He won’t be around long enough to suffer the results of his actions..
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Are you sure about that?
The bigger the El Nino, the more wind shear → hurricane suppression.
Edit: However, places like Florida are scheduled for some serious flooding in a huge El Nino.
Including Mar-a-Lago?
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don’t jinx it…guess who pays for the repairs?
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An honest look at CO2 emissions using city of Zürich assessment data.
What people wear or eat matters, but it’s much smaller than fuel for “mobility” and energy for buildings.
While local emissions are going down…
Within the city of Zurich, direct emissions have fallen steadily in recent years and are now at around 2.2 tonnes of CO₂ equivalents per person. That puts Zurich in the upper- middle range of European cities with published climate inventories. In comparison, Copenhagen, a city often cited for aggressive climate action, reported roughly one tonne of CO₂ per person in 2024, while Berlin reported around 3.6 tonnes of CO₂ per person in the same year.
“This confirms that our local measures in buildings, mobility and energy are effective,” says Andreas Hauri, a member of Zurich’s city council and head of the Department of Health and Environment.
Don’t look at the airport, those emissions don’t end up in the same atmosphere:
In the skies above the city, however, the picture is different. In 2024, Zurich residents flew an average of 10,500 kilometres per person – roughly the equivalent of a round-trip flight from Zurich to Dubai each year. That marks an increase of around 600 kilometres over the year before. Emissions from flights rose by roughly 110 kilograms of CO₂-equivalent per resident. Flying now releases around 3.2 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent per person.
Wait a min, my dumb car emits 210 grams CO2/kg. I drive more or less 15k km/year.
0.21 kg/km driven *15’000 km driven = 3’150 kg.
So, air travel emissions are equivalent to each resident of city of Zürich driving a dumb M car 15k km/year on average.
Anyway, this is a good thing. People is starting to realize that looking only at the little piece of land where we live is fooling ourselves:
For a country that imports much of what it consumes, this imbalance is structural. As territorial emissions fall, emissions linked to what residents consume abroad play an increasingly decisive role in whether Switzerland’s overall climate impact actually declines.
“Once you focus only on what happens inside the city or the country, emissions can look like they are going down, while the overall impact does not,” Nick says. “At that point, consumption becomes decisive.”
Checking some safety things for some work stuff:
- Big sea waves, probability 10^-4 (return period 10k years) , X magnitude
- Furious winds, probability 10^-4, Y magnitude
- Killer tsunami: probability 10^-4, Z magnitude
- Overhyped sea level rise (SSP “middle of the road”): probability 1, surprise magnitude
I’m familiar with these things and anyway chuckle in disbelief every once in a while. Probability of occurrence during the expected lifetime of the thingy to be built: ONE 
No life ending scenario, but it’s going to be seriously expensive. And consultants…consultants will do just fine.
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Finally Trump’s actions are doing something to help stop climate change https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/14/frances-emissions-are-falling-as-fuel-prices-soar-why-is-it-still-missing-climate-targets
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Aww this Iran war is bringing out the woke tree hugger side of him.
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Think positive about climate change (and AI?) The problem with telling people the world is ending | Climate crisis | The Guardian
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"We also included a text loaded with doom and gloom that told participants: “If your anxiety about climate change is dominated by fears of starving polar bears, glaciers melting and sea levels rising, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a young adult today. And yet the swelling seas – and the cities they will drown – have so dominated the picture of climate change/global warming that they have blinded us to other threats, many much closer at hand and much more catastrophic …”
This terrifying passage was the one that proved most effective at getting people to spread it on the internet or social media. But like other fear appeals, it failed in inspiring real action: it was the single worst message for getting people to make the time and effort to mitigate climate effects – by planting trees, for example. It also failed to increase belief in the climate emergency or support for climate policies."
“Jay Van Bavel is a professor of psychology and neural science at New York University”
I’ll go out on a limb and say that the esteemed Professor Van Bavel knows all too well why the bolded parts are as they are, but intentionally stops at calling it out in order to avoid giving the wrong message to people (instead of “you should worry a lot, and do something about it yourself” being received as “you shouldn’t worry, much”).
He surely knows that negativity is eye-catching, but positivity is motivating.
He also surely knows that the average person has a room temperature IQ, and worse critical ability than a piece of wood, so he’s forced to take a Guardiany middle of the road path. Finally, the Guardian could have also pointed out two well-known facts in psychology:
- dilution of responsibility in groups - “If everyone knows the climate is going to shit then surely someone will do something about it”
- reverse doomerism: “if the climate is going to shit anyway, and I can’t do anything about it then I might as well YOLO it, fire up that V8 and let’s go rip up some streets”
Actually always wished that the world would be a warmer place to live in. But not in this manner.
This has been the same story with DDT, or the hole in the ozone layer. Pessimism gets attention but no action.
All the talk like “we must do X by Y year otherwise we’re screwed” becomes self-fulfilling prophecies.
Slow or fast action? Doesn’t matter, there’s only 1 planet so even slow action is great.
Actually these problems have been long solved and don’t exist anymore. Now if we can only rid ourselves of Teflon?
Crucially, these things were resolved in the days before social media.
Science was free to do sciencing without every bot and gobshite on Twitter muddying the waters with hot takes in a bloke-down-the-pub style.
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Whats wrong with teflon?
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Yes and no.
The development trend of the hole in the ozone layer has changed. But, the hole is still there and will be with us for a long time. There is still a big effort in developing new refrigerants and phasing out the older ones. If you look at the phasing out of refrigerants, it’s a bit like emissions for cars ( Euro 4, Euro 5, Euro 6, Euro 6b). The refrigerants that will be phased out before the end of the 2020s are not as bad as the ones phased out 20 or 30 years ago, but they’re still “bad”.
DDT was banned 50+ years ago but it’d damned persistent. It will be there for a long long time impacting ecosystems.
So, let’s say problems are not growing at dangerous rate anymore. They are controlled. That would be a realistic target for climate change and reason to celebrate.
Anyway, the discussion here is feelings and perceptions. If climate change (CO2, methane) were framed using CFCs-ozone layer and DDT as examples of successful international cooperation to fix something, results might be different.
It’s a bid sad that doomers get the attention and not researchers, engineers, economists or political institutions working on it.
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+100!
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