this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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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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Republicans are trying to thwart the president’s power to declare a climate emergency amid record-breaking heat (www.levernews.com)
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From David Sirota’s The Lever

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Cars aren't going anywhere. Achieveing a 20% reduction would be great, but people in developing countries are only now getting started with cars. The only choice: what kind of cars?

Public transport is good, the nearest city to where I live has free public transport (Tallinn, capital of Estonia) but people still use cars. Public transport cannot get everywhere.

I propose a few test cases: try transporting someone old and frail, or a sick child or pet. Go by public transport, walk 10 minutes to the stop, switch lines, wait, walk 5 minutes to the hospital / clinic. If the old person tires, you can't carry them. Now try the same route with 20 cm of snow on ground. Now try with ice on ground. Now try in a storm. If you have a car, you'll be starting it up (if you don't, you'll be asking a friend or hiring a cab).

The question will be "which type of car", "whose car" and "how often".

Also, there will always be people working in the other end of the city, or in the countryside (where cars are practically required since public transport may be miles and hours away). People often have to decide whether to move near their job or move near their relatives (moving is an big hassle, it is not always possible to sell / buy / rent when needed, property prices differ, moving into a rich neighbourhood may be unrealistic) or commute. Smarter planning may reduce the flow, but there will be a flow. And industries are hard to integrate into living districts.