Has anything good even happened?

Doesn't look that way to me, given that the change has been pretty smooth and shows up on specific regions and adjusting for outliers and inflation (and matches the rise in median income).

More importantly, it's not incompatible with global inequality on the rise. Different stats measure different things.

Renewable energy beating expectations is the opposite of greenwashing, it specifically compares actual generated renewable energy against previous projections. If you want to poke holes into it for the sake of... denying anything good has ever happened, I guess? you should instead point out at how disproportionately that growth is driven by China.

And again, that's perfectly compatible with CO2 emissions going up. Different stats, different things.

Bullshit. Global inequality is on a constant rise.

You are one of the many who has equivocated the 'wealth gap' with the incidence of poverty, when there is no direct casual relationship between them at all.

All the wealth gap essentially is is just a label of who has the most wealth. But you don't need to be anywhere close to that to be stable/comfortable.

Fact: if everyone on Earth was poor, the wealth gap would be zero. A small/non-existent wealth gap does not equal things being in good shape.

Fact: The correlation between the size of the gap and the incidence of poverty in world history is negative--in other words, long ago, the gap was smaller, and many more people were desperately poor.

Fact: It is absolutely possible for there to be a wealth gap, even one as large or larger than the one we have presently, while no one is poor. Further, it's extremely unlikely that the hypothetical total eradication of poverty would shrink the gap at all, or even slow its growth.

Fact: If you waved a magic wand so that everyone in every county of the US, for example, had their income raised to the median, essentially wiping out poverty nationwide, the size of the wealth gap would literally be unchanged--the gap from broke to comfortable is nothing compared to the gap between comfortable and 'wealthiest on the planet'.

New wealth is created constantly, it is not zero sum and never has been. And there will always be someone who has the most.

P.S. The World Bank's poverty line has never been lowered that I can see, only raised, most recently in 2022 from $1.90 to $2.15 per day. So no idea what you're talking about with 'lowering the poverty line to make capitalism look good'.

More plebs suffering under capital owners = global poverty rate went down

Cool, but that's unrelated. We need the energy transition to happen anyway. Energy consumption is still climbing regardless, so we still need to move things over to renewables on top of whatever other actions we take. When it comes to climate stuff people tend to want a silver bullet or claim that anything short of that is useless, which I find kind of infuriatingly counterproductive.

Also, data centre power consumption has been up on aggregate on a very smooth curve since the 2000s. AI or no, those things have been burning through an increasing amount of energy over time. They need to generate that energy from clean sources in any case, which requires a faster energy transition.

Incidentally, I don't know if AI datacenters have "erased all gains". I don't have a direct comparison handy, but the numbers I see around for those two things seem an order of magnitude apart. If you have good sources I'd love to take a look, though.

Don't you remember all the pedantic asshats saying that 2000 wasn't a new century? "There was no year zero!", "People just want all the digits to change!", "You're celebrating a year early!"

Yes, but most people ignored it and celebrated the new millennium at the end of 1999 and beginning of 2000 anyway.

See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium#Debate_over_millennium_celebrations

It's quite interesting. For example Fidel Castro made sure that Cuba celebrated correctly at the end of year 2000. And the U.S. Naval Observatory, official timekeeper for the country, held a party for the new milennium then too.

Apparently yeah. In fact, it's actually easy to tell which years are in the 2nd millenium just by knowing its final year.

But people chose to celebrate the new millenium in 2000 because it's much more fun to have every single digit in a calendar year change than having only one digit change and calling it "a new millenium". Also, January 1, 2000 looks and feels so much cooler in my opinion, unless you write it in the dd/mm/yy format (mm/dd/yy wouldn't make much of a difference), in which case 01/01/01 has that nice satisfying feeling of all variables being the same value.

2000 was the last year of the second millennium and also the first year of the 00s. 2001 was the first year of the third millennium and the second year of the 00s.

On a 1' ruler, the first half inch ends at 0.5". All of the measurements within that first inch are "0.x". "1.x" will be in the second inch. "2.x" is in the third inch.

Calendars don't work like that. 1 January 1AD is in the first year, not the second. 31 December 1AD is still in the first year.

364 days after his (ostensible) birth was December 31st, 1AD. At midnight that night (364.999... days) 1 full year was complete, and we entered the second year.

3650 days after 1 January 1AD is 1 January 11AD.

36500 days after 1 January 1 AD is 1 January 101AD.

365000 days after 1 January 1AD is 1 January 1001AD.

31 December 2000 was the last day of the second millenia. The first day of the third millenia was 1 January 2001.

Only programmers start counting with 0. All the normal people start with 1.

Yes but 2000 was not.

Your take is not the correct one, longevity treatments (immortality drugs isn't something that can be made) will roll back your physical age by reparing you. Not just forcing life to stay in a decaying body.

So at 126 you'll run around playing basketball and listening to heavy metal, if that's what you like.

Ooh! The dust bowl of the 30's and the, I'm sure, many many ecological and natural disasters heading our way will have nice synergy on your list as well.

Congratulations! Same here!

Of course there can be an 0th year.

Kids don't start at 1 because they can't be 0, you start counting by days weeks and months and then years. This wasn't even a problem though, because in the 0th year people weren't walking around referencing dates according to whatever calendar we use.

If no years have elapsed then it's the 0th year.

It sounds to me as though some idiot named the 0th year "1", which just happens to be a numeral.

How 'bout we don't give a fuck and use a sensible system instead?

The thing about losing progress is you can’t know where you would be if priorities were different.

If the same amount of passion and resources was poured into the space program for the last 50 years as it was during the moon landing we would certainly be much further ahead, but no one would be able to tell you where would we be.

How do expect someone to describe something that hasn’t been invented yet?

Really? In the history of the world, there hasn't been a time more safer, healthier or better for mankind then now.

Don't stare yourself blind only on the scary stuff. That's what the media wants, to make you obedient, scared and consuming.

Instead, why not engage and talk with people? For every ugly person in the news, there are 100 good people in real life.

Break the cycle of negative echo chambering. Please.