Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: Either China's screwed, or everybody is. [View all]NNadir
(33,632 posts)...fitting, especially by extrapolation, is often just nonsense.
The most famous example of this comes from the history of quantum mechanics, where the Rayleigh-Jeans Law predicted an "ultraviolet catastrophe." The difference between that case and this case is that the people reviewing the Rayleigh-Jeans law recognized that the problem was with the theory, and not with the result.
If one could believe in curve fitting, it would follow that many of the soothsaying exercises of the past would prove to have been accurate.
The only prediction that can be safely made is that predictions will prove to be wrong.
I note, with some amusement, that you included the statement, "but the world loses its last vestige of hope for avoiding a climate calamity."
I may have this wrong, as I've stayed away from this place for a while to avoid the risk of hearing too much pablum, but "hope" is a word that doesn't appear often in your commentary.
One hopes you're feeling well, and haven't become sick with some existentially derived illness.
Now, I happen to believe that the world is in dire straits myself, but I don't believe that any outcome is inevitable, and I think it's silly to insist on curve fitting approaches to anything.
As for China, I will say this: China is the only nation on earth right now that has any hope of phasing out dangerous fossil fuels, adding that the per capita CO2 production of the Chinese is a small fraction of other nations, including nations where people sit on their butts doing less for the climate.
China may do better than everyone else over the long term - whether 'better than everyone else" is enough is another question - possibly, I suspect, that there is no Chinese equivalent for the name "Kristopher" or "Romm" or "Lovins" or any other anti-nuke fools who insist on burning dangerous fossil fuels until the grand renewable nirvana springs from the head of Zeus, or Jesus, or any of the other Gods who predict things that somehow never come true.