A graph that should be front-page news

I’m not shitting on China and that’s a red herring. I’m shitting on people who are praising China for being the #1 emitter who rapidly grew emissions long after the west realized how bad climate change was and was trying to correct them.

China actively built coal and continues to build coal fired generation far beyond the rest of the world.

The fact that the public charts are missing the recent decline is my mistake.

I don’t hate China, I hate people that pretend to care about the environment that glaze China when it’s very clear China optimized for its own citizens in the face of the west trying to grapple with climate change and is only now showing some signs of pivot with solar being cheap enough.

>What was correct a decade ago, is very much false today, and the trend line is accelerating away from your feelings.

I’m the one that gave a trend line. Your response was that it has slightly declined at the very end and the chart isn’t up to date. I don’t think you know what a trend line is.

Put your additional year or two on the end and it will just look like every other slight reprieve. Draw an actual, you know, moving average or anything else that establishes a “trend” and you’ll see China is not reacting to climate change very quickly.

>Does Vatican City get a prize for being the smallest emitter?

Nope, because they are irrelevant in the scheme of sources of CO2. Tons emitted is all that matters.

>The West led by the US whose adminstration currently denies the existence of climate change? Whose emissions drop was due to the fracking boom and natural gas becoming cheaper than coal? Let's not break our arms patting ourselves on the back. If fracking hadn't been invented how much coal would the US be burning?

The west, as in Europe (and the US before Trump) who began all of the initiatives to track CO2, the impacts of global warming, clean energy alternatives, etc. All of the solar tech that China is deploying today is paid for by the hundreds of failed startups pushing the technology forward in the 2000-2012 era.

>China burns coal because they have coal.

That’s not an excuse. Australia gets a middle finger as well for because they have a shitload of coal and also take the attitude of “we might as well burn it since we have it”. That’s literally the opposite of being proactive.

If you only build renewable to deal with a shortage of fossil fuels, then you’re not addressing global warming. You’re just doing the very normal economic incentive thing.

>Their factories produce panels and batteries and EVs that the rest of the world can use to decarbonize - so at least there's a point to "the highest emissions in the world".

Depends on how dirty the energy is for those. If more emissions come from manufacture and transport than are saved by the panel+storage, it would have been better for the recipient to burn fossil fuels.

>The US is approving data centers with on-site gas turbines, and paying off windmill operators to shut down.

Yes, it’s disgusting and everyone in the Bay Area that used to pretend about global warming who is now working for companies expanding for AI can get fucked.

>They are not the same.

They are not, but holy shit China is also terrible. The difference is that China has a track record of destruction over the last 25 years while climatologists screamed from the rooftops. It’s going to take 15 years even at their ambitious pace to unwind the expansion of emissions in the last 15. That’s the problem with climate change, it doesn’t matter if you increase solar production until you actually get rid of the coal burning.

> Nope, because they are irrelevant in the scheme of sources of CO2. Tons emitted is all that matters.

So if China split up into 200 countries, they are irrelevant? The US and Europe are ahead in cumulative emissions even today. If "tons emitted is all that matters" then that's who is the most responsible. All the carbon is still in the atmosphere.

> If you only build renewable to deal with a shortage of fossil fuels, then you’re not addressing global warming.

Why the heck not? Whatever happened to "tons emitted is all that matters"? Who cares why you build renewables as long as you build them?

> You’re just doing the very normal economic incentive thing.

The US reduces emissions because natural gas is cheaper - "The West took steps to fight climate change". China goes solar because it's cheaper - "Well they're just looking out for #1, they don't really care about the environment".

Bit of a double standard there, no?

> All of the solar tech that China is deploying today is paid for by the hundreds of failed startups pushing the technology forward in the 2000-2012 era.

Really they produced panels that cheap in 2012? I didn't see them. And China has produced zero innovations in solar tech or battery tech?

> Australia gets a middle finger as well for because they have a shitload of coal

You mean the highest per-capita deployer of solar energy today? In your worldview it seems countries are only allowed economic development on your terms that you've set because they make you look better than everyone else.

> If more emissions come from manufacture and transport than are saved by the panel+storage, it would have been better for the recipient to burn fossil fuels.

Fortunately fictional hypotheticals don't happen, so it's all good. You speak as though producing and transporting fossil fuels is emissions-free.

> China is also terrible. The difference is that China has a track record of destruction over the last 25 years

And "The West" has a much longer track record than that. Again we see your bias. No one is without blame but you seem eager to assign disproportionate blame to one country because of this bias.

> while climatologists screamed from the rooftops

And US voters gleefully voted in multiple climate change denying administrations.

> That’s the problem with climate change, it doesn’t matter if you increase solar production until you actually get rid of the coal burning.

The difference is that China is realistically on a path to end coal burning. The US is not currently on track to stop burning natural gas and gasoline, given its refusal to consider, indeed its active sabotage of, alternatives.

Well yes, a full exchange between the US and Russia would probably give us a long winter.

A heat pump is just an air conditioner with a reversing valve so the heat can either be rejected from or added to a space, depending on which way the refrigerant is flowing.