The EU had an 8% decline in emissions last year.
The US peaked at 23.1 tonnes of carbon emissions per capita in 1973. It came off that peak but stayed pretty flat through 2007 or so, at 20.2 tonnes per person. Since then, it's steadily come down, and is now at about 14.9.
There's still a long way to go, but the 35% reduction that the US has already accomplished shows that it's possible to keep making progress.
Yeah, the IRA and Infrastructure Bill steer about $67 billion to railways, $80 billion to transit systems. And even though a lot of the other spending goes towards the status quo of car-based passenger transportation, electrifying that will go a long way towards reducing carbon emissions.
And there are some more ambitious ideas baked in, too: redesigning cities to require less car infrastructure and overall energy use, etc.
I thought it was a big deal when passed and honestly can't understand why people who care about climate don't acknowledge just how big of a deal it was (and how devastating that so much of the money authorized will now be in control of a Trump administration).
The Inflation Reduction Act included $65 million in research grants for low emission aviation and $245 million in development of biofuel based Sustainable Aviation Fuel (aka SAF). And the $3 billion in loan guarantees for manufacturing advanced vehicle technologies included certain aircraft.
There were also $5 billion in loan guarantees for shutting down our heaviest polluting power plants or retooling them to greener generation methods.
There was $3 billion in buying zero emissions vehicles and charging infrastructure for the postal service.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which inherited a lot of the stuff from the Green New Deal, was a lot of things, and I don't think I've ever heard it called deeply unserious before today.
I haven't combed through the data in a minute, but I want to also say that they're also leading in fossil fuel deployment too.
Yup, China is also leading the planet on new coal plant construction. As of 2 months ago, it seemed to be on track to add 80GW of coal generation capacity in 2024 alone, and accounts for more than 90% of new coal construction.
By way of comparison, the US peaked in total coal plant capacity in 2011 at 318GW, and has since closed about 134GW of capacity, with more to come.
In context, what we're seeing is massive, massive expansion of electricity generation and transmission capacity, both clean and dirty, in China. We can expect China to increase its total carbon emissions each year to be closer to the West, while the United States reduces its own from a much higher starting point. Maybe the two countries will cross in per capita emissions around 2030 if current trends continue, but there's no guarantee that current trends will continue: will the United States continue to shift from coal to gas? Where does grid scale storage, electrification of passenger vehicles, demand shifting, or dispatchable carbon free power go from here, in a future Trump administration? What's going to happen with the Chinese economy over the next 5 years? What technology will be invented to change things?
There's been some reporting that Musk's Super PAC has been paying its workers so well that it's poached a bunch of the volunteers from the official campaign, and is so poorly run/audited that a lot of the workers are entering false data into the canvassing reports to qualify for bonuses. If that turns out to be true, then it will have been the case that Musk is burning his own money while hurting the Trump campaign.
I'm not ready to call the race, but stories like this at least reassure me that for Republicans, they're not sending their best.
I made my own "cell phone service" but it only works within 10m of my home.
was in charge of the prison where he died
Technically the president delegates that to his Attorney General, who in this case was the son of the guy who first hired a totally unqualified Epstein (21 years old, no college degree) to be around high school age kids, where he was known for ogling girls and somehow showing up to student parties where there was underage drinking.
And some blame lays with the prosecutor back in 2008 when Epstein was first charged for sex trafficking and sexual assault, who decided to let Epstein agree to a secret plea deal for only 13 months in county jail (which is really weird for a federal prosecutor to let happen), who, oh wait, was then rewarded by becoming a cabinet official for Trump.
The "Stan Kelly" persona itself is a fictional satire. The work is actually done by cartoonist Ward Sutton, whose standard political cartoons under his own name criticize the right wing directly.
Yeah, evolving lungs ended up clearing the way to make use of the much more plentiful oxygen in the air compared to what is dissolved in water. Amphibians and reptiles have pretty low metabolisms, but birds and mammals basically evolved endothermy (aka warm bloodedness), probably in support of much higher muscular power output. Ectotherms (aka cold blooded animals) have metabolisms that are correlated to temperature, which means they can't exert themselves as well when it's cold. Endothermy allowed animals to be warm all the time, and therefore use higher muscular power output in any environment, especially sustained.
That means mammals and birds were able to cover more distance, and survive in places where reptiles and amphibians can't, and all the advantages that carries.
This article estimates at a 40kg sailfish uses about 2.7 megajoules per day of energy when hunting. That's about 650 kcal.
An 80kg human weighs about twice as much and needs about 3 times the energy, without even exertion.
Warm blooded animals spend a lot of energy just maintaining body temperature. Plus water doesn't have very much oxygen in it, compared to the atmosphere.
There's not enough oxygen in water to support our metabolisms, even if we had gills.
Fish are adapted to conserve and use less oxygen, from slower metabolic rates to more options for anaerobic respiration that doesn't poison oneself from within.
The Republican party is ripe for conspiracy theory targets.
Epstein had close ties with Trump and his attorney general Bill Barr (whose father hired Epstein to teach at a prestigious private high school without a college degree, where he was known for ogling the high school girls and showing up to parties where underage drinking was happening). The waitresses and hostesses at Trump's Mar a Lago were also regularly recruited to work at Epstein's island. Alex Acosta, the federal prosecutor who agreed to a secret plea deal where Epstein served a slap on the wrist in a local jail instead of real prison was later elevated to Trump's cabinet, as Labor Secretary.
Now, Trump has named another child sex trafficker as his nominee for Attorney General.
There are suspicious ties between the Saudi royal family and key members in Trump's orbit, including his son in law Jared Kushner. Elon Musk has been doing sketchy shit with the Saudis and the Russians, as well. Basically everyone in Trump's circle, including his nominee to be the director of national intelligence, has shady ties with foreign adversaries.
There's lots of other little things about financial profiteering by the Trump folks: an SBA COVID bailout that went to huge businesses, a move to privatize or sabotage the public postal service and the weather service to help the private competition, arbitrary or politically motivated regulations to help certain businesses while hurting others, etc.
I mean, it really wouldn't be hard.