this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
148 points (98.7% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5808 readers
1048 users here now

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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
148
Before the Paris agreement, humanity was on track to cause a potentially catastrophic 3.5°C (6.3°F) global warming by the year 2100. Currently on track for ~2.5°C (4.5°F) warming by 2100 (yaleclimateconnections.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Most of the world wants to be at net zero by 2050, which means if they take these pledges and policies seriously they have to start to cut emissions right now. We also can see multiple countries making real progress in reducing emissions. Solar is already the fastest growing form of energy production ever just ahead of wind. A good number of countries also have passed laws or signed agreements to phase out combustion engine vehicles Also all continents, but Africa have a below replacment total fertility rate today. By 2050 a lot of regions will start to loose population.

Just to say it 2050 is in only 27 years.

As for real progress:

  • Coal consumption is done in many countries all over the world. At this point China is responsible for over half the worlds coal consumption. Given how much renewable generation China is installing, the only thing needed is a proper economic crisis to slow down Chinas electricity consumption and coal drops by a lot.
  • Oil consumption just say a big dip due to covid, but it recovered. At the same time there is a drop in new car sales in all of the G7 countries besides Germany and electric cars are taking over. Also the oil price is high again.
  • Gas just saw one of the biggest market shocks ever with the Ukraine war. EU demand fell a lot and the purchase of a lot of LNG by the EU from other countries created a massive market shock across the world. However demand is propably still rising.