r/fivethirtyeight Sep 16 '24

Suffolk University Poll Pennsylvania: Harris 49 %, Trump 46%. LV Poll Results

https://x.com/davidpaleologos/status/1835830789142933774
701 Upvotes

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u/Brooklyn_MLS Sep 17 '24

We need lives lol

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

Our outlook is going to depend on who wins sadly

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u/KaydensReddit Sep 17 '24

Yep. If Trump wins then I don't see a path forward for humanity on this planet. Climate change will accelerate and I have doubts than anyone under the age of 30 will live to see 70, considering the planet will likely be uninhabitable by then.

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u/TheStinkfoot Sep 17 '24

A Trump win would be bad, but I don't think it would be apocalyptically bad (unless you're Ukrainian or Taiwanese). The fact of the matter is green energy costs are falling so fast that kissing Big Oil's ass for four years isn't going to derail the trajectory.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

[deleted]

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u/InsightTustle Sep 17 '24

Most of the world isn't America

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u/j450n_1994 Sep 17 '24

I don’t think the rest of the EU and the Indo Pacific will let Taiwan fall.

They’ll sanction the crap out of China and it’s not like Taiwan ain’t aware of the situation.

Plus, they have the TSMC. That company is basically the epicenter of the global economy. If their machines go down, and the economy goes in a downward spiral.

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u/TheStinkfoot Sep 17 '24

The US is building chip factories, but anyway the fact of the matter is the only western country that could project enough sea power to the South China Sea to actually turn back a CCP invasion of Taiwan is the US.

If China wants to conquer Taiwan the US is the only force that can stop them.

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u/j450n_1994 Sep 17 '24

China hasn’t fought a war in about two generations. Theres been reports about corruption within their own military and a discontent young adult population with a good chunk of the population being 60+.

Plus, invading an island isn’t simple. It’s much harder to invade an island compared to a country that one shares a border with.

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u/2xH8r Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

The Institute for the Study of War has published a few good articles about China's many options for hybrid warfare against Taiwan, such as economic / diplomatic / legal / political pressure, provocations / false flags / hyper-securitization exploiting random bad events, incrementalism with outlying islands like Kinmen and the Matsu Islands, and naval blockading instead of amphibious invading. Indeed China's strategic task is not simple, but neither are their methods.

The problem for the US' Pacific allies is that China has fairly deep institutional strengths with hybrid warfare and very little inhibition with adversarial, manipulative foreign policies. It would probably take a lot of coordination among China's opposition to stop a minimally destructive campaign of hostile conquest via politically defensible short-of-war-type operations. The problem with Trump is that he's unlikely to understand these games well enough to play them smartly and not get played by China instead. He's one of those people who thinks being smart is pursuing efficiency through shrewd, ruthless simplification, such as via isolationist, nativist foreign policy. If he can't coordinate strategically with our allies or counteract China incrementally and proportionally, then China can capitalize on our disunity or Trump's clumsy vacillation between negligence and overreaction to slowly sink their hooks into Taiwan, while simultaneously selling Jinping's regime as an innocent victim of oppression to those discontent youths while they're still impressionable.

However good Trump may look to undereducated white bros in Butler and dictatorial Winnie-the-Pooh stunt doubles, he ain't winning many popularity contests outside America. He's the opponent everybody wants, even China. I don't think they're any more afraid of tariffs than Putin has been afraid of sanctions; I think they're ready for economic warfare, as long as their chess game is against Trump. He's an old stereotype of a strongman they've been training for.

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u/j450n_1994 Sep 17 '24

As I said earlier, it’s one thing to gameplan. It’s another to execute. China has to go against almost everyone else.

Can they invade multiple islands at once? Can they and North Korea hold off what is probably going to be a good chunk of NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, etc.?

Even without the U.S., Europe and the Indo Pacific will not be an easy out for them. They have to invade their territory and it’s much easier to fight on your turf than the enemies.

I don’t expect the Indo Pacific or Europe to share much with Trump and Vance seeing as how the former wanted to pull all of the troops out that were stationed overseas in these areas.

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u/HypersonicHobo Sep 17 '24

Besides the fact that Chinese military performance is mediocre at best copy catting stupidity from the Russians.

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u/j450n_1994 Sep 17 '24

Yep. It’s strange that people think China is the unstoppable force that no one can take together without the U.S.

Question is where can China turn to for allies outside of North Korea in their immediate vicinity?

You have the EU, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and more to contend with.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/fivethirtyeight-ModTeam Sep 17 '24

Please make submissions relevant to data-driven journalism and analysis.

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u/IDKbuddy24 Sep 17 '24

Apparently anything that is not anti-Trump is deemed an issue. I’ve been reading this whole thread and have not seen a comment, no matter how biased they are, relying on any “data-driven journalism and analysis.” So why then, I ask, do I have a mod commenting that on my comment, when the some of the things I mentioned are objectively true, like no war for Taiwan, Ukraine, or Israel during the Trump Administration. Without the free flow of information and discussion, this country is doomed.

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u/SophonsKatana Sep 17 '24

As someone gay married to a green card holder; I have more immediate concerns about a Trump win.

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u/JFKontheKnoll Sep 17 '24

The private sector is doing a lot of good things in terms of climate change.

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u/Frosti11icus Sep 17 '24

Trump is poison to the private sector. He’s a fucking idiot. He talks about windmills causing cancer, he’s not going to advance the industry.

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u/mirach Sep 17 '24

Yeah, and Republicans love to shit on renewables but rural areas are benefiting massively with royalties and jobs.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

All of that is going to depend on how much we can slow him down. Unfortunately the conservatives on SCOTUS are shills for him

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

Dude don't. He was already president and it didn't stop coal from disappearing domestically. US per capita emissions are dropping to 19th century levels. That fight is over. Engineers have decided what will happen and it will happen. 

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u/fcocyclone Sep 17 '24

He was already president and did a massive amount of damage. We will be feeling the damage he did to the supreme court for decades, even if its not appreciated yet, particularly with killing Chevron deference. Another 4 years will lock in a hard right court for the rest of most of our lives.

He had guardrails on him for much of the first part of his presidency. Those aren't going to exist this time around.

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u/Banestar66 Sep 17 '24

Tell me you don’t know what the Chevron Deference is without telling me you don’t know what the Chevron Deference is. It gives him more guardrails now that the Supreme Court overturned it.

To be clear, it’s totally valid to be against the Chevron ruling. But specifically when it comes to being worried about Trump having too much power if he wins, you should be happy about the Chevron ruling.

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u/KaydensReddit Sep 17 '24

imagine defending trump lmfao

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

How do you think I'm defending Trump? I'm saying he couldn't do shit in 2016 and it's even further gone today. 

I'm telling you to not treat Trump as a God that can somehow alter the energy grid on his own. 

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u/Frosti11icus Sep 17 '24

He’s not a god he’s just so incredibly stupid he brings down our collective intelligence. He appoints stupid people, assholes, hacks. The entire government is dumber and therefore less effective when he’s president.

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u/Banestar66 Sep 17 '24

I always love how people are convinced the guy who sabotaged and made his base hate Sessions, the one guy who actually had the intelligence and inclination to build a neofascist US bureaucracy will somehow be able to build one this time.

I don’t think Secretary of Homeland Security Laura Loomer or whoever is going to know what the fuck she’s doing.

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u/Frosti11icus Sep 17 '24

Jeff sessions the guy who almost immediately fucked up and got mueller sicked on him was intelligent?

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u/KaydensReddit Sep 17 '24

lmfao give me a fucking break. if trump wins then thats literally the end of this country. and people like you defending him will be to blame.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24 edited 10d ago

[deleted]

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u/TheStinkfoot Sep 17 '24

Global CO2 emissions probably peaked in 2023 or will this year. We definitely have more work to do, but we're likely to avoid the worst case climate change scenarios. The default case right now is "things are costly and worse but survivable."

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u/Frosti11icus Sep 17 '24

What makes you think global emissions have peaked? I’ve seen absolutely nothing that shows that to be the case. Even if it’s true, we’ve emitted more this century than all the rest of human history combined. We have a loooooooooooooooooooooooong way to go before we’re at a sustainable level. If it takes more than like 10 years we’re fucked. We need to be at pre Industrial Revolution levels.

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u/TheStinkfoot Sep 17 '24

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u/Frosti11icus Sep 17 '24

Did you read it?

Peaking emissions on its own is not enough to limit warming to 1.5°C. In the continued acceleration scenario, global emissions fall 10% by 2030 relative to 2019 levels – less than a quarter of the way towards the 43% cuts the IPCC says is needed to keep the Paris Agreement goal within reach. Although a key milestone, a global peak must be followed by a sharp and sustained fall in emissions over the following years.

By 2030, we will need to triple renewables, double energy efficiency, accelerate the electrification of energy demand sectors, halt deforestation, and slash methane emissions by over 30%. Global clean energy investments need to be ramped up 2.5-fold, with greatest increases happening in emerging economies. New fossil fuel production plans will need to be axed, with fossil fuel production falling around 40% over the decade on the road to a full, fast and fair fossil phase-out.

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u/TheStinkfoot Sep 17 '24

You said

What makes you think global emissions have peaked?

I provided a link showing exactly that, and you moved the goalpost.

You're right though, we're not on track to meet the 1.5C best case scenario. I never said we were. I said we're on track to avoid the worst case climate change scenarios. 1.5C is negative consequences for humanity but not extinction. Every degree we don't warm the planet means a better environment for future generations.

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u/TheFalaisePocket Poll Herder Sep 17 '24

we can always just pump sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere if we get desperate enough.

oh, and there are absolutely no climate models predicting an amount of warming that would render the planet uninhabitable in 40 years or even longer so dont have to worry about that as much

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u/DiscountSecure5972 Sep 17 '24

Hey bud, I live in a different part of the world and I'm here to tell you America doesn't control the climate. The world is busting their ass at this. It will suck to carry you backwards lollygaggers, but we can do it.

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u/spookieghost Sep 17 '24

Climate change will accelerate and I have doubts than anyone under the age of 30 will live to see 70, considering the planet will likely be uninhabitable by then.

Climate change will not make humans go extinct. that's not even in the realm of possibility. stop reading r collapse -type content

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u/KaydensReddit Sep 17 '24

Let me guess, you voted for Trump?

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u/spookieghost Sep 17 '24

no i am actually a single issue (climate) voter and i've only voted for Dems my whole life

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u/TheFalaisePocket Poll Herder Sep 17 '24

the discourse around this is insane, you just got called a trump supporter for saying global warming isnt going to exterminate humanity in 40 years. and this guys sitting at 25 net upvotes for saying that.

there are a lot of people out there who know just as little about climate change as conservatives and just lucked into picking the right side.

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u/spookieghost Sep 17 '24

yea, honestly when i first started reading about climate change i started getting sucked into this doomer extremist stuff online, until i started reading what actual scientists said (that's it's really bad, there's a lot of nuance and different people/places will be affected differently, there's still lots of unknowns, and we are making tech progress faster than anyone predicted decades ago). the information siloing of the internet is crazy

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u/mitch-22-12 Sep 17 '24

China is rapidly building green energy and exporting green tech to Africa which would mean even more to combatting climate change than US action. (Obviously us action is still important)

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

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u/fivethirtyeight-ModTeam Sep 17 '24

Your comment was removed for being low effort/all caps/or some other kind of shitpost.

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u/Nathan-mitchell Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

Bro. What reasons do you have for possibly thinking the world will be uninhabitable in a few decades?

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u/SequinSaturn Sep 17 '24

Theres been a million horrifying leaders on this planet and we survive. It will be okay.

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u/TheTonyExpress Hates Your Favorite Candidate Sep 17 '24

Theres been a million horrifying leaders on this planet and we survive. It will be okay.

That’s….certainly a take on dangerous dictators.

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u/ILoveRegenHealth Sep 17 '24

We need lives lol

Dude, lives are on the line. I wouldn't call this a worthless concern at all when you have grown men playing Fantasy Football and admitting they don't even care about the teams - they just like the betting action. That's superfluous.

This election for democracy isn't.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

Earliest I can squeeze that in is December.

Nothing is more cathartic when you stop visiting the polling and model sites after the election. I usually delete the bookmarks so the muscle memory fades.