Ben Matthews

There are renewables available cheaper than coal( if you take into account subsidies ), especially in China (the country that dominates those graphics (if you look carefully at the vertical scales). However, there are many political leaders - mainly of older generation - who cannot imagine abandoning coal, they prefer to keep on subsidising, to save traditions and communities, to defend their concept of what made ‘great’ decades ago. In China and India there is also a widespread concept that since the west did this in the past, so now they have to use up an equivalent per-capita share of the atmospheric space - a kind of collective global suicide.

Well, it’s a kind of stretched thought experiment, to imagine they had precise satellite-like temperature measurements in those days. But if you really want to ask, when did humans first have a discernible influence on the climate, it surely goes back much earlier than that - due to deforestation and associated changes in albedo (as well as CO2), also desertification in some regions (north africa?). I don’t see albedo or land-use change in this paper, only fossil emissions.

Good work.
I suppose that for those 1.4bn people inside China to access it, they also need to use a mirror site?
So I’m curious, how many people find such mirror sites, and why don’t the firewall managers just block those urls (the ips may be big cloud services, but the urls are not) as fast as the list evolves (maybe they track who uses them)? Could a decentralised peer-to-peer network scale more robustly ?

Combined with topic of trains, this reminds me of the famous movie Dil Se with the Chaiyya Chaiyya song on the roof of the steam train - itself in the SW, but of which the core plot was also about an rebellion in Assam… i.e. it reminds that this problem is older than current government …
But maybe they will be motivated to catch up, as China will soon have a direct railway from Sichuan to the frontier of Arunachal…

I’ve seen several videos illustrating this trend, it’s encouraging, but does anybody have an idea of the numbers ? This could be a big change, not least for cities which continue over-constructing, despite falling national population, assuming that past urbanisation trends can be projected to the future.

For many of them it’s still far away. But I note the ukrainian counter of russian casualties is about to pass a million. While there is ‘fog of war’ it’s easier to say people are missing, so friends and relatives can keep hoping that theirs is the special case. During any prolonged ceasefire, it would become clearer who’s gone forever - which is one reason why P avoids this situation (and also bans NGOs like soldier’s mothers, who used to help connect these dots).

Maybe eventually they should build several smaller dams instead of one big one, just enough for irrigation and water supply, considering the potential ecological balance of the whole region, rather than of just a narrow potential ‘reserve’.
It’s naturally a dry area, the south bank opposite Kherson is already almost a ‘desert’ with dunes, although with a long history - they say such ‘Pontic Steppe’ grasslands were where indo-european tribes originated.
Anyway, before grand plans, Ukraine has to control both sides of the river, so I suppose they’ll keep watching how hard the mud bakes this summer.

Indeed it seems Trump picked up some ideas about “Juche” (national self-reliance?) from his best buddy “rocket-man”.

Hmm, so how does the government distribute that potentially lucrative tariff-free quota between importers ? Or if the government imports rice directly, stores it, then resells at a much high price, that’s effectively a tariff.
Seems complicated, but then most countries do something similar, consider price-fixing of food by the EU CAP …

US has only 4% of the world’s population, there are now plenty of super-rich in China, India, etc. who like to flaunt i-stuff.

Yeah, but you just gave me an idea too, how about AI-directed canines? “apple-intelligence” applied to follow-your-nose. My dog loves to chase small spots of light, which might be a trick to steer them.

And if chinese buy iphones, do they now have to pay 84% tariff? - maybe HQ in europe solves that too?

So do they also tariff imports (e.g. american rice) that much ?
I haven’t been in Japan since 1997 (COP3) but was impressed by cycling past many little rice fields sandwiched between city buildings - it’s human-scale which is worth defending (similarly to some european agriculture - idea of CAP), the opposite of US prairies.

Hope you are right, but depends on the power balance after the election, and whether federal or provincial law decides such things.
Isn’t Alberta is more aligned to MAGA politically? Maybe tries to stir up a big provocation, then eventually ‘annex’ it.

Can anybody explain, how does an easily transportable and storable product like rice get to cost so much more (6$) per kilo in Japan, than elsewhere in the world (including rest of east asia)?

As a global company, Apple could just re-establish itself in europe, e.g. Ireland, and continue trading with China, they can just put the US on hold for a couple of years.
Meanwhile for those who really addicted to istuff, coyotes can smuggle iphones across the border, so maybe this solves the fentanyl ‘issue’.

Well thought out article - worth reading

Back to what car ???

History will recall this as the Trump Slump …

Others, including populist right politicians in several of EU’s own member states …
The article’s intention is good, but does anybody here know how much the EU commission or parliament can do about this, without unanimity, and without it’s own police ? Also does the ECJ have any role?