this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2025
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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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95% of countries miss UN deadline to submit 2035 climate pledges. (www.carbonbrief.org)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And of those 5% who will actually follow through? There's a 0% chance that these countries ever willingly use less energy, as that would be a detrimental blow to their economy. And yeah "solar panels exist" but that only accounts for electricity, and the world still produces over 80% of energy from high carbon sources. Plus we basically require fossil fuels to build the materials needed for "low carbon renewables" like solar panels and wind turbines.

[โ€“] TheGrandNagus 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I can't speak for everywhere, but the UK has recently banned the approval of any more North Sea oil drilling, approved several zero carbon energy projects, and is changing planning permission so that people won't be able to block onshore wind and energy infrastructure projects. They're also doing an ICE car ban 5 years earlier than the EU (2030).

Then there's a bunch of new standards for new homes built (e.g. gas boilers not allowed anymore), grants for improving home energy efficiency, and a few other policies like that.

The UK has done a pretty great job so far of decarbonising. Despite having more technology and a population 17% higher, the UK uses less energy now than in 2002. So the UK has been willingly using less energy for years now already. Additionally, the grid has went from being mostly coal and gas to 72% emission-free, with coal being completely eradicated.

There will still be difficulty, though. Most homes in the UK use gas central heating, and since the UK has the oldest housing stock on planet earth by a considerable margin, most houses aren't suited for air or ground source heat pumps. I truly don't know what the answer is for that in regards to net zero.