like India and Indonesia that opportunity. The main reason production is leaving China is high cost, due to high wages.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Why do you have a problem with multiple facts?

Comparing gross to per-capita is deliberately misleading, not factual.

China has had a slight growth in emissions this year and the population is falling

China’s CO2 falls 1% in Q2 2024 in first quarterly drop since Covid-19

As a result of the strong capacity growth – and despite poor wind conditions – solar and wind covered 52% of electricity demand growth in the first half of 2024 and 71% since March. (The fall in wind speeds can be seen from NASA MERRA-2 data averaged for all of China.)

Indeed, the increase in power generation from solar and wind reported by the National Energy Administration in the first half of the year, at 171 terawatt hours (TWh), exceeded the UK’s total electricity supply of 160TWh in the first half of 2023.

Rapid demand growth in January–February, at 11%, had outpaced even the clean energy additions. But combined with a rebound in hydropower generation, the increase in non-fossil electricity supply exceeded power demand growth in the March to June period.

The population is functionally flat. The rapid onboarding of green energy has displaced the need for new fossil fuel sources and depressed carbon emissions for the first time since the pandemic.

Also China had insane emissions growth for decades

China had normal, if not below average, emissions growth for decades. Their reliance on hydro power and mass transit has kept them well below the western industrial average.

The main reason production is leaving China is high cost

The costs are coming in the form of tariffs and other trade restrictions placed by an increasingly trade-hostile US federal government. Real cost of manufacturing in the Chinese economy continues to fall, as new advanced infrastructure reduce the material and energy costs of per-unit production.

What the other Pacific Rim countries have that China lacks is a scorched earth commitment to industrial expansion. They're destroying their local ecology and sacrificing the quality of life of their native residents to fuel a short term burst of foreign investment. But it can't last.