Lol good luck with Latin America. It’s pretty split between China and the US Empire/“the west”.
With the recent small wave of “left leaning” politicians winning in many places, many started to turn to China again.
And all in all China is a more attractive partner, because they usually pursue more equal deals compared to the IMF/“west”. Also they don’t call the global south a “jungle” while saying Europe is a garden lmao
But it doesn’t matter. In some years the US backed political parties will win again (after magically arresting another opponent, or killing them, couping them etc.) and turn to the EU and US again.
Because China is a country with the third largest land mass with the second largest population in the world. But per capita, they produce half of what an American does.
2 things about this; the planet don’t care about per capita numbers - 52.2 is gonna drop that population real quick. I doubt that would even slow their ruling class down
Second fuck is America a bad comparision. Those 2 will race to a scorched earth quicker than a nuclear war ever could
Per capita numbers are very, very important: they tell us where the low hanging fruit are. The people emitting the most per capita should be pressured most heavily to reduce emissions, because they’re the ones who are polluting most unnecessarily.
In a perfect democracy perhaps, but in the world we live in the power is in the hands of very few. Id also argue there’s too much noise using it to represent unnecessary pollution, as a single person running a generator in antartica would be horrible per capita - but quite so necessary. Larger populations have the benefit of larger systems, thereby operating more efficiently. A country could also reasonably just triple their population to increase their pollution “quota”, cause money - and a system that can be that manipulated isnt that reasonable of a system.
Looking directly at pollution on the other hand is more like looking directly at what causes the problem (climate change), and minimizing centralized sources of it would have a much more noticable effect. Especially those that have a greater population to landmass ratio (thereby having less untouched human areas) and so less so a positive effect on greenhouse gas removal.
Let’s frame this in inequality terms. Suppose (not the real numbers) we have the top 1% emitting half the greenhouse gases to fuel their lifestyles, and the bottom 99% emit the other half. You’re saying we should focus equally on the two groups when looking for emissions reductions???
Except we’re also setting high temperature records in Canada.
Even with that, it still pisses me off when I hear my fellow Canadians (mostly from a certain province that exports fossil fuel) saying “why should Canada do anything when these other countries are worse”.
Ok, doesn’t change that we need a ton of heat in the winter. An average 1.5 C change doesn’t matter much when we have to heat from -20 to +20, a delta T of 40 degs.
Exactly, the world doesn't care. The average co2 footprint per person globally is around 5 tonnes and as we've noticed, that is way too much for our planet to handle, one estimate is that we would need to drop that to below 2.5 tonnes.
China at 7.5 per person is a lot closer to than Canada at 18, Australia at 17, US at around 15 or Russia at 12. EU on average is close at around 8 I believe.
No way canada’s that bad? Thats a perfect example then cause were mostly hydroelectric, just empty as ass (an example I used to the other person is imagine the per capita numbers of an artic exploration group, probably horrible but we could never visit the artic again and still be boiling in superpowers pollution)
"Per capita" means per person, it has nothing to do with being mostly unpopulated. And it sure is that bad.
The exact figures differ slightly depending on who you ask, my source was Worldometer.
Whoops shoulda been a little more specific, I meant because most gas based generators arent nearly efficient as coal based plants (which aint as efficient as nuclear…) in terms of emissions to energy. That added on the fact that they’re probably not designed for sub zero temps and you end up with a horrible per capita (probably, I don’t have any actual numbers to back this up).
Ngl im not too great at expressing my whole thought processmao
Oh we’re pretty bad. Cold winters we need lots of heat. Big houses. Mostly car dependent inner infrastructure. Lots of distance for goods to travel and we still use trucks for it. BC and Quebec may have lots of hydro but that’s not the rest of the country.
It's not ignoring the problem, you are complaining that we are running out of food because that group of a billion people are eating too much when you have over twice as much food on your own plates, and saying the solution is that they should be forced to eat even less.
It is ignoring the problem. I’m complaining about the massive amounts of carbon China is pumping out and getting worse every year and you’re making excuses.
Classic tragedy of the commons. It’s no one fault. Everyone is doing it. Blah blah blah. None of this is lowering GHGs.
And if we split China into three smaller countries with a population of 450 million each, then those would only produce 3/4th the Co2 of USA each putting USA in the number one spot and solve climate change? China currently pollutes the most overall simply because it has the (second) biggest population, and that makes it look bad in the "per country" statistic. But per person they pollute less than half of what someone from the US, Australia or Canada do.
Another extreme example is India, it is on spot 3 on overall emissions, which means it produces a fuckton of CO2, even though per capita the figure is 1.89 - one person from the US produces as much CO2 emissions than 8 people from India. They are already well below the global average (~5 tons per person) and even below the suggested target to counter climate change - 2.5 per person.
Ok, so it doesn’t mention wet bulb temperature anywhere, so I went to figure it out. The first thing I was surprised with is apparently most of online calculators don’t take in values higher than 50C.
I couldn’t find the exact data about humidity for that day, but it has been 35-40%+ at a minimum for most days in that region, sometimes even reaching 90%.
So, 52C at around 40% humidity is 37.5C in wet bulb temp. The point of survivability is around 35, and most humans should be able to withstand 37.5 for several hours, but it’s much worse for sick or elderly. 39 is often a death sentence even for healthy humans after just two hours — your body can no longer lose heat and you bake from the inside. That’s like having an unstoppable runaway fever. And with that humidity it’s reached at 54C.
Wet bulb temperature is basically converting to 100% humidity equivalent, so as you get closer to 100%, WBT approaches measured temperature. We use this metric because our bodies cool mostly via evaporation, and no evaporation is possible at 100% — the air is already fully saturated. So in general, WBT means minimum possible temperature that can be reached by evaporative cooling. Once your body loses the ability to cool, it rushes to match surrounding wet bulb temperature (or even exceed it, since we produce about 100W of heat energy by simply existing).
So 52C at 90% is about 50C WBT. Survivable for mere minutes for some, and probably for about an hour or so for most humans. Definitely not survivable for a full day.
Temperature reports like this always use in-the-shade measurements. You can get much higher temps when measuring in direct sunlight, like easily 100C+, depending on the material of your measuring device.
To put this into perspective, a humid 60°C are conditions where hyperthermia (getting too hot) can take effect within 10 minutes of exposure.
We're 8°C from that point. We are within arms reach of creating conditions so hostile to human life that survivability for most people will be unimaginably low.
According to this informative video about the “super El Niño” we’re heading into, next year is going to be worse. Less easily dismissed, not that it’ll help. If we get any kind of extreme weather this winter before next year’s even hotter summer, that’ll be fodder for them, too. As we all know, anytime it snows, that proves climate change is a myth. 🙄
Maybe we should let them bugger out to the Mars. They can try their ancapistan "utopia" there, we'd be rid of the bastards. Win-win. Just put some railguns in orbit, in case their plans won't work out and they make their way back to Mother Gaia 🙃
Even at +4c there will still be plenty of “nice” places for billionaires to fuck off to and build a nice little rich people commune. Hell, a +6c world is still the garden of eden in comparison to Mars.
Yes there’s a lot of interest in Mars right now, but it’s really is just mega rich nerds. Hell, if I was mega rich, I’d make an aerospace company too, space is cool.
The rich peppers are buying up land and building compounds in climate safe havens, like New Zealand.
Humans on Mars seems to be a pure fantasy fueld by old SF. Technically it seems to be easier (and more viable) to build floating cities on Venus than for humans to live (on the surface of) Mars
Musk said something about how terraforming Mars to be habitable shouldn’t be difficult, and I was thinking “well then getting CO2 from 400+ ppm to 300 ppm should be a cake walk for you! Why haven’t you done that yet!”
I believe, and I’d have to go find the quote, but he meant/said simple. Simple =/= easy, just that there are a few things you can do that have a huge impact. Like you could bombard the polar caps and release a shit ton of Co2 and water which would thicken the atmosphere, trap some heat, and start a rain cycle. That’s conceptually simple but practically hard. To keep on with Musk, he’s also been quoted multiple times saying that living on Mars is gonna suck for a long long time.
I guess in the same way climate change is conceptually simple but practically hard. Cutting out 90% of Co2 emissions pulling existing Co2 out is simple, most of the tech is already developed, it just would cost hugely insane amounts of money to do it quickly. We have direct air capture, we could build dedicated nuclear power air capture plants above existing limestone/granite deposits and pump them full. It just would cost $$$$/kg.
Self-preserver capitalists are more along the hoarding supplies and creating fortified bases variety. Even Steve Huffman got his laser eye surgery for prepper reasons, according to him. No idea how much that was just a cover story for the pure vanity.
But the amount of preppers in the tech world are increasing, and they're not looking at ways of keeping anyone else safe but themselves and their families.
They would rather live underground in a bunker in luxury, then share just a litte percentage of their wealth that would benefit more people than themselves.
Most of them aren't billionaires though. They just own a little land and can afford to build on it, which is high-salary rich but nothing like billionaire rich. They might have a couple of years of comparative comfort at best. The billionaires are on a different level of entirely.
Unless lasik has significantly changed, last I looked it lasts ~10 years and you can only do it twice, so it doesn’t really make sense to do it from prepper reasons unless you think collapse is within 6 months. Otherwise, get the timing wrong and you could need another round of lasik just after the beginning of the appocolypes or worse you could need a new round but have already done two right before everything collapses.
Unless lasik has significantly changed, last I looked it lasts ~10 years and you can only do it twice
Iirc how long it lasts depends on the person. And most people take two at most as its usually good after the second correction, for those who actually need the second (not all people need it)
They’re going into a serious recession, between real estate and interest rates elsewhere slowing investment and spending there’s no major growth engine anymore, their consumer spending is collapsing in anticipation of a severe downturn.
reuters.com
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