East Asian aerosol cleanup has likely contributed to global warming
nature.com
nature.com
In my work in industrial air quality we occasionally joke that we are doing a good job if we exacerbate global warming.
0. https://skepticalscience.com/images/Radiative_Forcing_Summar...
https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to...
The very first sentence says:
> Climate change will cause agricultural failure and subsequent collapse of hyperfragile modern civilization, likely within 10–15 years.
No evidence is provided for this. The closest thing is some very brief discussion of saltwater increasingly interfering with rice cultivation in some areas of Southeast Asia. Everything else is ungrounded speculation.
And regarding those poor rice farmers, apparently a lot of them are switching to more lucrative shrimp farming when salinity is high: https://www.voanews.com/a/rising-salinity-threatens-rice-cro...
This is not to say that climate change is great. Just that this is not a reliable source.
Eg: Long established wine grapes in both France and mainland Australia have seen production falls already as local climates change in response to global parameters.
Brown Brothers (IIRC, an Australian wine label) has opened new vineyards further south (closer to the south pole) in Tasmania.
Another expected change is Cowboy Siberia; rodeo's, rodeo clowns, and vast cattle ranches on former tundra taking up the slack from US ranches as they bake and suffer from probable water issues.
Due to the climate shifts, 'New Zealand wine' is becoming a swear word within the wine industry here as they significantly out do our quality.
It reads similar to the works of Guy McPherson & James Kunstler in that they are continually pushing back the doomsday date as they miss again and again. But I think they do love the attention of publishing these dramatic predictions because it can make people feel like their lives are like that of fiction based drama. Alas normal life it much more humble and slow, at least for the most part.
I do think we will hit a long term equilibrium of about 2 billion people like claimed but over more like 150-300 years as we balance out from overshoot and ecological blow back. But that is a very different real world experienced scenario to what they propose.
We are basically doing only what is STRICTLY dictated by economy. And we know that it is simply not enough. Whether in 2 decades or 10, billions of human beings are going to die from the direct or indirect effects of climate change. And that is... Incomprehensible.
Just for some perspective... at the current global death rate, 2.4 billion die in two decades, and 12 billion die in 10. So it's not that incomprehensible.
We have short lifespans, it seems more likely the human population will shrink to match loss of habitable land mass and ecological damage through simply expiring, rather than suddenly through some kind of dooms day event (granted I'm certain climate change will hurry it along).
I'm going to use this bleak comment to suggest anyone reading make sure they go outside and smell the fresh air, life is short man, really short.
That is already happening in almost every western democracy as fertility rates have dropped precipitously. That is not because we have any food shortages: it’s because people are choosing not to have kids because life is so expensive.
Direct fatalities from weather related natural disasters (droughts, floods, storms, etc) between 2005 and 2024 worldwide are estimated somewhere around 200.000 people, so about 10.000 deaths per year [0].
If you assume (just for the sake of the argument) that climate change will increase this death toll by 10% every year for 100 years, direct deaths from natural disasters caused by climate change alone will amount to close to 140.000.000 deaths over that time period.
Add to this indirect deaths, i.e. premature deaths due to insufficient nutrition during childhood caused by drought, disease spread by floods, etc. etc.
And because the effects of climate change are mostly political in nature, you'll have to make some assumptions about that, too. Sea level rise will affect (as in inundate their current homes at least once a year) more than 600 million people by the year 2100 [1]. Many of these peoples will be displaced and depending on the political and economic capacity of their societies to cope with this displacement, this alone could result in millions of deaths.
Climate change is also a contributor to general political instability and the risk of both civil and nation state war. How do you account for those deaths?
In summary, the death toll of climate change can inherently not be known. But if you look at the next hundred years, I doubt you can assume a number of less than in the hundreds of millions, if we assume climate change effects based on current estimates of "status quo" emissions. Which makes emission reductions essential, because there is a literal connection between an additional ton of CO2 in the atmosphere and an increase in the number of deaths.
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-deaths-from-nat... [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z
The average global temperature is already rising by several percentage points each year: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/temperature-anomaly
Temperature = energy and more energy will necessarily lead to an increased number of and more severe weather events which in turn will claim more lives.
Natural disasters also have the nasty tendency to have tipping points. If a disaster (or a string of disasters) overwhelms the ability of a society to mitigate its effects, deaths rise exponentially not linearly with the severity of the event. I.e. the U.S. government can likely mitigate the effects of any one hurricane, but a series of catastrophic hurricanes might lead to a total collapse of the disaster response system, leading to potentially tens of thousands of deaths which otherwise could have been avoided.
And again: direct deaths from natural disasters are only one aspect of climate change and likely a minor one. Indirect effects will likely play an even bigger role, i.e. premature deaths due to worsening life conditions for children and elderly people, mass displacement/migration or political crises up to and including war.
Plainly incorrect and wrong.
Have you considered mitigating factors to prevent deaths?
Try the calculation with simple growth instead of compounding growth.
If you want to really kill your appetite, google "wet bulb temperature" and think about the (very real) possibility, that a mega-city in pakistan or india could experience a wet bulb temperature of >35°C for several hours sometimes this century, which will probably kill most people who don't have access to air conditioning (which is most of them), while the excessive use of air conditioning will further increase the temperature in this city during the event.
If we are talking about +3°C scenarios, it is really for you to argue why excess deaths shouldn't be assumed to show compounding growth.
> Have you considered mitigating factors to prevent deaths?
I've mentioned the possibility of adaption several times in this thread. But I personally severely doubt that a global society that can't get it's act together to limit CO2 emissions will be able to mobilize adequate economic and political resources to make a dent in the excess deaths resulting from a +3°C scenario. It's the same basic problem: we would need to mobilize considerable public resources, financed mostly by rich people and with significant impact on the lifestyle of the middle class to benefit society at large. Either we manage to achieve this for both emission reduction and adaption, or we will loose at both.
This marks you as an unserious person in the matter being discussed.
Those are: In 1976, global average temperature was 0.15 degrees C above the 1861-1890 mean. 50 years later, in 2024 it was 1.54 degrees above. On average, that's a 2.79 percent increase in the temperature anomaly per year over the past 50 years. https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/climate-change?Metric=T...
If you look at the graph and the scientific forecasts, it would be dumb not to assume that the rate of temperature increase will increase if we do not drastically cut down emissions quickly. If such a scenario doesn't scare the pants off you, you either have very little investment in the state of the world past 2050 or you are unreasonably confident that it won't impact you or your loved ones.
"Cold deaths vastly outnumber heat-related ones, but mostly due to “moderate” rather than extremely cold conditions."
Currently (mostly) cities don't see Death Valley or Marble Bar range tempretures or beyond .. this will change.
Government statistics show there were more than 10,000 heat-related deaths in the UK alone between 2020 and 2024. Close to 3,000 people died amidst the record-breaking 2022 heatwaves, when UK temperatures exceeded 40C for the first time. Despite this, the UK remains unprepared for extreme heat.
Extreme heat could lead to 30,000 deaths a year in England and Wales by 2070s, say scientists
~ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/10/extreme-...
Give it time for higher tempretures to reach dense urban centres, look to India and equatorial countries that'll experience both high temp and high humidity and you'll see heat exhaustion deaths rise to well past those anglocentric numbers.
The more serious numbers will come from climate related conflict and migration in any case (assuming no change in increasing emmissions, even assuming a flattening to a steady human annual addition).
Cold deaths will decrease in high-latitude countries (which tend to be sparsely inhabited) but heat deaths will increase in low latitude countries (i.e. places like India). The exact effects of this will depend on political factors (adaption), but it is unlikely that the decrease in cold deaths will compensate the increase in heat deaths. Also, the people dying from heat will still be dead.
Finally a positive outcome of capitalism!
Women don't have "tens" of children due to culture, they have them due to not having an option. The data says they (as a global group) barely want 2 or 3 (which makes sense to those that have seen the risks and tribulations).
North America has large stable energy amount per capita that is cleaning up.
Asia has large population, small energy amount per capita and is increasing that rapidly by all methods, including fossils but also low emissions ones.
So overall Asia has very large emissions but smaller per capita than North America. And almost everybody is deploying low emissions energy sources.
This is finally happening at scale.
Even Poland generated more energy from solar power than coal in June.
The tech and economics are there and have been for a while, it's politics and disinformation that's holding us back.
The key lesson I'm taking is that even if we avoid the worst of this environmental disaster we've created a political realm that looks to profit individually from making disasters worse rather than profit collectively by fixing them and that cannot be good for the human race as we face upcoming disasters, some of which will be spin-offs of this one, like climate wars and climate refugees.
This always seems to apply to inaction, but never to action or what is really to say, tax plans.
TL;DR India should be hotter, but due to sulfur dioxide emissions at ground level the rate of warming is a third less. For reference, the current rate of warming is ~0.25C per decade.
From your linked medium article:
By 2050 total human population will likely be under 2 billion.
Humans, along with most other animals, will go extinct before the end of this century.
These impacts are locked in and cannot be averted.
How can you validate (ie prove) these claims?
NB: Climate aside, the current "birthrate crisis" that the natalists scream about will see a flattening of population growth by 2050 .. that leaves ~ 8 billion to vanish to reach the 2 billion asserted.
> Everything in this article is supporting information for this conclusion.
So,
> How can you validate (ie prove) these claims?
By reading the rest of the article and its references.
As you probably know, not many things in this realm can be proven with 100% certainty.
These impacts are locked in and cannot be averted.
And under that assumption, it's a bit crazy to think anything but depopulation will happen. Everything points to it being in their playbook; the blatant mishandling of COVID (which is far from over) by the uniparty being one of many glaring examples.
Many wish there was at least malice because then there is a narrative, the reality is probably much more muddled and messy.
Capital incentives make people behave like animals, and even well intentioned ones are often coerced by said animals else face the ultimate price.
I prefer that framing too - cleaning up air pollution isn't really causing global warming, it was just that the aerosols were temporarily masking warming from greenhouse gasses that had already been emitted.
I was trying to figure out why volcanoes sometimes have a global cooling effect, I mean the things are pumping out obscene amounts of carbon dioxide right, so whats with the cooling. Well it turns out sulfur dioxide has a negative greenhouse coefficient(it will pass infrared light better than visible light). And if the volcano dumps tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, you get the cooling effect.
At which point I got too clever for my own good and went "Hey wait a minute, we(as a species) worked very hard to get the sulfur compounds out of our fuels, what it that was a mistake" conveniently ignoring why you don't want sulfur in your fuels. "Acid rain was not that bad, right?"
But sometimes it is fun do a little mustache twirl and in my best supervillain voice, proclaim "You know what would reduce global warming, we need to add a bunch of sulfur to jet fuel, to increase the amount of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere"
When simple solutions interact with complex systems, complex problems arise. As it is said, for every problem there is a solution that is simple, easy and wrong.
Solar growth is likely to remain exponential for the next decade or so, which will create a number of new opportunities. Other energy sources will also come online. But fossil fuels are unlikely to be regulated away, globally. We are also likely past some serious tipping points— so I prefer to figure out ASAP whether stratospheric aerosol injections are a viable tactic for preventing the melting of permafrost, for instance.
Some random small group of people get to take these risks for all humanity? No thanks.
Especially when the alternative solution to global warming is… degrowth. Which is just not going to work functionally as a political policy in a competitive world.
Fossil fuel use will decrease significantly… eventually.
Btw, did you know that if the USA replaced farmland currently growing biofuels with solar, that land area would produce 4x the current total electricity use of the entire nation?
We need to buy time — we can’t let the permafrost melt because “stupid humans deserve it”
Would it produce that much or would that be the capacity? They're very different things that i see endlessly confused in this context.
Like, say, petroleum exporters?
but you're burying the lede: "We are also likely past some serious tipping points—" == we're doomed, just slowly, and we desperately need to be doing something to slow down or stop this metaphorical bus before it falls off a cliff
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1fx12q1/is_an_em_d...
Any practical solution will consist of a wide array of approaches executed in parallel.
Talking about suddenly getting the whole world to stop using oil is a hypothetical thought exercise. It’s not going to happen. We have to be looking at all of the approaches together, including some lessening of fossil fuel use.
Unfortunately even if/when we completely stop producing CO₂, it takes at least several centuries until levels go fully back down to natural levels by themselves.
Pumping SO₂ into the stratosphere should be able to regulate global temperatures to reasonable levels while we develop effective CO₂ sequestration.
Unfortunately SO₂ injection is incredibly controversial, as it triggers the "don't mess with nature" taboo, especially among people who have seen Jurassic Park, and affects the whole planet, including those who don't want it.
We do actually know that SO₂ breaks down in the stratosphere in 1-2 years, because we've studied when volcanoes injects it. It also doesn't cause acid rain because it's above the rain cycle.
But these facts are very hard to get across to people.
Suppose we start putting enough SO₂ in the stratosphere to halt warming or at least slow its growth down.
I can almost guarantee that the response of the current US government would not be "Whew...now that we've averted the near term problems we were facing from climate change we can get to work on seriously getting rid of most fossil fuels use".
No, it would be "Great! We can now get rid of those cancer causing wind farms and ugly solar farms and go all in on a 100% fossil fuel economy featuring a massive increase in coal. We should have been doing that all along but enough people believed in the global warming hoax to slow us down. Now we are free of that!".
We'd need ongoing increasing SO₂ injections to counter this, and all it would take is something to disrupt that for a few years and then all that increasing warming that has held back by those injections would come roaring back. But we'd be getting that warming increase over a short term instead of a longer term, making it much harder to deal with.
To risky in terms of liability.
Otherwise I'm gonna hold the international maritime organisation solely responsible for every drought, fire and megastorm from how much their ban of fuel with sulphur content has exacerbated the warming situation by destabilizing the existing balance.
we are going to see countries going to war over unilateral solar radiation management efforts
It wasn't too long ago since another aerosol punctured a giant hole into our ozone, what was the effect of that?
Ironically, aerosol injection will probably benefit fossil fuel companies, with less pressure to meet aggressive emissions targets.
ETA: Don’t get me started on how weird it is that there’s a pre-spun conspiracy theory in chemtrails, one that makes zero sense but happens to align perfectly with making geoengineering even more difficult. But now I’m being conspiratorial.
They can sit on their asses, but going against people who actually try to do something to address climate change is a step too far.
There's currently 31 states who have bills to ban geoengineering. Its not just red states, there are plenty of "blue states" on the list as well. Painting this as a partisan political issue is just stupid. California is set to join the list as well.
March 2025:
As of this week, 31 out of 50 U.S. states—well over half the nation—have introduced legislation to ban or severely limit geoengineering and weather modification operations. Just days ago, on March 24th, that number stood at 24. Seven new states have joined in under a week, reflecting an undeniable groundswell of public awareness and political will.
https://sayerji.substack.com/p/weve-crossed-the-tipping-poin...
Anyone can introduce legislation. Keep this off HN.
B) Had you spent five minutes researching what's going on, you would've seen an article from last year about Alameda City, a city in California (yes, THAT California, the supposed VERY BLUE STATE California) that banned geoengineering:
June 2024:
A Northern California city council voted early Wednesday morning to cancel the nation’s first outdoor experiment into the potential to limit global warming by altering cloud behavior.
The five-member Alameda City Council voted unanimously to reject University of Washington researchers’ aerial spraying of liquefied salt from the deck of a retired aircraft carrier in San Francisco Bay, two months after the experiment began.
And shockingly, the report isn't in some strange substack. Its actually a well known LEFT LEANING site - Politico:
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/05/california-geoengin...
But hey man, just keep believing that this is simply some red state conspiracy to block climate change.
If not its a distraction, not a solution.
The calcium carbonate dust is reflective (the aim of the engineering is to reflect sunlight away from the Earth's atmosphere in the first place). However, it doesn't contribute to acid rain or oceans like the sulfate dioxide does (the aerosol that East Asian scrubbers are removing).
The CO2 (a greenhouse gas) amount isn't increased in this engineering effort. It increases because of burning fossil fuels, though. In the East Asian countries, they are producing/using more energy (via burning fossil fuels), but only removing the reflective aerosol; they're still emitting the CO2.
If cost was no object, we'd probably need to use the calcium carbonate immediately (to prevent the sunlight from entering the atmosphere immediately), we'd scrub existing carbon from the atmosphere (CO2), and we'd convert power plants to non-emissive technologies (and also install scrubbers onto existing ones for as long as they're needed).
NASA and the US Navy have been conducting studies since the 1960s showing no loss of cognitive function up to 50000ppm or so.
Submarines and space vehicles regularly operate at CO2 levels much higher than 1000ppm. If the levels of cognitive decline were anywhere close to what some of these studies show it would be easily observable in astronauts and submariners.
Not to mention testing locations with good ventilation would show drastically higher scores over all on standardized tests, and individuals would show drastically higher scores between attempts depending on ventilation.
None of these things happen. The only logical conclusion is that there is some flaw in study methodology.
> Recent studies have shown that short-term exposure to high levels of indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) could negatively affect human cognitive performance, but the results are still controversial. In this study, a systematic review and meta-analysis of fifteen eligible studies was performed to quantify the effects of short-term CO2 exposure on cognitive task performance. The control CO2 levels used for comparison were below 1000 ppm, while the exposure concentrations were divided into three groups: 1000–1500 ppm, 1500–3000 ppm, and 3000–5000 ppm. The results indicated that CO2 exposure below 5000 ppm impacted human cognitive performance, with complex cognitive tasks being more significantly affected than simple tasks. The complex task performance declined significantly when exposed to additional CO2 concentrations of 1000–1500 ppm and 1500–3000 ppm, with pooled standardized mean differences (SMDs) (95% CI) of −2.044 (−2.620, −1.467) and −0.860 (−1.380, −0.340), respectively.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036013232...
I don't know how large these effects are, but they are statistically significant.
Then they analyzed only complex cognitive tasks. But fewer studies included complex cognitive tasks, and they used different methods of adjusting CO2 exposure (ventilation vs adding pure CO2)
Then you’ll note that of those studies they found that:
“The effects of pure CO2 on complex cognitive task performance decreased with increased CO2 concentrations”.
Between 1000-1500, and 1500-3000ppm they found a decrease in complex cognitive tasks performance, but at a higher exposure of 3000-5000ppm they found no effect.
This makes no sense until you read
“the complex cognitive task results under pure additional CO2 concentrations of 1000–1500 ppm and 1500–3000 ppm showed publication bias.”
Handful of studies (many with sketchy methodology—reducing ventilation, which brings with it many more variables than just increased CO2), publication bias, and a negative dose dependent response.
Also that Satish et al. study (the author is the one I was referring to in my last post—they also have several other studies on the subject) shows an enormous effect IIRC, which would skew the aggregate effects in the meta study.
The effect sizes in that study were the ones I was referencing when I said that such effects would be obvious.
Since humans have been building shelter and living in caves, we have regularly been exposed to long term CO2 levels of 1000-2000ppm. The natural variations in ventilation dwarf a few hundred extra ppm in the atmosphere.
We’ve also been exposing submariners to thousands of ppm for extended periods with no observed effect, and we have many studies shows no observed effects up to 40k ppm.
We even have studies showing that small babies sleeping next to the mothers are exposed to CO2 levels of 5-10kppm.
skimming through a couple of studies, measurable impact starts around 1000 ppm. with current policy intervention, we will likely reach 550ppm by 2100
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/grantham/publications/briefing-pa...
glorious, thank you.
>Nit: You probably mean Cue, as in "That's your time to go on stage" not Queue as in "that's your place in line"
bone to pick: you missed your opportunity to cool-ly say "not queue as in hair worn in a long plait descending down the back"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...
That last little bit scares me. Whenever I see "yeah nah we can totally reverse it", all I can imagine is that it's something we'll do carelessly and excessively, with no ability to reverse it within our lifetimes.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/cons-products/...
India is a difficult challenge for most manufacturing operations, the government has done little to educate the population and pollution both in the air and food I fear will have a lasting impact. Some of the last reporting I saw had some insanely high number like 90% of tested children have lead poisoning. China has had their problems but they excelled at the growth stage.
I don't think that's true. India has a large domestic market, high tariffs, and relatively low labor costs. It makes a lot of sense for products for the domestic market to be manufactured (or at least assembled) inside the country, and you see many manufacturers doing that. Some of them have success in manufacturing and go on to build for the export market in India; many have less success and accept the tariffs.
Completely untrue. Indian GDP per capita has more than 5xed since 2000.
put the sulphur back in the ship juice!
The nightmare scenario would be something like we start releasing sulfates into the upper atmosphere to induce cooling to counter the warming from greenhouse gases but do not reduce the growth in greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases would continue growing and so the amount of sulfates we have to release to counter that also would keep growing.
There are two big problems with that.
#1. The greenhouse gas emissions are a side effect of numerous useful and important activities. People make a lot of money from those activities. They happen unless we make a concerted effort to reduce them.
The sulfite emissions on the other hand would be specifically to counter the effects of greenhouse gases. Whoever is paying for them would be losing money doing this. All it takes is an economic downturn to make budgets tight and funding might go away.
#2. Greenhouse gases can affect climate for a long time. It takes hundreds to thousands of years in the case of CO2 for today's emissions to be no longer affecting the climate.
Sulfates in the upper atmosphere clear out in months to maybe a couple years.
Let's say then we go down the sulfates path, don't reduce greenhouse gas growth and this goes on for decades. Then something stops or disrupts the sulfate releases for a couple years and the sulfites leave the upper atmosphere.
The greenhouse gases are there still there and we rapidly get most of the warming that had been held off for decades by the sulfates.
This would likely be disastrous. Getting all that warming spread over several decades at least gives people time to adapt. Getting it all over a few years would be way to fast for people to deal with.
I think probably the only way purposefully emitting pollutants like this might be acceptable would be after we've got greenhouse gas emissions under control and are on a path we are sure is going to get is to net zero in some specific timeframe, but it will still take a few years to reach peak greenhouse emissions and we've identified a tipping point that we will hit before that. Then maybe countering that with emitting pollutants just until greenhouse gases peak and then come down to where we are below that tipping point might be reasonable.
They are technically also paying the rich (and crucially the companies that supply things for both the rich and poor) to not use oil and gas too.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/indias-solar-boo...
It's quite the opposite situation than the US, where coal is extremely high-quality and private player participation is unrestricted.
I'm not holding my breath. I'm happy they saw a slight reduction in oil and gas use, though.
The entire point is that the global climate is a complex system and changing things may have unintended consequences.
Proved by reality, that's why they propose to reduce or even undo human emissions.
It's just shifting, what types and where, energy is generated.
And those shifts, have tradeoffs.
Want cleaner air in developed urban areas via EVs? ok cool, but the tradeoff is more mines elsewhere to supply those minerals, more batteries and metals for charging infrastructure.
There is no free lunch in the energy world, solar and wind have tradeoffs.
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/VW-and-H...
( Carbon Dioxide Absorbs and Re-emits Infrared Radiation - https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/carbo... )
You want science, testable and repeatable science?
Start with, say, Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity (1967)
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/24/3/1520-04...
described as "the most influential studies of all time" ( https://www.carbonbrief.org/prof-john-mitchell-how-a-1967-st... )
There are others: https://www.carbonbrief.org/the-most-influential-climate-cha...
The real world physics of doubling a low CO2 concentration in representative air samples has been performed many a time .. it works as the cited paper says .. trapping more of heat energy radiated upwards by the land and sea that would otherwise diffuse outwards.
People calculated precisely what exactly happens when you double CO2... And the effect it's logarithmic...
Original paper (on arvix, not accepted by any mainstream journal so far): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.03098.pdf
C.A. de Lange loves it, claims it as game changing etc: https://co2coalition.org/publications/van-wijngaarden-and-ha...
There are a number of discussions re: the original paper and why it was not accepted, eg:
What is technically wrong with Wijngaarden & Happer's paper claiming to show that CO2's contribution to surface warming is saturated? - https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/25227/what-...
The thing about Venus is also something you'll find if you look for serious papers trying to criticise the paper. Nitpicking about the word logarithmic seems to be the only things that serious critics have found. The other main argument seems to be name calling and Cancel Culture... and that's all what critics so far have produced...
Claiming that things are unaccepted is also some kind of rumour. There are more papers, and if you read them you'll notice that they're of very high quality. Just compare the quality with that of papers of critics...
To me the most compelling argument for Wijngaarden is the incredible low quality of all the writings from people from climate-institutes that tried to find something against him. OMG...
Maybe read the paper and those that followed, especially about the follow on increases in water vapor and methane and where trapped heat energy goes once there's little to no ice left to melt and act as a sink.
The people you are quoting are a known fossil fuel disinformation crew providing a pension plan to fossils like Clauser who have zero peer review papers in any part of the climate or geophysics field despite some sound work in unrelated fields contemporous with 1967.
For some that is less cows, for others, it seems like the desired solution is less humans.
Dirt poor people heat and cook with coal or firewood. They burn down forests to plant food. They are sustained by long supply chains by well intentioned NGOs rather than local produce.
It's not simple to say rich people are polluters, and poor people are living naturally.
Although per capita, the middle class consumer may be the worst of them all.
- start with the humans that pollute more - which is way more correlated to their consumption that their solar roof surface. Sorry USA, you go first. Others high standard living countries follows.
- Regarding the cows, they have a shorter lifespan and don’t shop much neither do they heat their house or shower water. We could just stop breeding new ones and keep the existant till their death.
Their farts are not a long term issue like so damn many people make it out to be. (and I don't think they don't produce (that much) more than the wildlife and plant rot they replace over the total outsized amount of space they actually take up) If there's a reason to have less it's because we chop down forests for more grazing space to grow the herd. Environment impact aside these are carbon sinks even if vastly less efficient than kelp forests or bogs or the like. Also because we use a bit of fossil fuels for fertilizers in part for their feed. That said the manure they produce is probably invaluable in avoiding famines if we're going to stop utilizing Haber–Bosch or start utilizing more expensive methods without gas.
The US wants to immediately defund these satellites and halt their observations.
https://www.science.org/content/article/dozens-active-and-pl...
I've come to the conclusion this is basically it, aside from corruption.
Intellectual weakness and cowardice, avoiding what you can't actually do or don't understand.
In the case of anything space related though, I'd look to corruption, trying to cut public resources to reduce competition with private equivalents, shifting money from something publicly owned to something privately profited from.
just happens that oil barons & Putin happen to have views that are aligned, and that Trump + his cronies are willing to play ball with the fellow travelers.
politics 101.
[0] https://www.space.com/science/climate-change/as-nasas-budget... (.... It called for a 24% overall cut to NASA's budget, including a 47% reduction in Earth science funding...")
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Fiscal...
> "The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life."
Seems like a deliberate effort not to mention it in the title and abstract, despite the text clearly defining "East Asia" as "mainly China".
Also major contributor to plastic pollution in the ocean (from rivers) and #1 in CO2 emissions. All the while western economies hurt themselves and consumers in vain efforts instead of being serious about the issue and confronting its major contributor.
https://old.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1lvoi0x/theres_a...
Meanwhile, US leadership is on team "Drill baby, drill"
India: 1.2 tonnes CO2/person/year.
China: 7.2 tonnes CO2/person/year.
Russia: 10.1 tonnes CO2/person/year.
Canada, Australia: 12.9 tonnes CO2/person/year.
USA: 16.5 tonnes CO2/person/year.
Your figures are for who produces CO2 and nothing to do with pollution
So in the context of the article this thread is discussing CO2 and pollution are different.
A complete picture of blame absolutely should include per-capita, ultimate use (who buys the end product of China's emissions), and historical contributions. However, to ignore China's absolute , ongoing contribution as the world's largest emitter (by far: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...) is clearly an error.
2023 totals:
China: 11.90 billion tons, trending up
USA: 4.91 billion tons, trending down
Unless you can make a good argument that some humans have a natural or divine right to a bigger share of whatever total worldwide emissions budget we decide we can accept any kind of per country instead of per capita base allocation [1] make no sense.
This can be seen by considering what happens if countries split. A large country that is over their allocation in a per country system can simply split into two or more smaller countries, with the split designed so that each of the new countries has about an equal fraction of the former country's emissions.
This results in no change in the total worldwide emissions, but now that set of people that were before over their total allocation and high on the list of people that need to make big changes now are all in countries under their allocation and in the "should do something about it eventually but no need for big changes now" group of countries.
If they are clever about how they split the original large country into smaller countries they can immediately make free trade treaties and travel treaties between them that effectively make a common market with free travel like much of Europe now has so the split into multiple countries doesn't even change life much for the citizens of the new countries.
Whatever countries have now moved to the top of the "need big changes now" list because of this now have incentive to split, and so on.
[1] By base allocation I mean whatever share they would be allocated in a world with no trade. Actual allocations need to take into account people emitting more because they are making/growing things for other people which reduces the emissions directly attributable to those other people.
A useful measure should not be affected by where we happen to draw political boundaries on our maps.
Outside that thought experiment it actually is useful, and that's why we have data showing that China leads, by far, in producing emissions. By the way, they lead in methane and nitrous oxide as well -- it isn't just carbon dioxide.
One property a useful measure of something undesirable (like CO2 emissions) should have is that if you identify the country that is doing the worst by that measure, and they were to change so that their economy works like that of the second worst country and their people live a lifestyle nearly identical to the people of the second country, that should improve the thing being measured.
Total by country fails at that. If China were to change so that they are basically a clone of the US economy and lifestyle their emissions would go way up.
Conversely, if the US were to change to be a China clone that would result in a big decrease in total emissions.
If you want to suppose those these two countries' populations changed lifestyles, I can also entertain that argument. You'd want to consider the economic reasons why one produces the emissions it does right now, and then suppose how that changes. In such a case, who is purchasing China's manufacturing output, and who is now purchasing that of the US?
Ignoring the world's largest and fastest-growing source of emissions simply because its per-capita rate is lower is a distraction from solving the actual problem.
It's an enticing "what if," but does not reflect the reality of the real data we have today. That data says China is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Now, yes, if we consider just China, then that being a major contributor to world CO2 emissions does imply that if we are to have total emissions under some total global rate, then, well, the total emissions from China need to be below that rate, certainly.
However, it seems a hard ask to try to get China to put stricter per-capita limitations on themselves than we are willing to endure ourselves?
Now, if the higher population places reduced their emissions and the lower population places stayed the same, that might be sufficient, but it also seems a bit, free-riding for those lower population areas?
Also, yeah the consumption of the goods produced seems pretty relevant.
It is especially a hard ask when you consider that because of the longevity of CO2 in the atmosphere there is more US/Europe CO2 in the atmosphere currently than there is Chinese CO2.
The US and Europe spent well over 100 years massively emitting in order to build up the levels of prosperity they now enjoy. If everyone else that wants prosperity tries to follow that same path it will be disastrous.
The only way to give every country a chance to reach a decent level of prosperity without using a a disastrous amount of fossil fuels is for (1) countries that achieve prosperity to rapidly and drastically cut their emission by switching to renewable energy, and (2) the prosperous countries provide subsidies for renewables to the countries that are trying to become prosperous so many of the latter can skip much of the "fossil fuel our way to prosperity" phase and go more directly to the prosperous renewal energy powered country endgame.
> Also, yeah the consumption of the goods produced seems pretty relevant.
In a fair system it is relevant, but as an adjustment after population. A fair system would start with the amount of total annual emissions that we decide (somehow) we need to keep under as a world, divide that by the number of people, and then assign each country that quotient times there population as their annual emission allowance.
If a country emits more than that they would have to get some other country to give them some of that country's emission allowance. That could be incorporated into international trade by making it so outsourcing production of something to another country requires you to provide that other country with enough of your emission allowance to cover the making of that thing.
I do enjoy the back and forth on these points, though.
I'll address the per-capita figures again, as it's still being lawded, but it is misguided. China's per-capita CO2 emissions are not only multiples higher than India's but have also surpassed those of the European Union. China's high emissions are a direct result of its chosen path of industrialization, pursued for its own economic ambitions.
Regarding historical responsibility -- a point I've already agreed should be part of a complete picture ("historical contributions" above): Crucially, this is happening in an era with known consequences and technological alternatives. The West industrialized over a century without access to modern, cost-effective renewables. China, by contrast, is making a deliberate choice to build out its fossil fuel infrastructure today, fully aware of the climate impact and with cleaner technologies readily available.
This brings us to the original topic of this thread, which is aerosols. China is demonstrating the capability to scrub its emissions, but it is choosing only to clean up the pollutants that have immediate, local health impacts. This reveals a clear policy of prioritizing national benefit over the global necessity of reducing greenhouse gases.
China has higher emission, because China has higher number of factories. The factories produce stuff. Where do all that stuff go? And for whom are all that stuff produced?
Not entirely China, or Africa, or India. A vast amount of that stuff flows to... the West.
So, if the West chooses to reduce its consumption significantly, the CO2 emissions of China will go down.
The consumers have to take the blame. It's as clear as that. And the West should fund climate-resilient infra for people and green tech for China and India and Vietnam. Because it is to West that stuff goes. But that's another issue. It is because there is demand in the West, China produce stuff.
If every American buys only one pair of shoes and a couple of new tshirts every year, and not more, and buys a smartphone after using one for 4 years, not less, the CO2 emission of China will go down.
> ultimate use (who buys the end product of China's emissions), and historical contributions. However, to ignore China's absolute , ongoing contribution as the world's largest emitter (by far: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...) is clearly an error.
"Ultimate use" discusses consumption by the West. This fact does not exonerate China, as China directly causes the emissions in order to satisfy its economic ambitions, and profits from its _factual_ role as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. If China did not offer these exports, perhaps someone else would. But right now, it's China.
I also threw in "historical contributions" to throw you a bone. Nonetheless, right now, its China and China's emissions are, even still, increasing.
If you want to pass the buck to the West that's fine, but the reality is that China is producing more emissions than anybody else is, and it does it for the benefit of China at the expense of the planet.
Is it?
Chinese companies are doing it for the profit, no doubt. But the West's unsustainable consumption standards should share the blame. China only do this because the West buy. And Western companies shift their production to China for cheaper labour, mainly.
Many American companies are actually doing the polluting. Not only Chinese companies produce in China. So, in a world with blurry boundaries, please take into account the production of Western companies, in Chinese physical borders, and stuff that China export to the West.
It is China now, it will be India, too, some years into the future. Where you write from the third iPhone (produced in India) that you bought in the last two years, that India and China are to blame for the pollution, where your second big heavy car sits in the garage, the rare earth minerals for which were mined in China, for an American company, and a roomba cleans your floor (also produced in China), that reads "carbon-neutral". You just hear the bell, and someone delivers your pizza, who is a climate refugee from a small pacific island.
You are not to blame. China and India are polluting!
Your argument has now shifted to focus on consumer demand. Yet, even examination of this angle will reveal that China's state policies create the artificially low prices that fuel that consumption.
The issue isn't simply that "the West buys things." It's that China's government actively engineers this hyper-consumption as the Chinese economic policy.
The CSIS (link below) describes this as a system of "nonmarket policies" and "state-driven overproduction." This is accomplished through massive government subsidies that allow Chinese companies to operate at a loss and "dump" cheap goods onto the global market.
The "unsustainable consumption" you describe is, therefore, a direct response to a market deliberately distorted by China for the sake of its economic ambitions.
Furthermore, the CSIS article explicitly states that these dumping policies support China's "pollution-intensive" and "carbon-intensive" manufacturing.
All this is to show that the problem is not reducible to consumer choice, but more so a deliberate strategy by the Chinese state.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-steel-and-aluminum-tariffs-...