this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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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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The California grid ran on 100% renewables with no blackouts or cost rises for a record 98 days (electrek.co)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by kalkulat to c/[email protected]
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The period occured in 2024 between late winter and early summer. "Compared to the same period in 2023, solar output in California is up 31%, wind power is up 8%, and batteries are up a staggering 105%."

Link to the study PDF mentioned in the article: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/Others/25-CaliforniaWWS.pdf

One of the paper's cowriters is Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the atmosphere/energy program at Stanford University.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Storage batteries. They more than doubled storage batteries to save excess daytime solar for use overnight.

[–] halcyoncmdr 4 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Ah yes, an average of 4.84 hours per day running entirely on renewables.

There's definitely enough storage to enable that reliably. /s

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

People still dream about battery (or any other) storage as some magic solution. They simply don't understand the amount of energy that has to be stored to make it really renewables only. We'll get there eventually, but it will take a lot of time and resources. And we don't have time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Our home averaged 7.5kWh/day in December (we did not travel and we're home with family the entire time); this is about 10x less daily energy than the battery capacity of a modern EV.

Now, we have gas heating and stove/oven, so that adds a huge amount of load

but my numbers above are for 24hr energy, and batteries wouldn't need to supply that whole time.

Of course, this doesn't address cost, and it doesn't address natural resources, like you mentioned. But that actual required amount of energy per capita can certainly be achieved with current battery technology.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 days ago

Sure, but the majority of your energy is not renewable, plus you are emitting a lot of CO2. Heat pump for heating and electrical appliances would quickly rise your consumption to something like 30+kWh/day and then you'd have under three days of car battery. Also relying on car battery is tricky as in such case you can't use your car and your car's battery might be fairly empty when you need it.

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