this post was submitted on 07 Nov 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] 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So...uh...is everyone ready to join those of us slandered as "doomers" in reality now? Nothing of significance has been done or is being done, and this problem is not going away. It is only going to get worse. Unless everyone joins us in reality, it is over. I'm not exactly hopeful, as the "I hate all science" party just swept both houses, along with the presidency and they already had the courts.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The EU had an 8% decline in emissions last year. That is roughly in line with meeting the 1.5C target and mainly done using reasonable policy.

China also invests a lot in Green technology. With the trade war, it is certainly possible that the Chinese economy crashes, which would mean lower energy consumption growth and hence lower Chinese emissions.

There also is a strong chance that Trump launches a massive war in the Middle East. He loves Israel and bombing Arabs. If that includes attacks on oil and gas infrastructure, that could be great for the climate(although horrible on so many other levels).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Valid, though in some cases dark, points. The US is one of, if not the largest, per capita emitters on the planet, though. Our military alone is a top emitter. I just find the outlook for meaningful change in this country grim and the effects we've already begone to see from climate change are pretty severe.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

The unbelievably massive amounts of heat, pollution and environmental destruction from war is not currently 'great for the climate'. Ww3 and bombing oil and gas infrastructures is not going to change that.

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

The EU had an 8% decline in emissions last year.

The US peaked at 23.1 tonnes of carbon emissions per capita in 1973. It came off that peak but stayed pretty flat through 2007 or so, at 20.2 tonnes per person. Since then, it's steadily come down, and is now at about 14.9.

There's still a long way to go, but the 35% reduction that the US has already accomplished shows that it's possible to keep making progress.