Recent record-hot years have caused a discussion whether global warming has accelerated, but previous analysis found that acceleration has not yet reached a 95% confidence level given the natural…
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For those (like me) who don't know the authors, apparently they are well-published authors in the field of climate science whose work is very highly cited:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39&q=gra...
Not a perfect measure of whether this is a reputable article but at least readers should know this isn't from some randos in a basement somewhere.
By notarobot123 2026-03-0615:488 reply Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reputable scientists
By jihadjihad 2026-03-0617:316 reply Because they are practicing the reverse scientific method. They hold a conclusion in their hand, like, man-made climate change is a hoax, and seek to find any threads of "evidence" that support their foregone conclusion.
By 4er_transform 2026-03-0816:593 reply Actually I think a lot of climate change denialism has more to do with the “…and so we have to do X to solve it” part of climate change. It’s “climate change activism” that turns people off.
Climate change is real. That doesn’t mean we should halt economic growth. Unfortunately this is another area that gets so wrapped up in political power and incentives where: Democrats have factions and groups that want to implement world changing measures and redirect billions of dollars in a way that benefits their interests, and climate scientists seem to weigh the climate costs far higher than the economic devastation a hard switch would bring, so naturally there’s a level of skepticism at the whole affair.
There should be level headedness about it: climate change is real, it’s not world ending yet but we should get ahead of it, we need to make investments in changing our societal behavior to get on a track that balances mitigating the harms while keeping the real economic boon that comes with our current approach.
By logicchains 2026-03-0620:594 reply The scientific method is making testable predictions. You can look back 10, 20, 30, 40 years at the predictions of sea level rise made by climate scientists, and the sea level today is nowhere near where they predicted it would rise to. If someone's continuously making incorrect predictions it's not reasonable to assume their predictions will suddenly become accurate, especially when there's no feedback loop to weed out people making bad predictions (unlike e.g. in finance where people whose models have little predictive power eventually go bankrupt). No climate scientist has lost their job for making incorrect predictions of sea level rise twenty years ago.
By assaddayinh 2026-03-0722:39 [dead]
By like_any_other 2026-03-0622:211 reply [flagged]
You can apply that too to the “man-made climate change is real” argument.
By funkyfiddler369 2026-03-0619:473 reply that's cute but you can't blame people for holding opinions based on phenomenal observations before they learn the language and can perform experiments. the fact that so many can't is the sole reason you might be considered somewhat superior or competent. more people with scientific skills and a personal way to explain and adhere to the scientific method would mean that your competence would be no more than average, if at all. how would that make you feel?
more importantly though, is the fact that there are enough "critics" that consider Global Warming a cycle that "man" merely accelerated by a few decades. most of these "skeptics" are also perfectly capable of discerning between the amount of energy "wasted" in office buildings and lit up skyscrapers as well as anything at the end of luxury supply chains and markets and what the rest of the world "wastes" or expends. to them, the hoax is the "man-made" part ...
it should be "some-man-made climate change"
There are various levels of perspectives
- Climate Warming is a hoax
- Climate Warming is happening, but not Man Made and part of larger cycles
- Climate Warming is Man Made, but drastic De-growth strategies cause more harm.
- Climate Warming is Man Made, don't need de-growth strategies because Technology will solve energy efficiency, clean energy growth and carbon capture and humans adapt along the way
- Climate Warming is Man Made and we need drastic de-growth strategies and complete ban of fossil fuels.
For people in the last group, all other groups look like Climate Deniers because they don't agree to their de-growth/ban plans
By imtringued 2026-03-0816:39 You forgot to list like a dozen variants in-between the last two groups. The abrupt end and extremely biased framing is almost comical.
>Climate Warming is Man Made, don't need de-growth strategies because Technology will solve energy efficiency, clean energy growth and carbon capture and humans adapt along the way
Green growth aka energy efficiency doesn't work, so one more category.
Carbon capture doesn't work without government subsidies. Hence you need a group of people who would be willing to pay tax money to solve climate change. One more category.
Human adaptation can mean many things. People accept climate change even if it means mass immigration. One more category.
People accept climate change even if it means armed border conflicts where immigrants get shot (see Poland) due to closed border policies. One more category.
People resign and accept the negative consequences of climate change as the new normal, similar to people living in polluted cities, except globally. One more category.
Things must be bleak for climate deniers if they have to make an itemized list of strawman arguments to feel good about it.
By JackMorgan 2026-03-070:101 reply You're missing: "Climate is warming, but this is a good thing because it means Jesus will come back sooner and I'll live in endless bliss and not have to go to work anymore, so I'm going to do my part by driving a huge truck and pretend like it's fake."
Hypothetically speaking, if people in the last group were right, and that is the logical conclusion to be reached from careful evaluation of the evidence, wouldn’t the other positions indeed be ones of wilful denial of the state of the climate?
By Ma8ee 2026-03-0917:39 I would be in the second to last group if we actually did something when there still was time, and more was done to actually do something now. Yes, there's a lot of energy efficiency measures that could be done, and much more clean energy could be build, and we will be forced to adopt whether we want to or not. (Carbon capture from the atmosphere is a fucking joke though, which should be to everyone when you know that CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million!)
But we didn't start when we had to, and we are still doing only a fraction of what must be done. So, we are screwing ourselves over majorly. And this is not some fringe hysteria, this is the scientific consensus and has been for a long time. You can almost hear screams of frustration and desperation through the lines if you pick ut the latest IPCC report.
By Biologist123 2026-03-0718:24 Maybe add climate change is real but there’s little we can do to stop it/change the systems which result in it.
By Toutouxc 2026-03-099:34 > humans adapt along the way
These people are about to be really surprised when the bees die.
By michaelsbradley 2026-03-071:40 - Climate Warming in the last ~200 and current years is Man Made, but given Man’s relative shortsightedness and propensity for becoming preoccupied, his ongoing impact on climate change will run its course to one end or another, probably redefining coastlines in the process and including other effects on agriculture, diversity of species, and so on. Much, much later the Earth will more than likely enter another Ice Age and most of the planet will be frozen over. Between the Man induced (relatively) extreme warm period and the next Ice Age, Man will find his way one way or another. Or Not.
> de-growth
Associating action to prevent with 'de-growth' is disinformation from the deniers. Climate change itself is massively de-growth. The question is how to best prevent it.
By belter 2026-03-070:56 [dead]
Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help
By Forgeties79 2026-03-0620:09 It also doesn’t help that anyone with few scruples and a desire to make a buck can quickly monetize screaming about how up is down on YouTube
By mmooss 2026-03-071:40 > Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help
These are scientists, not the government, and the US government, at least, has long opposed or been ambivalent toward climate research.
I'm not sure how rich donor influence is involved. Rich donors generally have acted to oppose climate research.
By scottLobster 2026-03-0620:381 reply Also scientists generally suck at messaging and persuasion. They think if they just dial up the stakes and consequences a little more, it'll be compelling! Maybe if we make one more documentary with bad CGI disaster movie scenes, that'll do it! Same with the stupid "Doomsday clock" that is somehow always "the closest we've ever been to nuclear war!" whenever it gets trotted out. You'd think people who know what stochastic noise is would realize when they're producing it.
They would have made a lot more headway talking about clean air, clean water, jobs, and a bright prosperous future where we manufacture wind turbines, batteries and solar panels in deep red Missouri. A minority tried that, but most stuck with the catastrophizing for decades and now that they've ruined their social credit no one will listen to the message they should have opened with.
You need people emotionally invested, and it's a lot easier to get them invested in their lives than in the abstract consequences of computer models that are at least 100 years out if they're even accurate. And most people are not independent enough to direct their own lives. If they make the right decisions on abstract concepts, it was more because the incentives/disincentives in their environment were set up correctly than they actually understood the decision they were making. Message accordingly.
By thrance 2026-03-0710:20 Except the same people disbelieving in climate change hold a blind faith in Trump's administration, that is extremely corrupt and influenced by rich donors. This isn't skepticism, these people have just been completely ideologically captured by the oligarchy's propaganda.
By designerarvid 2026-03-0620:39 There’s actually research to support the claim you’re making here (Elaboration Likelihood Model).
When forming attitudes in an area where one doesn’t care, one tends to rely more on who is saying it than what is being said. The opposite is true, if you care about [climate change], you listen to the arguments regardless of who is presenting it.
By rootusrootus 2026-03-0616:472 reply It's a culture thing, nobody on the right would ever be convinced by science, they will shop around until they find what they need to hear. My sister in law sent me a video and told me that she thought it was a really good explainer and had a lot of good facts and figures to support it. To humor her, I took a brief glance at it, and saw that it was produced by Dr. Shiva. I was thinking "no way, it can't be that Shiva, could it, email guy?" Yes, yes it was.
We are doomed.
By madaxe_again 2026-03-0619:33 Tell her that you have a greenfield synergistic solution to upscale her big tent.
By BoingBoomTschak 2026-03-0711:061 reply Because "the left" would be willing to listen to scientific arguments attacking their pet issues, right? It's really not a left/right thing.
By amelius 2026-03-0623:27 It depends if they can agree with what they are saying.
By devwastaken 2026-03-0623:204 reply [flagged]
By longitudinal93 2026-03-070:011 reply While it's true that China is currently responsible for the largest share of CO2 emissions at least their output is trending down:
See https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
By longitudinal93 2026-03-070:08 Worth also noting that on a per capita basis China aren't even in the top ten.
By virgildotcodes 2026-03-072:59 Tax plundering, really dude?
Quick guess, do you think more tax dollars have gone to the fossil fuel industry, or climate scientists?
Political power, just again, amazing.
Who do you think wields more political power in the world? The fossil fuel industry and petro states, or climate scientists?
It's such a blatant, weird attempt to invert reality. It's the whole "accuse your enemy of that which you are guilty" approach.
I don't understand how this propaganda talking point sticks in anyone's head and doesn't fall apart with two seconds of critical thought.
By aaron695 2026-03-070:35 [dead]
Setting aside the names of the authors, this is a very bad paper. They take temperature data sets, "adjust" [1] them by attempting to remove the biggest recent factors (volcanism, solar and el nino cycles) affecting temperatures, then do a piece-wise regression analysis to look at trends in 10-year chunks. This is just bad methodology, akin to what a junior graduate student with a failing thesis might do to find signal in a dataset that isn't being cooperative to their hypothesis.
Climate data is inherently noisy, and there are multiple interconnected cyclic signals, ranging from the "adjusted" factors to cycles that span decades, which we don't understand at all. "Adjusting" for a few of these, then doing a regression over the subset of the data is classic cherry-picking in search of a pre-determined conclusion. The overall dubious nature of the conclusion is called out in the final paragraph of the text:
> Although the world may not continue warming at such a fast pace, it could likewise continue accelerating to even faster rates.
They're literally just extrapolating from an unknown point value that they synthesized from data massage, and telling you that's a coin toss as to whether the extrapolation will be valid.
I am not a climate scientist so you can ignore me if you like, but I am "a scientist" who believes the earth is warming, and that we are the primary cause. Nonetheless, if I saw this kind of thing in a paper in my own field, it would be immediately tossed in the trash.
[1] You can't actually adjust for these things, which the authors admit in the text. They just dance around it so that lay-readers won't understand:
> Our method of removing El Niño, volcanism, and solar variations is approximate but not perfect, so it is possible that e.g. the effect of El Niño on the 2023 and 2024 temperature is not completely eliminated.
Your summary of the article is wrong. The authors model temperature using time series over solar irradiance, volcanic activity, and southern oscillation. They calibrate that model using time series over global surface temperatures. This allows them to isolate and remove each of the three listed confounding factors. The resulting time series fits a super-linear curve -> accelerating global warming.
> Your summary of the article is wrong. The authors model temperature using time series over solar irradiance, volcanic activity, and southern oscillation. They calibrate that model using time series over global surface temperatures. This allows them to isolate and remove each of the three listed confounding factors.
No, it isn’t. You’re just rephrasing what I said with more words: they attempted to adjust for three of the biggest factors that affect temperature, then did a piecewise regression to estimate a 10-year window.
You can’t do it in a statistically valid way. Full stop. The authors admit this, but want you to ignore it.
By tgsovlerkhgsel 2026-03-0710:052 reply They also don't seem to account for the reduction of sulfur emissions from ships, which is surprising given how widely this was reported even in mainstream media.
Is this an oversight (or "oversight") or something that is reasonable for some reason that would be so obvious to experts in the field that it's not worth mentioning?
By cbility 2026-03-0717:36 Doesn't that fall outside the scope of "natural variability factors" which they are trying to account for?
By timr 2026-03-0711:55 I mean...they're just cherry-picking the sources of "noise" that prevent their preferred window from showing "significance". It's not like they did a thorough analysis of every uncontrolled factor and carefully tried to control them all. Even that would be crap, but at least it would be good-faith crap.
This has always been the big issue I have with the conclusions draw in climate publications. I encourage anyone with strong opinion on climate change to do a deep dive on the temperature analysis.
The best example I can think of is the "global warming hiatus" that was discussed in depth in the top climate journals in the mid-2010s. Nature Climate Change even devoted an entire month to it.[1]
5 years later publications were saying "there was no hiatus at all".[2]
And as you said, when you dive into the paper, you realize that temperature measures are not objective at all. And I would ask - If everyone was in agreement that temperature increases paused, then 5 years later everyone agrees they didn't, how much confidence do we really have in the measures themselves.*
As someone who conudcted scientific research, this has a ton of inherent problems. It doesn't matter what I'm measuring, if the data collection is not objective, and there is no consensus (or at least trong evidence for adjustments), then the data itself is very unreliable.
If I tried to publish a chemical paper in a top journal and manually went in and adjusted data (even with a scientific rationale) the paper would be immediately rejected.
[1] https://www.nature.com/collections/sthnxgntvp [2] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/global-warming-pause-cli...
> And as you said, when you dive into the paper, you realize that temperature measures are not objective at all.
I don't know if I'd go that far. The measurements are as objective as they can be given the limits of technology and time, but what we do with the datasets afterward is usually filled with subjective decisions. In the worst cases, you get motivated actors doing statistically invalid analysis to reach a preferred conclusion.
This happens in every field of science, but it's often worse in fields that touch politics.
It says this in bold red at the top - "This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal."
I am not a climate scientist - how should I think about this statement? Normally I am looking for some statement that shows a document has been vetted.
For non-specialists, I think the most important view on papers is to not view them as nuggets of truth, but communications of a group of people who are trying to establish truth. No single paper is definitive!
Peer review is an important part of scientific publication, but it's also important for the general public to not view peer review as a full vetting. Peer reviewers look for things like reproducibility of the analysis, suitability of the conclusions given the methods, discussions of the limitations of the data and methods, appropriate statistical tests, correct approval from IRBs if there are humans or animals involved, and things like that. For many journals, the editors are also asking if the results are interesting and significant enough to meet the prestige of the journal.
Peer review misses things like intentional fraud, mistakes in computations, and of course any blind spots that the field has not yet acknowledged (for example, nearly every scientific specialty had to rediscover the important of splitting training and testing datasets for machine learning methods somewhat on their own, as new practitioners adopted new methods quickly and then some papers would slip through at the beginning when reviewers were not yet aware of the necessity of this split...)
Any single paper is not revealed truth, it's a step towards establishing truth, maybe. Science is supposed to be self-correcting, which also necessitates the mistakes that need correction. Climate science is one of the fields that gets the most attention and scrutiny, so a series of papers in that field goes a long ways towards establishing truth, much more so than, say, new MRI technology in psychology.
By tgsovlerkhgsel 2026-03-0710:081 reply Sometimes reviewers also look for whether the paper cites enough of their own papers, who is publishing it (regardless of whether the review is supposed to be anonymous or not), whether it clashes with a paper they're about to publish... science is just as full of politics and corruption (if not more) as any other field.
By jfengel 2026-03-0621:35 I'd say that for a non-scientist, you should treat it as a non-event -- a paper that hasn't happened yet.
The climate is not something for which you need daily, weekly, or even monthly updates. Rather, this paper is just one more on top of a gigantic pile of evidence that that climate change is serious, something that we can and should do something about.
If the paper passes muster, you'll hear about it then, though all it'll do is very slightly increase your confidence in something that is already very well confirmed. Or, the paper may not pass review, in which case it doesn't mean anything at all, and you fall back on the existing mountain of evidence.
If the paper had reached the opposite conclusion, that might merit more investigation by you now, since that would potentially be a significant update to your beliefs. And more importantly, it would certainly be presented as if it were a fait accompli, even before peer review.
Instead, you can simply say, "I don't know what this paper means, but I already have a very well-founded understanding of climate change and its significance."
By sleet_spotter 2026-03-0615:521 reply Peer review is still very relevant in climate science. But given it is from well-respected authors, I am more inclined to trust the results at this stage.
By Nevermark 2026-03-075:37 There is no need for "trust".
There is no benefit in non-expert readers inserting their own subjectivity into an already complex topic. Even for themselves.
What we know: It is an interesting paper. It is going to get attention.
Good to be aware. It is also good to reserve judgement while the community evaluates the results.
It is already published at Geophysical Research Letters, a highly (if not the most) reputable source in the area. But that journal is behind a paywall: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
By FabHK 2026-03-071:55 Oh, that contains an ELI5:
> Plain Language Summary The rise in global temperature has been widely considered to be quite steady for several decades since the 1970s. Recently, however, scientists have started to debate whether global warming has accelerated since then. It is difficult to be sure of that because of natural fluctuations in the warming rate, and so far no statistical significance (meaning 95% certainty) of an acceleration (increase in warming rate) has been demonstrated. In this study we subtract the estimated influence of El Niño events, volcanic eruptions and solar variations from the data, which makes the global temperature curve less variable, and it then shows a statistically significant acceleration of global warming since about the year 2015. Warming proceeding faster is not unexpected by climate models, but it is a cause of concern and shows how insufficient the efforts to slow and eventually stop global warming under the Paris Climate Accord have so far been.
By jaredklewis 2026-03-077:23 A paper being peer reviewed is a good sign, but I feel like the signal is usually over interpreted.
Peer reviewed does not mean the findings of the paper are established fact or scientific consensus. It does not mean that the findings have been replicated by other scientists. It does not mean that the paper relied on a robust methodology, is free of basic statistical errors, or even free of logical fallacies.
Some of these limitations are due to the limitations of peer review itself. Others are just side effects of the way science works (for example, some ideas start as small, unimpressive experiments that are reported on in papers, and the strength of the findings is gradually developed over time). Obviously sometimes the prestige (or lack thereof) of the journal the paper is in decreases (or increases) some of these issues.
Anyway, peer review is a very noisy channel (IMHO).
By tialaramex 2026-03-0621:27 For one thing, some of the places which would publish this kind of thing will authorize authors to provide anybody and everybody pre-prints but not the final copy they published.
In principle you could go (pay to†) read the actual final published copy, maybe it's different, but almost always it's basically the same, the text is enough to qualify.
If you go to https://eel.is/c++draft/ you'll find the "Draft" C++ standard, and it has this text:
Note: this is an early draft. It's known to be incomplet and incorrekt, and it has lots of bad formatting.
Nevertheless, the people who wrote your C++ compiler used that "draft" document, because it isn't reasonable to wait a few years for ISO to publish the "real" document which is identical other than lacking that scary text and having a bunch of verbiage about how ISO owns this document and it mustn't be republished.
And you might be thinking "OK, I'm sure those GNU hippies don't pay for a real published copy, but surely the Microsoft Corporation buys their engineers a real one". Nope. Waste of money.
† If you have a relationship with a research institution it might have this or be willing to help you order it from somewhere else at no personal cost.
By bjourne 2026-03-074:11 Pre-prints exists because it can take up to 18 months to get a paper published in a journal or reputable conference. Since lots of people can publish pre-prints[1] what you should think depends on the authors. If they have a record of publishing good research you should think highly of the paper.
[1] - Actually, there are hoops on pre-print repositories, such as arXiv, so not everyone can post there. I guesstimate that 99% of the public has no means of posting on arXiv.
By mold_aid 2026-03-071:11 Are you? How many preprints are posted here every day?
By Sharlin 2026-03-0615:28 No, it really does not work like that, for reasons that should be obvious.
By unethical_ban 2026-03-0615:291 reply Yes, credibility is one component of evaluating conclusions from evidence.
By yanhangyhy 2026-03-072:453 reply The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) outline draft has listed making new and significant progress in building a Beautiful China as one of its main objectives, with achieving the carbon peaking target on schedule being a crucial aspect of this goal.
In 2020, China made a commitment to the world: to peak carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and strive to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Last year, China announced its 2035 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for addressing climate change.
"The outline draft clearly emphasizes actively and prudently advancing and achieving carbon peaking, proposing that during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will be reduced by 17%, and a preliminary clean, low-carbon, safe, and efficient new energy system will be established. This clear roadmap will help us achieve high-quality 'dual carbon' phase goals and lay a solid foundation for carbon neutrality," said Wei Yuansong, member of the CPPCC National Committee and Director of the Water Pollution Control Laboratory at the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
from： https://www.news.cn/20260305/7ad8d5ee3a6d4b28b1b62230199f1d0...
this is in china's next 5 year plan
By iLoveOncall 2026-03-075:012 reply China is already so much ahead in some aspects.
I'm literally in the plane flying back from Shanghai right now, where cars have blue plates for petrol cars and green plates for electric ones.
Easily 70% of the cars on the road are electric, and basically all of the scooters used for deliveries.
The roads are so quiet it's sometimes dangerous because you don't hear the scooters come behind you.
They'll undoubtedly be the world leaders in clean energy.
By DeepSeaTortoise 2026-03-0711:041 reply Isn't Shanghai a Tier 1 city? IMO it's not very representative of the whole country.
It's also not like China is an overachieving outlier, but western nations actively having been sabotaged by its leadership at least since 1990 and MUCH MUCH more so since occupy wallstreet.
FFS Germany is blowing up its nuclear powerplants on a never before seen record breaking schedule so that a potential successor government cant reactivate them.
By iLoveOncall 2026-03-0721:221 reply Yes but it was the same in the two Tier 1.5-2 cities I also went to.
Obviously it's not the whole country, but it's setting a trend still, especially when it's always the richest who pollute the most per capita.
By yanhangyhy 2026-03-075:05 Remind me of this video
China is the world’s largest fossil fuel importer, so this is a case where their economic incentives align with global environmental trends. I suspect they would be trying to do this regardless of whether global warming were a problem. And now that they’re heavily invested in green tech manufacturing, it’s kind of a self-fulfilling feedback loop - they have an interest in promoting electrification worldwide.
By throwaway290 2026-03-096:351 reply But for now it is the country with 3x coal plants than the next country (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/number-of...), 95% of coal plants under construction in the world (not counting how many coal plants were approved but not yet started), and emits more CO2 per year than US and EU combined https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re...
By GreenWatermelon 2026-03-135:521 reply of course, we shouldn't forget that they manifacture the entire world's shit, and have a larger population than US and EU combined. And despite manufacturing all shit, they still emit less per Capita than US and EU.
By cbeach 2026-03-0815:26 I've always found it odd that the Paris Accord allows China to keep building coal powered stations when it is already the leading global contributor to climate change:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...
Meanwhile the Paris Accord seems to bludgeon Europe and America (who are reducing their CO2 emissions significantly), with the net effect of accelerating the deindustrialisation of the West (thus helping industry grow in China).
The Accord should focus on moving industry away from China to countries where electricity predominantly comes from renewables.
The issue with any significant steps to curbing the climate or environmental impacts with laws or treaties is always: But the economy. It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries.
My proposal is thus: create a supranational treaty organization with a EPA like authority(or whatever the European equivalent is) that can inspect and fine companies in member organizations. Then any treaty members agree with the following conditions: The EPA can enter their nation freely, inspect, and are able to fine companies that break rules. Members send delegates to a session to create new rules democratically. And most importantly all members act as a cartel, imposing large tariffs on any country outside of the organization. So if US was in and Mexico was out, you couldn't just pollute in Mexico, without some massive tariff. This creates an economic incentive to be in and clean.
"But the economy" is an out-of-date framing. The cost of renewables has been plummeting for well over a decade. New renewables are now cheaper than new fossil fuel plants in most of the world, and in many regions they're already competitive with or cheaper than simply running existing fossil fuel infrastructure. As modern wars in Ukraine and now Iran are increasingly demonstrating, they are not only cost effective but rapidly a matter of energy sovereignty and national security.
That's not to say we won't need treaties and supranational entities for some aspects of decarbonization. Methane emissions outside of agriculture are notably a problem of enforcement.
We're badly in need of a collective update to our priors regarding renewables. In the US, a hostile policy toward renewables is not only shooting ourselves in the foot environmentally, we are now actively impoverishing ourselves due to entrenched economic interests across the fossil fuel industry and the cultural inertia they actively worked to develop.
A new US administration and Congress need to be voted in. There is one party who backs fossil fuel interests and denies anthropogenic climate change. They're currently in charge. The American public didn't see that as an important enough issue in 2024.
They are forcing power companies to run coal plants that they don’t want to run (at a loss).
By FrinkleFrankle 2026-03-0816:32 They need a complete reworking of the government. The fact is that bum-fuck states with a handful of citizens can use their senate seats to hold the country hostage. Nothing will ever get better until that is resolved.
>"But the economy" is an out-of-date framing.
Then why is my electricity and gasoline both so much more expensive than they used to be?
By jtr1 2026-03-0814:22 For many possible reasons, depending on where you live.
By breakpointalpha 2026-03-0619:335 reply In principle, you are right. Cheaper than coal renewables are winning. Don't forget though, that fighter jets can't operate on batteries.
By hdgvhicv 2026-03-079:24 Every mile you drive in an f150 steals fuel that should be going to American planes
Patriotic red blooded Americans use renewable energy
> fighter jets can't operate on batteries
Gas turbines can run on a variety of fuels, natural, synthetic or a mixture of both. It’s actually one of the reasons that a turbine was chosen for the M1.
By UqWBcuFx6NV4r 2026-03-0620:141 reply That’s a red herring. It’s not worth mentioning.
By BLKNSLVR 2026-03-0622:51 So we won't be able to fight air wars over the last remaining pieces of arable land.
I'm convinced.
By Findecanor 2026-03-0616:251 reply We have needed tariffs for many years now. The EU has some tariffs on imports, but they are only used to level the playing field for companies in EU countries with emission rules against companies in countries without, and only in some select industries.
They need to apply overall, on all goods and services.
And emission limits need to be progressive over time, with a limit for each year, not just "x% at year 2030".
By Nevermark 2026-03-075:55 Cap and trade is so much more efficient. It allocates fossil fuels to the places where replacing it would be most expensive, without central planning.
And slowly raising the price on a smooth forward looking schedule lets businesses make rational choices about budgeting for that or for migrating to greener options.
Companies are excellent at adapting to acheive their best interests, to any predictable continuous (as apposed to discontinuous) economic change. Especially when it is a market based change, as that creates a level playing field.
By cogman10 2026-03-0615:48 > It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries.
I think the flaw in this thinking is thinking that burning things is the cheapest way to get energy.
Oil processing and extraction is a complex industry which requires a huge continued investment. Coal requires massive mining operations. Natural gas is probably the least intensive of the burny things, and it still requires a pretty advanced pipeline to be competitive.
Renewables are relatively cheap one time purchases. Save energy storage, the economy that is most competitive at this point is one powered by renewables.
That transition is already happening in the US without a massive government regulation/mandate. In china, it's happening a whole lot faster because the government is pushing it. And the chinese economy is at no risk of being outbid by smaller economies burning fuel.
The main reason burning remains a major source of fuel is that for most nations, the infrastructure to consume it has already been built. It's not because it's cheap.
My country mines rare earth metals. Your country processes them into computer chips. Joe and Jane's country want those computer chips to fuel their economy.
Who's getting fined, here? Me, because mining the stuff is inherently dirty (without, probably, significant research and capital investment)? You, because you need the stuff to build other stuff? Joe and Jane because they're the ones ultimately driving the production of the stuff? If you fine me into not producing the raw materials, what, ultimately happens to your economy and Joe and Jane's? If I don't sign up, where are you going to get the raw materials, if I'm tariffed into oblivion?
Sorry, I'm not trying to like, doom this away - but there are so many interconnected pieces, that I don't think it's a problem that can even start to be solved from an internet comment. At some point, voters in democratic societies need to decide that they care as much about the world their children will inherit as they do a ten cent difference in gas prices ten minutes from now. It's unclear that they ever will on a long term, consistent basis.
By bryanlarsen 2026-03-0616:17 Nobel memorial prize winning solution: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.15000001
By curiousObject 2026-03-0616:11 Rationally, you apply fines as close to the source as possible. Because they will pass those costs up the stack.
But the source could be the most likely place for corrupt reporting. Or: Maybe the source element is not dangerous but downstream by-products are.
Like you’ve said: It’s a problem.
By bryanlarsen 2026-03-0616:101 reply There is a Nobel memorial prize winning plan to do something like this in a more elegant, voluntary fashion. Nordhaus' Climate Club.
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Faer.15000001
It's essentially a carbon tax on local production and a corresponding carbon tariff on imports. Countries that already have a carbon tax or equivalent don't get tariffed. IOW, they're part of the club.
Usually a carbon rebate is also included in the plan, although that's not strictly necessary.
Germany was spear-heading an effort to create a carbon club, but it fell apart, unfortunately. At the time a club that didn't include the US seemed infeasible.
In 2026 a club that doesn't include Trump's America is a good thing, not a bad thing IMO.
The real problem is that everyone has to sacrifice, but half the people think there is no problem and then other half thinks only corporations need to sacrifice (and are unwilling to sacrifice themselves).
By ComputerGuru 2026-03-0619:223 reply No one thinks only corporations have to sacrifice; they do think that it's folly to ask individual members of society, who on average contribute the smallest overall proportion to global warming, to sacrifice while corporations continue to squander away our natural resources. And the pareto principle agrees.
No, that's insufficient. Yes, corporations that cause the most warming will need to be curtailed if we're to survive. But those corporations are in the act externalizing costs. Once you force them to internalize those costs, the visible costs to consumers will increase, meaning less consumption overall. If you can't convince those consumers that less consumption is a good thing if it's in the service of saving the biosphere, then they're going to rebel against your efforts to properly force companies to account for the environmental costs of their products. There's no either/or here, it's the responsibility of both corporations and individuals.
By JuniperMesos 2026-03-0620:461 reply Yeah but there's a lot of individual members of society, and nearly all of them benefit from supply chains that emit CO2 and would have to stop doing so in order to not emit the CO2.
If gasoline in the US cost $20/gallon this would reduce the amount of CO2 emissions because suddenly driving a gasoline-powered car is much more expensive for everyone. This would make a lot of ordinary Americans very upset.
By Aerroon 2026-03-0622:46 Oil companies sell you gasoline that you burn.
By wolvesechoes 2026-03-0710:06 1% of richest people produces as much as poorest 66%. Wealthiest 10% are responsible for 2/3 of warming effect since 1990.
It is not equal responsibility.
By carlosjobim 2026-03-0621:251 reply One rule which always holds true in life: people who ask for sacrifice will never sacrifice an inch themselves. No matter what cause.
By ministryofwarp 2026-03-0623:35 People love to point out a hypocrite but math and statistics are rarely kind to laws that always hold true.
By BLKNSLVR 2026-03-0622:49 Recycling someone else's quote:
"The economy is a wholly owner subsidiary of the environment"
Many people use the 'but the economy' argument (including my mother in law, maddeningly) without seeming to have any remote clue as to the truth of the quote above.
By microtonal 2026-03-0615:461 reply The issue with any significant steps to curbing the climate or environmental impacts with laws or treaties is always: But the economy. It creates an incentive where someone doesn't follow the laws, burn everything they can to accelerate their economy, and take industry from other countries.
Or quickly develop to the point where solar, wind, and hydro is cheaper than getting dead fossils out of the ground and processing them.
I am not familiar enough with the economics of this to know whether we are close to that point, but I can imagine once we cross it, combustible fuel burners will be at a disadvantage if they haven't invested in infrastructure needed for renewables.
By queenkjuul 2026-03-0615:58 Solar plus batteries is the cheapest form of energy now as of 2025
And why would countries adopt this? So that other countries can use this cartel to push their own agenda? If anything it seems like it would be in every country's best interests to make sure such an organization doesn't exist.
In my opinion one of the reasons why European economies have been struggling for a long time is because energy has been much more expensive than elsewhere. Part of it is the excise tax on gasoline because it drives up the price of everything.
Even to this day EU countries where people earn less than a third of what Americans earn still pay more for gasoline.
Honestly, if the economy is killing us all, then screw the economy.
The way our economic systems are set up is inherently anti-human and only benefits a tiny fraction of the population anyways.
It's time for a fundamental rethink.
By mcdeltat 2026-03-0617:28 Bu-bu-b-bu-b-b-b-bu-bu-bu-but supply and demand bro!!!! It's the free market bro! If people are buying, the free market has decided the planet is right to be destroyed!!
The economy is an abstraction. Millions of individual consumers are concerned with the environment and have demonstrated that they're willing to take individual actions to reduce their environment impact. However, individual consumers are not in charge of the economy, which is increasingly consolidated and monopolistic. The majority of pollution is coming from industrial activity, not from consumer activity, not even auto exhaust, and the most important decisions are made by wealthy industrialists who seem to care only about unlimited growth of their own wealth and power, at the expense of the planet. (Even if we're talking only about auto exhaust, think about how return-to-office was forced on workers against their will after the pandemic. Non-wealthy individuals simply don't have the leverage over mega-corps.)
From a political perspective, I think the problems of global warming and wealth disparity go hand-in-hand. It's difficult to solve one without solving the other. To the extent that the ultra-wealthy own the politicians, or actually become politicians themselves, there is little hope for environmental regulation.
Consumers don't need or necessarily even want unlimited economic growth. That only "helps" consumers if they're relying essentially on trickle-down economics, where we have to allow the ultra-wealthy everything they want in the hope that they'll spare us some change. A more equitable distribution of the current wealth would reduce the pressure to produce ever more, more, more.
Consumers usually want products that they own, not rent, products that last for a long time and don't need to be constantly updated or upgraded. Coincidentally, this is also better for the environment. Producers often want the opposite of that, in order to maximize profit. So what we get depends crucially on the power balance or imbalance between consumers and producers. This is where consolidation and monopolization become a major factor.
A lot of the "convenience economy," dominated by temporary, disposable goods, is predicted on consumers having no free time, because they're constantly working. Despite vast improvements in worker "efficiency," we haven't seen comcomitant reductions in the number of hours worked. The future of leisure facilitated by technological advances, which everyone was imagining 50-60 years ago, never became a reality. The technology did advance, but the leisure did not. The other day (or night) I noticed Amazon delivery drivers arriving for neighbors after 9pm; this is a dystopia.
By orthecreedence 2026-03-0621:10 > So what we get depends crucially on the power balance or imbalance between consumers and producers.
Gosh, if only consumers and producers were the same people. What could we call this new economic paradigm?
But no, economic monarchy is the only way to have Freedom (TM)(R), so let's slap on some easily-sidestepped regulations and keep going the same direction! It'll probably turn out fine.
And what exactly would prevent a country like the United States to use its outsize resources to moot this org?
By dottjt 2026-03-0620:27 The technical term for what you're broadly describing is Jevons Paradox.
