this post was submitted on 14 Sep 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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This chart shows expansion plans (not current extraction) Area chart showing oil and gas expansion plans in terms of emitted CO2 by country

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[โ€“] neanderthal 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Almost everything you buy is produced using fossil fuels to extract the raw materials, transport the materials to a factory, power the factory, and transport it to you.

Buy less stuff. Buy stuff used, that is recyclable, or sellable/donatable.

Buy quality. E.g. pima cotton shirts, 50 year shingles or metal roofing instead of 25 year shingles, mid-high end compute devices. Quality costs a little more up front but will save $$$ and GHG in the long run. It also works better. I have found the biggest bang for buck is building materials. When I replaced my roof, 50 year shingles over 25 only increased a 5 figure project cost by 500 dollars and cut in half the cost of roof replacements over time. If 25 year roofs were eliminated, we probably cut the GHG from shingle production by some double digit percentage.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Compute devices are a bit of an outlier. They age due to software and if you do not need specific high demand programs, but just a general office computer, just go with Linux. The other big one is to buy second hand or just get stuff second hand from other people. If you live in a rich country it is easy to get some really nice stuff for nearly free, especially if you have some skill fixing things.

That being said a lot of it does not come down to consumer choices, but is about large scale political decisions. Quality urban planning allows for car free living in a relativly small flat, a green electricity grid reduces emissions by a lot, district heating can provide green heating for cheap, right to repair laws make products last longer and so much more. Generally speaking you can about half your emissions compared to the regions average you are in with relative ease, more and you have to really push.