this post was submitted on 28 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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‘Off-the-charts records’: has humanity finally broken the climate? (www.theguardian.com)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The 2022 report shows a 0.8% increase for U.S. emissions. I get your point is that there are many plans to change that, but so far we're still going up and that's including offshoring some industries. That's why the world overall reached a new high. Granted the EU has made some progress, being I believe the only group showing a decline in emissions (-2.5%). As with any call for solar and wind (which was probably a key component) I have to ask if the environmental costs due to their manufacturing was worth it. I know, we have to do something...we sure can't look at the demand side of things though, can we? Always about how to make more energy with less bad effects.

Sorry...once you take the red pill it's hard to look at anything positive anymore. I used to think that way...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, there's a rise as a result of the decision to stop doing anything about COVID. It doesn't really change the trajectory driven by a piece of legislation which won't be fully in effect for a couple more years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

South America also had a decline in emissions in the last two decades. Well North America as well, but coming from a high level. Africa is intresstingly having stable emissions since a decade, but given how poor the continent is that is likely to change. Really emissions growth comes from Asia and that is basicly it. It is countries like China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia becoming wealthy, which requires more energy. Obviously a lot of that is from fossil fuels.

However on a per capita bases the US is still among the worst and while Europe is better some countries are still bad.

[–] schroedingershat 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The 2022 report shows a 0.8% increase for U.S. emissions

Out of context sound bites like that achieve nothing but doomerism and serve those who want to make it worse.

The rise is to a level 3% lower than any year in 2012-2018 and 7.5% lower than the peak.

It's not enough, but it means we are starting to win, even if it's too late to save everything/everyone.

The 7.5% drop is also before what passes for the US centrist part started to take it seriously.