81–90 of 140 posts
This kind of talk frightens me. Not because I don't think its what we need to do, but because then US will find an excuse to invade or interfere.
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It is beyond shameful how Westerners misallocate the blame for pollution, using misleading statistics. India has ~17% of the world's population. That it only produces 7% of global emissions means it is contributing far, far, far less than whatever country you possibly come from in relative terms, so at that point you are besmirching it solely for the crime of having a larger population than your country. China, while…
Climate change doesn't divvy impact based on per capita usage. And large countries and blocs like the US, China, EU, India, etc would survive in a world with significant climate crises. So the incentive to change doesn't exist. And this is why the world will burn.
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Even artificially limiting their availability causing prices to shoot up does not quench the thirst. I am always confused why the conversation seems to be about switching the toggle switch from fossil fuels only to renewables only. It's obvious the best way is more of potentiometer where you slowly change from one by adding renewables to the point of being able to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels. We're seeing it…
To "simply run out of fossil fuels" is like that potentiometer you mention, it isn't like you run out all at once but you run out of the cheap ones first and it gets more expensive. I remember reading https://www.amazon.com/Hubberts-Peak-Impending-Shortage-Revi... in the early 2000s which was about the coming peak of conventional oil production and it turned out to be wrong in the sense that we knew in the 1970s that…
It's only a matter of time - likely a few years - before there's a significant wet-bulb heat catastrophe that kills a huge number of people.
For example.
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There is no progress in CO2 reduction, we are still emiting more CO2 each year. " Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes increased by +0.7% within 2025." https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-026-00780-4
But the growth of CO2 emissions is slowing, even though the global economy is growing and many more countries are industrialising and becoming wealthier (both proxies of CO2 emissions). So we're working on it. Not as fast as we need, but progress is being made.
It's too little too late.
India's CO2 emissions growth rate is around 4% [0], and India's economy is expected to grow at around 6-7% a year for at least the next decade. This means India's contribution alone will grow massively.
And what about other large countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, etc who are also seeing massive expansions.
Edit: can't reply
The Indian government's "electro-state" transition is predicated on coal expansion [1] - yes at a rate slower than before, but still at a rate that is a net negative for the environment.
This is also why India backed out of hosting COP33 in 2028 [2] - it would have brought this inconvenient truth to the forefront [3]
[0] - https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...
[1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-05/india-mul...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/india-withdraws-b...
[3] - https://www.dw.com/en/why-india-walked-away-from-its-bid-to-...
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Many people were saying that things were not as dire as they claimed. I’m glad they revised but you had silly people gluing themselves to thoroughfares (cars stuck in traffic waste more energy) and vandalizing what some people consider precious art and or national patrimony in the name of climate change thinking that those most dire predictions were indeed correct and we were all headed to hell in a hand basket.
So we are no longer worried about catastrophic or runaway climate change based on these revisions?
I also think we should limit or be judicious as much as we can about what we pump into the atmosphere (or oceans or ground)
We‘ve had talks about this topic decades before I was born, but progress is a bit underwhelming.
https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/solar-surge-halts-fo...
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> Ethanol is quite a useful thing to have though, as a multi-season stable store of energy. Am I missing something? Ethanol is hydrophilic and hygroscopic. In concentrations used as a fuel (e.g., E85), it acts like a desiccant and spoils quickly. In a closed system this ends up with phase separation and the freed water causes engine corrosion. I'm not sure we want people running a still or molecular sieve in their ho…
Ethanol doesn't "spoil". It is a very stable molecule and miscible with water. The main issue is that it has a strong affinity for water so it needs to be stored in containers that are sealed from the environment. The same issue exists with the ubiquitous ethanol/gasoline blends.
This just doesn't meet up with the day to day reality of your average consumer.
Even your gas station underground tanks aren't airtight. The problem is that the air around us has tons of water vapor in it.
Interesting that Colombia is currently powering more than 70% of their electrical consumption on hydropower. They currently have about 65 TWh of hydropower capacity; the total feasible generation potential is around 200 TWh. Makes then an interesting country to host such talks.
Good for them, but for most of the world there are no good hydropower locations left. And even when they exist building them is a local ecological disaster.
Pumped storage hydro electricity is one of our least ecologically devastating options and we are not even remotely close to exhausting locations we can put them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
> “The mere fact that the conference is happening is already a success,” said Claudio Angelo, senior policy adviser at Brazil’s Climate Observatory, a network of environmental, civil society and academic groups The bar has been set so low that talking about it is seen as success now. Sometimes I think the only way we'll really make meaningful progress is if we simply run out of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, we're just…
Brazil has had a pretty active program of converting cane sugar to ethanol for a while now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil Sugar cane doesn't require replanting every year either, like corn does. Plants are actually not a good converter of solar energy to chemical energy though. They capture a few percent of it. Solar cells are able to capture about 10 times that, a much smaller footprint.
Because that is the overall path (for long-term storable chemical energy, i.e. usable for transport or seasonal energy storage in countries where solar is highly seasonal).