this post was submitted on 02 Dec 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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Stop emissions, stop warming: A climate reality check | Why future warming isn't as "locked in" as you might think (www.theclimatebrink.com)
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[–] UnderpantsWeevil 7 points 1 week ago

One part of the thing is that oil interests are far too powerful and people are far too complacent.

We've seen a number of crashes in the O&G sector in my lifetime, typically paired with sharp downturns in the economy leading to contractions in consumption.

The COVID shock in '21 illustrates a big part of the problem is the Just In Time supply chain. We have relatively few places to store energy, so a crash in demand can create a big backup in supply. The end result is -$43/bbl oil, because nobody has a place to put the excess. That triggers huge layoffs and creditor liquidations that can rapidly reduce industrial capacity.

there is an overpowering collection of voices saying “I don’t wanna” that need to be overcome. The natural disasters are still going to have to get worse before people want to do something about it.

I can easily see a future in which US domestic production or Saudi Gulf exports suddenly tank out thanks to a war or another pandemic or a super-storm.

But the end result of a crash like that is enormous human misery for an extended period of time. Would prefer to do things the easy rather than the profitable way.