this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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Construction equipment is going electric. Here’s what it’s like behind the wheel. (wapo.st)
submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I tested a 55,000-pound electric excavator. New ways to power off-road machines, which mostly run on diesel, could cut about 3 percent of U.S. carbon emissions.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Lol how do you think construction sites generate electricity to charge the batteries?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Three ways:

  • They can prioritize bringing power to the site, and do that first
  • They can use a trailer with solar panels, as is currently done today for lighting and tools
  • For equipment which sees limited use, simply bring it to the site already-charged

Electric equipment doesn't need to be a 100% replacement to make a big difference.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago
  1. It's not always practical to get power to a site, depending on the utility and whatever upgrades they need.
  2. Solar doesn't generate enough, and doesn't generate at all overnight (when plant would be charged).
  3. Most plant lives on site and transporting it off site to charge is just going to add to costs and likely increase pollution (you need lorries to move them).

It's a good idea, and one that's growing, but it's still niche and it will be a long time before construction sites are fully electric.

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