In defence of the personal carbon footprint

 From Kristian Steensen Nielsen

I often hear people, including in the climate community, dismiss the concept of a personal carbon footprint. I believe this is a mistake. Here are three reasons why.

The usual argument against the personal carbon footprint is that the fossil fuel industry created it. This is not entirely true. But BP and Ogilvy & Mather were instrumental in popularizing it and for very problematic reasons. Nevertheless, the concept can still have scientific and practical value.

1️⃣ Carbon footprints can highlight the immense #inequality that exists between and within countries. Wealthier countries and wealthier people generally have disproportionately large carbon footprints. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

2️⃣ Personal carbon footprints can inform people about which of their actions are most carbon-intensive. This solves a real problem, as most people lack knowledge about which behavior changes matter for climate change mitigation (understandably, since this is complex).

A better understanding of carbon footprints may help prioritize behavior changes and community and organizational climate initiatives. It could also direct public attention to the most effective climate actions, which, in turn, might increase people's support for more ambitious climate policies.

3️⃣ Your carbon footprint does not imply that you have full control over your emissions! This point is crucial. Some emissions happen outside your control and are embedded in supply chains, public services and infrastructure. Moreover, shifting away from carbon-intensive behaviors can be difficult...

... and reducing barriers to change will often require policy interventions. The severity of the barriers varies across contexts and socioeconomic groups. I would argue that wealthier people will often have an easier time changing behavior. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We need both individual and system-level change, and they are deeply interconnected. Even with system changes, people with high CFs will need to reduce air travel ✈️, live in smaller, energy-efficient homes 🏡, cut meat consumption 🍽️ 🥦, increase their use of public transportation 🚆, and more.

While the concept and its measurement have limitations, carbon footprints can help guide people, municipalities, and countries toward actions and initiatives that matter. And I highly doubt that the fossil fuel industry (and supporting industries) would be happy about this 🤔

Importantly, personal carbon footprint only speaks to consumption. The opportunity space for taking impactful climate action is much wider, and for some people, actions in other 'roles' will be more impactful than changing their consumption. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Of course I miss water

 Cartoon by Jonesy

World bond bloodbath

 Bonds are being heavily sold off.  (Reminder:  yields rise as prices fall)

It's because of :

• the Iran war, and its effect on oil prices and inflation.  
• ballooning US deficits
• concern that the Fed won't fight inflation
• Japan's economic unravelling
• stubborn inflation, not just in the US, but in Europe and elsewhere.
• the beginning of Central Bank tightening.
• strongly rising commodity prices — it's not just oil.

When bond yields rise, it's a signal of tightening credit.  The riskier the borrower, the bigger the rise in the interest rates they must pay to obtain credit. (That's why national government bond yields haven't risen by equal amounts over the last 2 years). At some point, the elastic snaps, and companies and possibly countries start going bankrupt.  Which leads, inevitably, to a recession.

The AI bubble is dependent on credit and circular financing.  When outside credit flows dry up, it will pop, taking down the economy and share markets with it.

Every previous oil crisis has been followed by a recession, and the bigger the relative increase in prices, the deeper the recession. 

Solar capacity outpaces coal in China

 

Source: Our World in Data

From EuroNews

China's solar energy capacity has surpassed that of coal-fired power for the first time ever.

"As of the end of July this year, China's installed solar power capacity reached 1.286 billion kilowatts," China's National Energy Administration (NEA) said.

"For the first time, photovoltaic installed capacity surpassed coal-fired power, becoming the largest power source category in China," it added.

The country's coal-fired power installed capacity, the energy body said, stood at 1.285 billion kilowatts [1,285 GW — a typical coal power station is 1 to 2 GW]

Solar generation rose 15.5 per cent in the first seven months of 2026 compared to the same period last year to 802.4 billion kilowatt-hours, about one-eighth of the country's total, the NEA said in another statement.

China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases that drive climate change, has pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

The NEA said China's installed solar power capacity and power generation "have maintained a steady trend of rapid growth," with it playing an "increasingly prominent role" in guaranteeing electricity supply and driving the energy transition.

Coal has been China's key power generation source for decades and a key driver of planet-warming emissions.

But the country's coal-fired power generation fell by nearly two per cent in 2025, despite rising energy demand in the world's largest emitter, data reviewed by the AFP news agency showed in February.

It marked the first decline in six years, with some analysts saying it was the first time on record that coal generation dropped at the same time as power demand rose.

China has seen an explosive growth in its renewable installation, with coal's share in its energy mix edging down in recent years.The country installed a record 315 gigawatts of solar power and 119 gigawatts of wind power capacity last year, over 80 per cent of total newly installed power generation capacity, according to the China Electricity Council.

EU countries are trailing behind China when it comes to renewables, partly because China started their transition to clean energy much sooner. [This seems incorrect. China's solar capacity on 2000 was just 0.03 GW, compared with 0.2 GW in Europe and 0.59 GW in the US.  China's capacity only exceeded Europe's in 2017.]  As an example, in 2023 China installed between 180 and 230 gigawatts of solar, compared to 58 gigawatts in all European countries combined.

China's ownership of clean technology parts and patents makes a big difference to how quickly and cheaply they can install, as well as cheaper labour.

China's energy grid is also more efficient at handling energy from multiple sources, where as Europe's grid has been called "outdated". Hybridisation has been recommended as a solution.

Remember, this is capacity, not output.   Solar output is constrained, often curtailed by the grid operator, because of excess capacity in coal.  China is still building coal power stations, despite low capacity factors, and electricity utilities have quotas to use coal power in preference to solar and wind.  For China to significantly reduce emissions, it will have to rejig the electricity market.  When it does, emissions should plummet.

How good is "AI" programming?

 It turns out, not very good at all

From Jan Wildeboer

#Oops. A benchmark that checks how good "AI" coding works on real code from real companies. The TL;DR: Nope, it doesn't work. Not even close.

"Does AI code match the bar of a real-world enterprise? Our results show us that we're far from that reality. [...] We've found that today's models are weaker at understanding company coding patterns and frequently miss requirements or don't verify their assumptions."

https://withspecific.com/benchmarks/re

This is supposed to be one of the main uses of "AI".  How soon before the bubble pops?  

AI might be good at drawing elves or creating cat videos, but how lucrative a use case is that?

Europe's EV sales boom

Europeans are responding to soaring petrol/diesel prices by buying EVs and hybrids.   That choking noise you hear is the death rattle of ICEVs.  

From Inside EVs

Europeans’ appetite for electric cars is not slowing down. Last month, EV sales in the region went up by 51% compared to the same month last year, leading to a crisp 25% market share for this type of powertrain, according to Dataforce, which crunched the numbers from 98% of all new car registrations in the European Union, United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland.

In the first seven months of 2026, EV sales grew 37% compared to the same period last year, helping the entire industry keep its numbers in the green. By comparison, the entire European car market went up by 4.1% last month and 5.7% from January through July.

The growth of EV sales outpaced plug-in hybrids and traditional hybrids, too, with PHEV sales rising by 15% in July, while full-hybrid sales were up 9%. Rising fuel prices and an ever-expanding lineup of electric cars are more than likely the main drivers behind the sustained growth of EV registrations in Europe.

France and Germany, two of the biggest car markets in Europe, are leading the EV boom, with more and more battery-powered vehicles hitting the roads every month. In July, France hit a 35% EV share, with over 44,000 registrations. Meanwhile, full-electric cars reached a 29.3% share last month, with nearly 79,000 registrations.

In total, 277,006 EVs were registered in Europe last month, and none of Tesla’s models are at the top of the list. The Škoda Elroq was the best-selling EV in the region, followed by the Volkswagen ID.4 and the Renault 5 E-Tech. However, the Tesla Model Y is still the best-selling EV in Europe after the first seven months of the year, with 115,759 registrations, an increase of 55%. Škoda’s Elroq is second, with 67,679 units, followed by the Tesla Model 3 with 57,086 cars sold.

The Škoda Elroq

Feedback climate loops very bad news

 

Fiercer wildfires in drying forests are occurring globally, as seen in this image from Indonesia in August 2026. Photograph: Mast Irham/EPA

From The Guardian

Rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels are transforming the world’s forests, wetlands and tundra to the point they are releasing emissions that could further worsen global heating by as much as 30%, a new study has found.

As the world heats up, permafrost in the high latitudes is thawing, fiercer wildfires are burning in drying forests and wetlands and lakes are warming. All of these changes are themselves causing the release of planet-heating methane and carbon dioxide locked in trees and soils, therefore worsening the climate crisis, the paper states.

While scientists have long known of these “feedback loops” that amplify the impact of direct pollution from burning coal, oil and gas, the emissions from natural sources are largely unaccounted for in climate projections.

This additional heating is, however, significant, researchers found, with emissions from natural sources set to amplify global heating by 20% to 30% by the end of this century. This would add an estimated 0.2C to 0.4C to the global average temperature by this time, depending on the overall action taken by countries to combat the climate crisis.

Even small fractions of temperature change across the global climate can greatly change the risk of severe and deadly heatwaves, floods, drought and other impacts.

The United Nations last week conceded the international pact to constrain the global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels will be breached in the next few years, causing climate impacts such as this summer’s record heatwaves and wildfires to “strike faster, hit harder and last longer”.

Yet the increase in the world’s fever will likely be even larger than most projections currently account for, the new research warns, as they do not factor in the methane and CO2 that will spew from permafrost, wetlands, freshwaters and wildfires – the four areas the paper analyzed.

“This hidden multiplier is missing from the models guiding climate policy, so those models are likely underestimating how much warming is coming – and overestimating how much carbon we can still afford to emit,” said Sam Abernethy, a scientist at Spark Climate Solutions who led the research, published in Environmental Research Letters.

The disruption of the world’s carbon cycles is now being seen in “real time”, said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University scientist and study co-author. “The results are a wake-up call, and it’s imperative that they be included in the next generation of climate policies,” he added. “Failure to do so will make meeting the world’s climate goals less and less likely.”

There has been longstanding concern that should global heating melt enough of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, thaw enough permafrost, warp crucial ocean currents and turn the Amazon rainforest into a savannah, the world will career past a series of catastrophic tipping points where the climate system spins wildly outside any sort of restraining human influence.

The planet is getting closer to such a “point of no return” where this runaway global heating becomes reality, a separate study earlier this year warned.

This latest paper makes clear that action by countries to cut fossil fuel pollution will still lessen the amount of additional emissions that come from landscapes. Under the most optimistic climate scenario where emissions are cut quickly, natural sources will add 0.2C of warming, the paper found. Under a worst-case higher emissions scenario, 0.4C will probably be added.

Current policies put in place by governments are likely to see the global temperature rise to 2.6C above pre-industrial times, according to Climate Action Tracker. This will probably cause severe disruption and hardship to billions of people through sea level rise, crop losses and other consequences.

“One of the most troubling aspects of climate change is that warming can trigger natural processes that cause still more warming,” said Bill Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University who helped author the research earlier this year on runaway heating. He was not involved in the new paper, which he called “important”.

“This does not mean that a Hothouse Earth trajectory is inevitable, but it provides another warning about the possibility of reinforcing feedbacks that can amplify the warming humans initiate,” he said.

“The paper also reminds us why every fraction of a degree matters. The more we warm the planet, the more we risk activating natural processes that add still more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. This makes rapid reductions in fossil fuel emissions even more urgent.”

These feedbacks are causing accelerated heating.  

Meanwhile, Australia is approving new and expanded coal and gas extraction, the US is cancelling wind farms and opposes EVs, the UK wants to licence new North Sea oil exploration, Europe is dragging its feet on the transition to EVs, and China, Indonesia and India are still building new coal power stations.  Politicians clearly do not accept the urgency of the change needed.