this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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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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Batteries start to rival gas on California’s electricity grid (english.elpais.com)
submitted 1 week ago by kalkulat to c/[email protected]
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"Gas accounts for 40% of California's grid. However, its use in April registered its lowest proportion in seven years."

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This article doesn't really say, but gas power plants are frequently used for peak demand because you can easily throttle them to meet fluctuating demand (and generated power that is not used is wasted). So, even though we're comparing energy production (gas) with energy storage (batteries) it does make some sense because the batteries can probably replace the need for peaking plants eventually. If we can smooth out the demand cycle with storage for power generated during off-peak hours it would make the power grid much easier to manage.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

They also can take power out of the system quickly, which is extremely usefull for balancing a grid.