this post was submitted on 08 Aug 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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How to respond to the "But what about the farmers?" argument? (self.climate)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by SpiceDealer to c/[email protected]
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We've all seen this "question" thrown around. It's a smear disguised as an inquiry meant to present climate activists and climate-conscious people as trying to take jobs away from "hard working" farmers. When talking about climate issues with people, this one of the most common responses I get. But here's the thing: I know it's a bullshit question but I don't how to explain why it's a bullshit question. Any help? Thanks in advance.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Land use (and with that agriculture) has a lot to do with emissions. Imagine a forest cleared to farm palm oil. All that stored carbon is now in the atmosphere. Think about the staple crop rice emitting methane, due to the nature of water submerged fields.

If not emissions, water usage is also a big concern. Like farming water intensive crops in areas where water is sparse, just because the crop is very profitable, but maybe not very nutritious.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Also, beef & dairy - cows burp & fart A LOT of methane which is 20x more warming than carbon dioxide.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Beef and dairy isn’t farming. That’s ranching. I’m asking about farming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I’m asking about climate action affecting farmers in general. Yes, water is a good point. My main point is that farmers are an incredibly small part of emissions, the majority come from construction, oil and gas, and ranching.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Oh, sorry I misread your first comment.

First: acriculture is a major greenhouse gas contributor, globally.

The amount of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture is significant: The agriculture, forestry and land use sectors contribute between 13% and 21% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Source: Wikipedia

I'm not sure how they affected by climate action. I can only assume it's a sector, where it's very difficult to remove emissions, unlike other sectors without impacting the crop amount? Like reducing farm animals or fertilizers and machinery?

Here is a short breakdown of emissions in agriculture from "ourworldindata.org".