this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

God when are people going to get tired of this disgusting, useless, tween angst attitude toward life?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (10 children)

Conservatism has dragged America fifty years behind in tech progress and wasted all of our resources on destruction over building. I wish this country would get fucking NUKED. America is a dismal failure on every level

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Extreme poverty worldwide is down from 38% to 8.5% since 2000. Global median income has doubled in that period. And yes, that's adjusted for inflation.

Oh, and renewable energy generation as share of the global energy mix has consistently beaten expectations during that period, too. Solar, specifically.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 week ago (8 children)

Bullshit. Global inequality is on a constant rise. The extreme poverty crap is propaganda by the world bank who lowered the poverty line for no other reason than to make capitalism look good.

That stuff about renewaple energy is simple greenwashing. The only year since 2000 when CO2 emissions went down was in 2020 thanks to COVID.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Doesn't look that way to me, given that the change has been pretty smooth and shows up on specific regions and adjusting for outliers and inflation (and matches the rise in median income).

More importantly, it's not incompatible with global inequality on the rise. Different stats measure different things.

Renewable energy beating expectations is the opposite of greenwashing, it specifically compares actual generated renewable energy against previous projections. If you want to poke holes into it for the sake of... denying anything good has ever happened, I guess? you should instead point out at how disproportionately that growth is driven by China.

And again, that's perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don't know too much about the median income, but I'd wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off. Also, at least according to Wikipedia, the latest definition of extreme poverty was made in 2015, before the recent inflation spikes.

And "beat expectations" is just a non-statement. What were the expectations? And how does it matter if we're still on track for a climate catastrophe? We've crossed the 1.5°C target.

[–] HobbitFoot 13 points 1 week ago

but I'd wager that it was mostly because the really poor country got a bit better off.

That's what happened. The bimodal world income distribution has become unimodal as the working class of East Asia has seen a lot of improvement. Inequality in the first world went up since a lot of working class jobs left their countries while the wealthy were able to get richer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Hey, I'll take poor countries getting a bit better off before any benefits to any American any day. That's good news, so point made.

As for "beat expectations", I was going off a specific study showing multiple official forecasts and how far behind actuals they all were, but unfortunately I don't have it handy.

But the data is the data, so here's another example from an Australian blog post: https://evcricketenergy.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/2030-renewables-in-australia-forecast-2024-update/

And some data on renewable generation overtaking fossil fuels in the EU: https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2024/09/Report_Wind-and-solar-overtake-EU-fossil-fuels-in-the-first-half-of-2024.pdf

I don't know why people look at this as such a binary. Climate change isn't an on-off switch. This has to happen regardless. Faster is better than slower. Climate catastrophe or not, we need to figure this out, it's about how bad things get before we do and how much extra work and impact we have to deal with from going over certain thresholds. Going over 1.5 doesn't mean we can give up now, we still have to get the renewable transition done, even if now we also have to deal with a bunch of humanitarian crises that wouldn't have happened had we transitioned sooner.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

But energy use is way up and AI data centers have erased all gains from renewables.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Cool, but that's unrelated. We need the energy transition to happen anyway. Energy consumption is still climbing regardless, so we still need to move things over to renewables on top of whatever other actions we take. When it comes to climate stuff people tend to want a silver bullet or claim that anything short of that is useless, which I find kind of infuriatingly counterproductive.

Also, data centre power consumption has been up on aggregate on a very smooth curve since the 2000s. AI or no, those things have been burning through an increasing amount of energy over time. They need to generate that energy from clean sources in any case, which requires a faster energy transition.

Incidentally, I don't know if AI datacenters have "erased all gains". I don't have a direct comparison handy, but the numbers I see around for those two things seem an order of magnitude apart. If you have good sources I'd love to take a look, though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I suspect the claim that AI has consumed all gains is hyperbole, given that it used to be applied to crypto.

Regardless, those assholes are still using too much power, privatising the benefits, and socialising the fall out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Sure? But, again, the question is whether there have been positive changes this century. Separate negative changes are not a counterpoint.

AI power consumption would have been AI power consumption. The unexpectedly fast adoption of solar is there regardless.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Obviously, that depends how you're counting.

In the year 2,000, if you projected solar adoption, you might now be pleasantly surprised.

However in the year 2,000 if you projected progress on climate change, you'd probably now be horrified.

Solar adoption wouldn't be a positive if not for climate change.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That's the best part, though, solar adoption has beaten forecasts consistently over time. Most revisions upwards have still been too conservative.

Now, is that fueled by an energy crisis in turn caused by war, making self-generation and energy independence more appealing? Maaaaybe. But still, sun power!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That doesn't address my point though.

Solar is only good because climate change is bad.

You can't say "solar adoption is good" and ignore the climate deteriorating faster than expected.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I don't accept the premise that "solar is only good because climate change is bad". Where does that come from? Solar power is the longest-running energy source we have, it's good for distributed generation, and climate change or not, most people don't like to suck on a car's exhaust, so it is cleaner for more reasons than the large scale effects of CO2 emissions.

And on the flipside it's consistently inconsistent, has lots of challenges for storage and it mostly produces electricity, which then needs to be stored, sent and converted into useful stuff.

Solar adoption is good overall AND solar adoption is better than the alternative regarding climate change, all else being equal.

And since all else is equal, because climate change isn't stopping to wait for renewable adoption, solar adoption is good regardless of the climate deteriorating faster than expected. Those two things just aren't dependent on each other. Hell, if anything, faster man-made climate change necessitates faster renewables adoption.

What's your premise here, even? Take an actual stance. If "fast solar power adoption good" is not a valid statement, what IS a valid statement?

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It feels to me like it all went to shit when Bush stole the election from Gore - using the Supreme Court I might add.

I'm 37 this year and I remember being a kid at a time when we were all more optimistic and well off. When a middle class existed in the west. When we were told the world was our oyster and we just had to study and work hard to get anything we wanted. That piece of advice was valid to a handful of us millenials, diminishing to those born in the 1990s. My husband is 31 and has never been on an overseas holiday - the differences in privilege just being born 6 years later are stark and upsetting. It's only gotten worse for younger generations and the people who did all this are cackling as they push their boots in harder on our throats.

As a pacifist I just don't know what to do anymore other than try to live my life among the damned and hope it resolves itself before something comes for me and mine.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I ate a really nice curry in 2014.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I learned how to make a really nice curry.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

And that places closed a week later because of health code violations right?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So much good stuff has happened (in addition to all the bad stuff that also happened). The US elected its first black president. The ACA although far from perfect is a massive massive improvement over the situation that existed before it. There have been lots of improvements in medicine like rna vaccines, which have been in development for decades, and thankfully all that hard work came to fruition right when the world needed it and it saved millions of lives worldwide.

And tons more good stuff happened. We're talking about 25ish years, so of course tons of good stuff happened in addition to everything else

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 days ago

Let’s see if the the ACA survives or if it’s replaced with concepts of a plan.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

It's not over until next year.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Not according to those who think that the new century only began in 2001 because the Christian calendar has no year 0 or smth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (10 children)

Yep. That's because there can't be a "0th year after that one geezer was born". It's -1 BC (the last year before) and then immediately 1 AD (the first year after).

(I know they did the calculations wrong and it should actually be somewhere around -6 to -4. That doesn't change the fact that there is no year 0.)

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Boomers 401k and McMansion values exploded

Their rich owner daddies got richer

Rest of working people gonna need to work harder so they can live their best lives!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Saw this post right below:

“# Steam On Linux Ends 2024 With A Nice Boost To Its Marketshare, AMD Linux CPU Use At 74%”

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Have you read about the first quarter of the prior century?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Robber barons and spiraling inequality:

  • 1920s ✓
  • 2020s ✓
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Guys, I don't think I will make it to the end. I could live to 122 years old but I don't want to.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Doom Eternal came out

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Lots of good stuff has happened. It's not in the news though. Or on the ticktwits or whatever bullshit they're indoctriniating children with today.

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