It has been almost 4 decades.

China now emits almost twice as much greenhouse gas as the United States.

What Sagan predicted 40 years ago came true. “Even if the United States and Russia…”

We’ve essentially squandered half a century.

… and did so because a few large companies recognized how much money they could save by trumping up a controversy around a scientific consensus which was largely settled by the Reagan administration. It’s really aggravating now to hear people complain that it’d cost too much to do anything, knowing not just that this is untrue but also that it would have been much cheaper if we’d made minor changes back then.

> China now emits almost twice as much greenhouse gas as the United States.

China has over four times the population of the US.

edit: i.e. comparing China to the US is like comparing the US to Germany or France. We're polluting twice as much, and a good amount of the pollution in China is for exporting to us.

In the 1980’s I imagine the United States was emitting 10 times as much as China on an absolute basis.

However, as Carl Sagan warned, China had huge coal reserves and they put them to use.

Other countries are doing the same , of course.

Hence global coal usage for power generation is at records.

From global point of view if there is demand for energy they will burn the coal. New sources of energy are not replacing the old ones, just covering new demand. You can point to any country while missing where the demand is coming from.

https://ourworldindata.org/global-energy-200-years

Resistive heaters are actually more efficient than heat exchangers at lower temperatures.