this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Niobium and hafnium do not occur as free elements in nature, but are refined from mineral ores. They are used in semiconductors and superalloys.

In addition to these two unusual elements, a significant number of particles contained copper, lithium and aluminum at concentrations far exceeding the abundance found in meteorics, or ‘space dust.’ “The combination of aluminum and copper, plus niobium and hafnium, which are used in heat-resistant, high-performance alloys, pointed us to the aerospace industry,’’ Murphy said.

source

they are finding elements that don't even occur in nature, and elements that do occur but in proportions in the atmosphere that have grown significantly since we started burning up rockets.

Armchair scientists don't seem to give actual scientists much credit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

they are finding elements that don’t even occur in nature

Neither of your referenced quotes claimed that the elemental makeup of the measured particulate was synthetic. If you are referring to "Niobium and hafnium do not occur as free elements in nature", what this means is that the elements are not ever found on their own — they have only ever been found bonded to something else. Niobium makes up 0.0017% of Earth's crust and Hafnium makes up 0.00033% [source (archive)].