"The industry relies on air-separation units, which use giant compressors to turn air into liquid and then distill it into its many components. These machines are responsible for much of the industry's electricity demand, and their use alone is responsible for 2% of carbon dioxide emissions in China and the US, the world's two largest polluters."

In July, the EPA proposed rescinding its rule that CO2 is a pollutant: https://www.epa.gov/regulation...

It is incorrect to label these countries as "polluters". Carbon Dioxide is not a poison, it is an essential compound that plays an enormously important role in maintaining life on this planet.

No, nuclear is not just like renewables. Yes, a system primarily using nuclear does require supplementing to meet peak demand by gas or coal or a combination.

But, unlike wind and solar, nuclear produces continuous predictable power. The gas generation can be brought in to meet predictable peaks in demand. Wind is neither continuous nor predictable. Solar is predictable but vanishes predictably in winter and at night. And neither one has peaks of production that coincide with peaks in demand.

You want a real life example: look as usual at the UK, who deliver real time statistics on their ongoing slow motion energy policy disaster. Go to www.gridwatch.co.uk, use the menu to look at both wind and solar generation.

It should be obvious that what is going on here is not the supplementing of wind and solar by gas. Its running a basically gas generation system supplemented by wind and solar. Look what happened to UK wind October 11-18. It died. There's about 30GW faceplate installed. The low so far this month was 0.383GW. Nothing like that ever happens to nuclear.

To have a viable electricity grid you have to have adequate dispatchable capacity to meet demand, including peak demand. You cannot do this with wind and/or solar, and you cannot get enough battery storage to do it, and if you could get it you could not afford it.

The choice is very simple, as the UK is going to find one of these winters. You either have full dispatchable capacity, or you have blackouts. Supplement with wind and solar all you want, but supplementing is what you are doing.

The UK is just resorting to the inevitable consequence of trying to close down its dispatchable sources. The plan is to move the country to EVs and heat pumps. But this will of course raise demand, and it will raise it most during December - February. Unfortunately that is exactly when the usual blocking highs appear to the south west, and this leads to calm, cold clear nights. So they are now proposing smart meters which will vary pricing every half hour. The idea is you come home at 5 or 6pm, its dark and cold. You get ready to cook dinner. You look at your smart meter and, guess what, its now costing you ten times the usual rate for boiling that kettle. So you wait and hope the wind picks up again. Which it will, it will.... in a few days time. What do you do till then? Open a tin of cold baked beans?

Any rational inspection of the numbers available in real time from the great UK experiment will show any reasonable person that Net Zero, running the country off wind and solar while moving transport to EVs and domestic heating to heat pumps, and closing down conventional generation, is simply impossible. You can move all right, but the result will be no transport or heating for days on end in the winter, and ridiculously high prices to even light your home or office. Just look at the numbers.

Can't be done. And what cannot be done will not be. But the fallout from the failure is going to be something to behold. No country has ever done itself such peace time self-harm since the Xhosa slaughtered their cattle and destroyed their crops and starved. It is going to be a historic example of human folly for future historians and social scientists to ponder. Why on earth did they do it? I doubt they will find any answer other than that their political and media classes went collectively insane.

"How much is it worth to avoid global warming?"

This is supposed to be an argument for US nuclear generation. The argument, not quite explicitly made, must be that building nuclear would lower or prevent global warming. Thus, however expensive it may be, its cheaper than the alternative, which is higher emissions and higher temperatures driven by them.

But building nuclear in the US cannot have the slightest effect on global warming. It will not affect US emissions materially, but that's not the only problem. Even if it did, it would not affect global emissions. The US economy is too small a percent of the global economy, US emissions are too small a percentage of global emissions, and power generation is too small a percentage of US emissions,

It is a common feature of these discussions on /. -- people assume that unilateral action by the US in some area will have an effect on global emissions and thus the climate. But the alleged effect is never quantified.

If people want to make this argument they should do something they never do: quantify it. Just say what the US is emitting now, then how much it would be given the proposed program, in this case a nuclear build out. Then say what global emissions are now, and what they will be after the buildout. And then say what difference that will make to global warming.

The answer is, negligible effects. But prove me wrong, put up some numbers. At the moment the argument is literary criticism when what is needed is engineering logic.

No, China is under reporting the amount of its emissions.

If it were to report correctly, the emission level would be higher and the sink level staying the same, but the result would be rising ppm.

They do not believe in any climate crisis. But they do believe there is a public relations problem and they are managing it, and very effectively too.

Sorry, simpler than a plug-in hybrid. Not simpler than a plug in EV of course.

There are two kinds of hybrid. One kind is a mild hybrid, which only uses an electric motor to give supplemental power when starting or accelerating. This kind doesn't run completely on battery ever. It is much simpler than any kind of plug in EV because the electric motor is just a bolt on to the existing transmission.

The other kind is a full EV with a smaller battery than a full EV, and in addition a gas or diesel engine. They typically have ranges of about 50 miles on electric.

The point of a mild hybrid is it increases gas mileage, quite significantly. Early Priuses were an example.

This was the first starship test flight that bored me the entire time. A spectacular achievement. It's not a lowering of the bar, just the opposite.

Never visited 4Chan, but this is the interesting question. There are 195 countries in the world. I set up in one of them, then serve information from servers in various of them.

Do I, on the UK precedent, have to ensure that every request is identified by which country its coming from? And then make sure I have a database with what the law is in each of the 195 countries? And then ban the content that is illegal in each country from being served in response to questions from that country?

Consider TV broadcasting. In Europe in most countries you can get TV from other European countries. The old joke in Holland was, Watch TV - its good for your German (ie, Dutch TV is so bad you will end up watching German instead). Is each broadcaster obliged to make sure that whatever people can get in France or Luxembourg is legal there? When they are HQ'd in Belgium or Luxembourg?

This is nuts.

So, who do you think is emitting the most CO2? That is what you are worried about, right? That is what you think will result in 'burning the world down' - whatever that means specifically.

The world is emitting, what, 38 billion tons a year? How much is the US tech industry emitting? I asked Grok. This is what it said about the global tech industry:

"Globally, the digital/ICT sector contributes 1.5-4% of total GHG emissions (roughly 560-1,480 Mt COâe annually, based on 37.4 Gt global emissions in 2024). The top 200 digital companies (many US-based) account for nearly 1% of global emissions, or about 370 Mt COâe total (including all scopes). US firms like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple dominate this, suggesting the US tech sector's share could be 200-300 Mt COâe annually when including supply chains (Scope 3). This is roughly 4-6% of total US GHG emissions (6.3 Gt COâe in 2022, with slight declines in 2024)."

So, they are currently doing about 1% of global emissions. They are, of course, turning to conventional power generation because you cannot run servers or indeed any business on intermittent electricity, and there is no feasible way at present to make wind and solar deliver dispatchable, reliable power. You can in principle do it with batteries, but the problem is you can't afford enough batteries to make it work over the predictable fluctuations of both wind and solar.

But the good news is that even adding more coal generating capacity, they are not going to be making any measurable difference to global CO2 emissions. The US industry is only doing 4-6% of US emissions. So adding a bit of coal generation is only going to raise this by a percent or two. And since the US only does about 12% of global emissions, that tiny rise will not even be measurable.

There is no need to worry about them burning down the planet. They could not do it even if they wanted to. The US is not a large enough economy, and within that they do not do enough emissions, no matter how hard they might try.

So stop panicking and start doing a few numbers. Talk of "burning the world down" in this context is simple intellectual hysteria. There may be something to worry about with global warming, but there is nothing to worry about from these plans.

I think Bari Weiss is going to be great at CBS News. Getting her on board was a real coup. There's absolutely no reason corporate media couldn't report interesting and useful news. They have all the infrastructure to do a good job -- especially the production staff and facilities -- all they've been missing is a brain. Like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.

The Free Press is just flat out fun to read. There's no double speak, anywhere. The writers know their craft and they treat their audience like adults. Their comment boards are always full of people complaining from all sides.

Elegy on the Death of Steve Jobs*

Farewell Steve Jobs the charismatic preacher
Whose first vocation was perhaps Guyana
That sunlit clearing where the waiting crowd
Wept as they drank and died, and he died later.
But Woz and Sculley, illness, resurrection
The cheering lost familial annual crowds
Saved him from all that. Now that he has died
The Cupertino crowds that lined the streets
Through which his train with black clad mourners flowed
Could half not know they had been acolytes.
They strewed the road before him with their flowers
Something of loveliness had left their lives
They'd not so much believed as felt a pull
Where buying was belonging, using meant
A spiritual rapture and a state of grace
Inclined without necessity. There, freedom
Seemed to be perfected in his will.

But turn turn away now, turn you now and climb.
Off board the pastel roaring bird your ashes
Drift as a grey cloud into the waves
They cannot hear your funeral elegies
That blend of Zen, Far Eastern and New Age
That spiritual pride is all forgotten now
And whether it was cult, religion, commerce
Will not long trouble now the primeval ooze
Or settling dust of what was once a man.

The level of ignorance about both Britain and the Labour Party shown in these comments is very striking. One hardly knows where to begin to try to remedy it.

Lets focus on the dynamics of the Labour Party. The background in which they are attempting to govern is given in the head post. What isn't there is the UK reliance on funding its debt by issuing index linked bonds. This limits its ability to inflate their way out of rising debt.

Why should debt rise? It comes down to Labour in the end. Labour's traditional approach has always been, and still is, spend and borrow. There is a particular loop which comes from the party's funding. The unions, today the civil service unions, contribute heavily to the party. In exchange the party throws money at them in the form of generous wage and benefit settlements, and this funds the contributions.

Traditionally this led to a cycle in which Conservative governments would come in after a fiscal crisis caused by increased spending and borrowing, clean it all up, get abused for doing something called austerity - prudent financial management - then get replaced by a Labour government which could screw up the economy again.

However two things changed in the last round of this cycle. One is that the Conservative Party moved to the left and engaged in absurd levels of spending - nominally justified by Covid, but many observers regard that as an excuse rather than a reason. The UK now had two political parties making up 80% of the representatives who were both committed to fiscal irresponsibility. The second is that as a result when Labour came to power a year or so ago it did not inherit reasonably sound finances.

But it was still caught in its own loop and behaved as if this were the late 20th century all over again - spend, give to the unions, get back poltiical contributions, borrow, and it would all work out fine, at least for a while. Only, if you do this with huge debt levels and a restive bond market, and with the ghost of Liz Truss peering over your shoulder, it doesn't work like it used to. So you find yourself obliged to raise taxes in the first year of the cycle, and having decided not to raise basic tax rates, income or VAT, are obliged to do so in much more damaging ways. The result is an economic slowdown, but no fall-off in entitlement spending or the government's wage and benefits bill.

The UK and its government therefore finds itself being carried to the Budget in late November this year. The Budget is a charming UK political custom where the government of the day sets out its forecasts and plans for spending and taxation. As they go into this round (which they have had to postpone to the last possible legal date, which tells you something) they are facing a gap. How large? Opinions vary, but in realistic terms its several tens of billions sterling.

They find themselves in an impossible position. Raise basic taxes by huge amounts, and court electoral disaster at the first opportunity (in the May 2026 local elections). Try and cut expenses? They tried on welfare and ran straight into the party activists and had to climb down. Starmer tried to fire Miliband, which would have been a first step to ending the prohibitively expensive Net Zero program. He failed. Do neither, and borrow, and you get into the spiral caused by index linking - and you really wake the bond market up from an increasingly uneasy sleep.

Watch out for late November. There are no good choices for them. The chances of a real financial crisis are very high and rising, and a visit from the IMF is on the cards.

None of this has anything much to do with Brexit. Its structural factors in British politics, and the precipitating factor was the Conservative sharp left turn, and fiscal irresponsibility. This has interacted with similar levels of irresponsibility by the Labour Party to produce what promises to be a perfect storm.

You want to see a real time indicator of this? Just keep checking 10 year Gilt prices and yields. But don't buy them! You thought Liz Truss had produced a crisis? That was nothing to what is coming in November. Starmer and Reeves are rabbits in the headlights. Meanwhile Farage, the ablest UK politician in a couple of generations, is waiting and planning. He and Reform will be the only winners from this.

The story omits to say where in the world these unfortunate 1.5 billion people are living. So I asked Grok, as you do:

Do you have a list of the leading particulate emission countries, by amount emitted? And where do the people most exposed to particulate emissions live, also by country?

Leading Countries by Particulate Emissions (PM2.5)

Particulate emissions typically refer to the total amount of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) released into the atmosphere from sources like industrial activities, vehicle exhaust, coal burning, and agriculture. Data on total emissions (e.g., in tons per year) is tracked by sources like the UN's Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), but recent public rankings often focus on population-weighted average concentrations as a proxy for emission intensity, since higher concentrations correlate strongly with elevated emissions in densely populated areas. Based on the latest available data from 2023 (from IQAir's World Air Quality Report and supporting sources), the leading countries by highest average PM2.5 concentrations are:
Rank Country Average PM2.5 Concentration (Âg/mÂ)
1 Bangladesh 79.9
2 Pakistan 73.7
3 India 54.4
4 Tajikistan 51.4
5 Burkina Faso 46.9

These rankings reflect national averages derived from ground-based monitoring stations, emphasizing areas with high emission volumes relative to population. For context, the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline for annual PM2.5 exposure is 5 Âg/mÂ; all listed countries exceed this by over 9 times. South and Central Asia dominate due to rapid industrialization, biomass burning, and transboundary pollution.
Countries Where People Are Most Exposed to Particulate Emissions (PM2.5)

Exposure is measured by population-weighted average PM2.5 concentrations, which account for both pollution levels and the number of people breathing that airâ"making it a direct indicator of how many individuals face elevated risks. This metric highlights countries where large populations live in highly polluted environments, leading to greater overall health burdens (e.g., respiratory diseases and premature deaths). Drawing from 2023 data (primarily IQAir and State of Global Air reports), the top countries by highest population-weighted PM2.5 exposure are:
Rank Country Population-Weighted PM2.5 (Âg/mÂ) Approximate Exposed Population (millions)
1 India 54.4 1,428
2 Bangladesh 79.9 173
3 Pakistan 73.7 241
4 China 33.3 1,412
5 Nigeria 40.2 218

Asia accounts for the majority of global exposure, with over 80% of the world's population breathing unsafe air. Sub-Saharan African countries like Nigeria and others (e.g., Niger at ~45 Âg/mÂ) are rising due to increasing urbanization and biomass fuel use. Globally, PM2.5 exposure is linked to ~7 million premature deaths annually, with South Asia bearing the heaviest burden. Only 7 countries met WHO standards in 2023: Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand.
2s

My son writes contract proposals, another area where people try to cut corners by generating responses from requirement documents. Sounds legit, you would think. He tells me it's a boat anchor, dramatically slowing down delivery. The problem is when it guesses -- and it guesses A LOT -- there's no telling what ridiculous BS it will pull out of its learning corpus. You can't rely on it being even predictable.

You can downvote all you want, label as trolling all you want. But the facts are that there is plenty of evidence that the UK Met Office is doing a terrible and unprofessional job of maintaining a network of up-to-standard weather stations. And, from the testimony of people living and staying in the UK this summer, this was not an especially hot summer.

You can't stop people knowing this, saying it. You can affect how its rated on /., and thus somewhat affect how many people read it here. But you can't affect the facts, and you can't stop general publication of them. All you can do is destroy the credibility of the institutions you are trying to defend by banning crticism of them. Not that there is a whole lot left to destroy!