Oceans hit highest temperature on record

The term 'Hyperobject' summarized it perfectly. Essentially the problem operates at such a large scale and requires such a level of systemic thinking that it becomes the scope of most people. Not because they are stupid but simply because just a side effect of it being such a large subject.

Also the multi-decade latency means it move slow enough that many can ignore it but it move quick enough that unaddressed it causes major issues.

This can't be denied but the reality is that the fossil fuel industry has done everything in its power to delay the transition to other forms of energy for the past 50 years with great success and to their benefit. What could have been a successful transition to nuclear and solar would have implied maybe up to 30% of the emissions we have created thus far, which would have drastically changed the panorama of climate change where we wouldn't be in the position where we are today.

It's literally just a couple of decades of effort what separates the scenarios between mild climate change and the accelerated extinction of most of humanity and biomes. All so that Saudi Aramco and Chevron could get a bit more profit.

> The operation as currently described is so inefficient, even for the 1960's!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal

Construction began: 1 January 1881

Date completed: 15 August 1914

> The energy released when lowering can be stored either in gravitational energy of a mass, or be used to power a second parallel lock operated in counter phase (so while one lock is lowering ships say eastwards, the energy is used to raise ships traveling westwards, and afterwards their roles reverse). To speed up a second gravitational potential energy store (and optional flywheel) can be used to accelerate and decelerate the pumping.

if the canal didn't exist, and we were designing it as a greenfield project in 2026, that would definitely be a design worth considering.

could it be retrofitted onto the existing canal? sure, in theory.

in practice, they currently handle 36 ships per day, and lowering that limit by just 2-4 per day is significant enough that it makes international news [0]

so whatever retrofitting you have in mind, the construction would need to be done completely non-invasively, without disrupting the daily operation of the locks. it's nowhere near as simple as you're making it out to be.

0: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2026/08/21/panama-...

There are several problems with this.

First, you are ignoring gas. The US stopped building coal plants because of the fracking boom. That gave the US huge sources of natural gas which was cheaper than coal.

China has little natural gas but abundant coal, so when they need fossil fuel for something they cannot yet do with renewables they use coal whereas the US uses gas.

Second, you are looking at number of plants, but not looking at capacity factor (which is a measure of how much they are actually used). The new Chinese coal plants have lower 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.

Their use will continue to decline because China is massively deploying renewables. They also are adding massive amounts of grid battery storage and UHV transmission lines (60000 km so far spanning the country with another 12000 km under construction or permitted--the US is a bit behind that at 0 km), which means the can move electricity from where renewables are strongest to places with high needs but fewer renewables much easier that most other countries can which is further going to reduce the amount of time those new coal plants run.

Third, for India, even if we compare by country rather than by the correct per capita measure (see other comments below for explanation of why per capita is the correct measure when comparing energy policies of different countries), India's current emissions are only 68% of US emissions even though the have 4.3x as many people. That 10% increase you cite that they plan for coal in 2025-2026 still leaves them doing WAY better than the US.

India is also expanding renewables rapidly. They have around 10 nuclear reactors under construction, and are adding lots of solar and wind. They are currently up to 136 GW of solar capacity (64% of US and 11% of China), and last year added around 38 GW (the US added 34 GW). They added 6.3 GW of wind compared to 6.2 GW in the US.

They are almost certainly not going to get anywhere close to the US total emissions. (And per capita where they emit 1/6th what the US does they are definitely not going to even remotely near the US).

> Cancelling those contracts IS letting the market decide

They didnt cancel the contracts, they paid the companies to stop doing work that those companies(i.e. the market) wanted to do

> Further, offshore wind is expensive in terms of maintenance. Stopping the project now is protecting billions in expenses in the future.

Source yourself that this is worth it as per the market if you are going to claim this is a market decision