Did you not see my qualifier about asteroids? We haven’t found primate fossils (oldest is around 55million) dating back to the pre-Chicxulub impact 66million years ago, but DNA branching evidence places primates potentially existing before then. It’s hypothesized that the impact blotted out the sun for 15years.
The oldest Primates discovered are in North America and can be found at the White House in Washington DC.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-21/major-climate-agencies-call-global-emissions-peak/104016030 Maybe got shared earlier. This is GOOD NEWS. If the West has already got falling emissions, and Chinese emissions are falling, then it won't be hard for India's emissions to fall and that's the ballgame. We avert 2.5C-3C warming, and we can focus on mitigation against 2-2.25C warming.
I wish i could be so positive about it. The real battle on climate is definitely happening in Asia, but the main increases are going to come from the large parcel of nations including India, indonesia philipines etc. when you put those ones together, the situation still looks very bad. We need to prevent those guys building coal etc
And if you're wondering how China is doing it.. Well, part of it is the shrinking population and slowing economy is decreasing demand for power, but much more important is that China has been building a lot of clean energy. The article Brummy linked focuses on solar and wind power, as well as EVs, but more importantly is that China has become the largest producer of hydro power in the last 20-30 years and claim they are adding between 10GW and 20GW a year for the next decade. https://www.reuters.com/markets/com...-generation-surges-coal-ebbs-kemp-2024-06-18/ Not only that, but China claims that it is currently building between 6-8 nuclear plants a year and plans to be up to 150 by 2040. Right now they have 55, which produces about 5% of China's production https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61927 The end result is that China has reduced coal as a source of their power from as high as 77% in 2000, to down to 53% this year. The bad news is that while coal power has decreased by percentage, That doesn't represent a significant reduction in power production from coal, so it is better to say that China's energy growth has been from clean energy sources. https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysi...-to-record-low-53-share-of-power-in-may-2024/ As for why China's power growth is still growing despite its economy slowing and population decreasing.. Well, China is still electrifying. Even within their major cities, a hefty chunk of the population uses stoves for cooking and heating and a lot of them use coal in the stoves. While a lot of them have access to electric stoves and heating, for cultural reasons, coal stoves are preferred. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/traditional-stove-use-in-rural-china-persists-despite-health-warnings
I'm not sure that I agree with it won't be hard for India's emissions to fall.. China has been investing hundred of billions over the last 20+ years building dams, nuclear plants, and solar/wind farms, as well as EVs. India does not seem to have the interest, nor budget to make this type of effort. Don't get me wrong. It's not like China is at a better place for their energy production than India is, it's just that China seems to be making the investments while India isn't. https://www.iea.org/countries/india
I too am not bullish about India. However, it seems that life in India is getting increasingly difficult with climate change and temps clearly not suitable for human habitation for months at a time.
And the short term "solution" for this isn't clean energy, it's more and more air conditioning, which means more fossil fuel energy production. It is also worth noting that the US's reduction in emissions for energy generation is largely because we switched from extremely dirty coal to less dirty natural gas. This isn't something that either China or India can do. The US has a basically limitless supply of natural gas, while India and China have very little and certainly not enough to make the switch from coal to natural gas plants like the US has. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
Numerous problems in India: -no cohesive national energy policy. It’s pretty much a local fragmented system. -poor utility service all around. You can’t electrify the systems because the systems are known for their power outages. Chinese residents experience roughly 3 hours per year. Indian residents in even well of urban areas experience 2 hours of power outage per DAY. My wife’s family over there is well off and live in a more affluent section of a large urban area known for its (relatively) high standard of living. They cook with propane tanks and have backup power generators. -it doesn’t have the financial and development capacity to decarbonize. GDP per capita is roughly 20% of China’s and on an overall development basis, they are China 20 years ago but with no real path toward accelerated development path China has been on over the last 20 years. While they’re probably more or less where China was 20-25 years ago, I think it will take them 40-50 years to get where China is today. China achieved what they did via a strong manufacturing base, combining the top down CCP planning with capitalist friendly practices to elevate standard of living and modernization. The low birth rate helped during that time as well, although it will come back to bite them as this has now set off a demographic chain reaction. India’s exports per capita is roughly 20% of China’s. It is more service heavy on the export. Good for developing modern trade economy, but those benefits accrue only to those with the skills to participate, ie, not very many people. -tax compliance in India is atrocious. Maybe 5-10% of households even file and there isn’t sufficient monitoring of those who do. Same with corporations. The government doesn’t have sufficient access to funds to make the necessary improvements. Life there centers on finding private resources to meet needs: private primary and secondary education, private hospitals for treatment, having personal funds to create redundancies for when utilities crash out intermittently. When my wife’s aunt had Covid, our extended family spent time finding and buying her a private hospital bed. And then finding and buying her the oxygen and meds to bring to the hospital for her to be successfully treated. It’s a chaotic, decentralized libertarian developing world shit show. Things the government is good at top down: higher ed system via the IITs, smiling when remittances from non resident Indians come in, othering Muslims (Sunni Muslims really, Shia are cool with them) to manufacture some sense of “Indian” unity, building up defenses against Pakistan, modernizing a few global economic hubs within key cities to create a sense of progress for outsiders or those who have the honor of living inside that bubble.
The desert in Saudi Arabia always gets cold enough for it to snow. The reason it never has snowed before is because they don't get any water during the cold season. Now with climate change they did.
Including the ones caused by climate change mitigation efforts. Lithium-ion batteries don't grow on corn fields.