this post was submitted on 22 Aug 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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Architect here. How can I be the most helpful? (lemdro.id)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I am a registered architect. As an active contributor to one of the most damaging industries to our climate (construction & building systems), I often daydream about pivoting careers into something more productive for the planet. I'm not talking about stuff like green washing or ~LEED accreditation~. Even sustainably-focused jobs are hard to come by and usually pretty regionally specific. Architects have a broad set of skills, and it's not always clear where I can take those skills and put them to better use.

Any thoughts/insight would be appreciated as I hop into my mid-life crisis before 30.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there a set of standard guidelines for people who are retrofitting their own houses to use to make them as energy efficient as possible?

When I briefly looked into the space, nothing seemed accessible, lots of snake oil selling of products, but no overarching wiki energy doing cost comparison of each solution. Especially given that different markets have different item costs

[โ€“] edoorklep 3 points 1 year ago

To be honest, cost wise there are going to be big differences between regions. However what I learned from my own house improvement journey, the first step is insulation, always insulate as much as possible. Next up with insulation is ventilation, to make sure the air is clean for you to breathe. The the next step is looking into how much heating/cooling is still needed. And check if you can use a heat pump or aircon efficiently. And then when you know your energy need you can add solar. Although that can also be useful earlier in the process. But the first step is always insulation since it reduses your need for energy immediately and is usually one of the cheaper options.

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