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[deleted] t1_jdyheu4 wrote

Reply to comment by Inevitable_Syrup777 in The Greenland Ice Sheet is close to a melting point of no return by Vucea

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Frostcrisp t1_jdykh7o wrote

China is outputting the vast majority of warming gases. I think that's what they're alluding to.

China makes the US look like a non-offender by comparison.

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ialsoagree t1_jdyl5yu wrote

China is not emitting "the vast majority" - they're not even emitting the majority.

Words have meaning, and majority means more than half. China emits around 30% of the total CO2e emissions - not even remotely close to the majority.

The word you are looking for is plurality. China emits a plurality of CO2e. With the US being the only country remotely close behind at 14%. India, the third highest, emits about half of what the US emits, or less than a quarter of what China emits.

The three countries combined equal the majority of global emissions.

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Inevitable_Syrup777 t1_jdz78tx wrote

CO2 Emissions by Country

Country Share of world

1 China 29.18% 2 United States 14.02% 3 India 7.09% 4 Russia 4.65%

china literally IS emitting the majority

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ialsoagree t1_jdzm8ko wrote

Less than 50% is literally not the majority, it's a plurality.

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Realistic_Turn2374 t1_jdzj2dq wrote

For it to emit the majority they would need to emit more than 50%.

What you mean is that they are the country that currently emits the most. Although if we look for cummulative CO2, the US wins by a lot, then it is the European Union and then China. This matters because the C02 that is warming up the environment is not just what we emmit every year, but what we have emmited over all.

China is currently the main emissor, and they do need to do something about it (and they are doing it by being the biggest clean energy producer), but let's not forget that they are the second most populated country in the world and that they manufacture products for the rest of the planet too. The US, in comparison with only a small fraction of their population, pollutes too much.

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Inevitable_Syrup777 t1_jdyy4l3 wrote

one country emits 1/3 of the fucking global emissions. I thought they were the smartest country, too!

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ToothlessGrandma t1_jdyl0pt wrote

It really doesn't make sense and speaks to the volume of incompetence on the global stage. China is investing in 90 new coal plants. 90. Instead of investing in renewable energy, they're doing everything they can to contribute to global warming.

It's super short term profits over long term viability and stability. It's insane really.

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ialsoagree t1_jdym6qv wrote

>Instead of investing in renewable energy, they're doing everything they can to contribute to global warming.

This isn't an accurate or fair claim by any measure.

China has issues, and it needs to address them, but straight up lying isn't helpful to the conversation.

In 2022, China added 26.8GW of new coal power capacity.

In the same year, China added 125GW of new solar and wind power.

While the US is investing about $141 billion in new renewable energy, China has invested a whopping $546 billion in 2022.

The idea that China isn't making efforts to build out a clean grid just isn't true. Yes, they are expanding coal power generation, and they are the nation with the leading CO2e emissions - and they do need to address both of those problems.

But to suggest that China isn't committed to building renewable energy just isn't accurate by any stretch of the imagination. They're doing more to expand renewable than the US and EU combined.

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ToothlessGrandma t1_jdymqch wrote

I acknowledge all your points, but still disagree with your overall logic. It doesn't matter what they're doing with renewables, by adding an additional 90 coal plants, you're really offsetting all that progress and it's pretty meaningless now. If they were serious they wouldn't be proceeding with new coal plants. I'm not sure anyone can explain why the coal plants are needed except because they're cheap and fast, which has been china's motto for decades.

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ialsoagree t1_jdynh5z wrote

>It doesn't matter what they're doing with renewables

Then why did you lie about what they are doing?

Instead of investing in renewable energy, they're doing everything they can to contribute to global warming.

If you hadn't lied about it, I wouldn't have mentioned it.

>by adding an additional 90 coal plants, you're really offsetting all that progress and it's pretty meaningless now.

China needs more power. They should not be building coal, but it's not fair to say that it's "cancelling out" anything.

They added 150GW of power between coal and renewables. Instead of it being 150GW of coal, it's 120GW of renewables and only 25GW of coal.

That cancels out a lot of coal emissions - and saying they're not investing in renewables is a lie. You lied.

>If they were serious they wouldn't be proceeding with new coal plants.

It's incredibly easy to criticize a country that is trying to develop itself, especially in areas that lack the technology and infrastructure to support more advanced power plants.

It's especially easy to do while you sit in a country that emitted far more emissions from coal than China ever has when it went through the same development cycle centuries ago.

Compared to the US or Europe, China is doing an incredible job of bringing power to millions of people while minimizing emissions.

EDIT:

To clarify, the US has emitted about 2x more emissions than China since the industrial revolution. And the EU has emitted about 1.5x more.

That doesn't excuse China, but it does make the idea that China isn't doing enough to limit emissions laughably ridiculous when it comes from the EU and US.

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ToothlessGrandma t1_jdyord8 wrote

Nothing cancels out those emissions. They're still going into the atmosphere and contributing to the overall greenhouse gases.

You seem like you're a shill for China, so this conversation isn't going anywhere. Wasn't China caught recently as being the only country on the planet secretly using ozone depleting gases?

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ialsoagree t1_jdyqcsf wrote

I never said anything cancels out those emissions. Infact, it was you who said that some emissions cancel out a lack of emissions, am equally ridiculous claim.

If you think pointing out facts makes me a shill, I think you're just unable to admit when you're wrong.

Everyone is wrong from time to time, it's how you respond to being wrong that defines you.

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Inevitable_Syrup777 t1_jdz715q wrote

CO2 Emissions by Country

Country Share of world

1 China 29.18% 2 United States 14.02% 3 India 7.09% 4 Russia 4.65%

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ialsoagree t1_jdzm6d1 wrote

Yes. I've literally pointed that out elsewhere.

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MightyH20 t1_jdzk1vi wrote

No offense but all these numbers are useless given the massive scale of the quantity of a percentage increase or decrease from a reference point.

The only metric that is relevant in terms of climate change is the amount of emissions and in particularly the progression towards climate targets.

A fair question would be how far a country has progressed towards that target?

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Realistic_Turn2374 t1_jdzjfqp wrote

> Instead of investing in renewable energy, they're doing everything they can to contribute to global warming.

This is a lie. China invests more in renewable energy than any other country and per capita the US emmits 4 times more than China. On top of that, China produces products for the rest of the world. If the average Chinese person spent as much as the average American, China would produce 4 times the amount of CO2 they produce now. Luckily for us, Chinese dont't waste nearly as much as Americans.

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