this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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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.

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Think you need another car? Consider an e-bike instead. (wapo.st)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry but the e-bike can't go on the highway. No dice.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's the thing: it substitutes for a lot of trips of a several miles or less. That's enough for a lot of people to replace much of their driving.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I understand the reluctance from people in the US. Much of the cost of car ownership happens no matter how much you drive, so switching to an ebike for some trips may not save money for a very long time if you have to keep the car. Also, riding a bike (even a class 4 ebike) in many places can be really scary. I live in Denver, and there are parts of the city that I wouldn't go with an ebike, and Denver is one of the better cities in the US for biking infrastructure.

If you can get to a point where you can rely on rentals and ride share for your car needs, getting an ebike makes sense. Otherwise, it's going to be a hard sell for a lot of people.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most people live in some form of family/marriage situation (they may not be legally family/married, but they have lived with the same person/people for years and plan to continue that). Such situations can generally get rid of one car for a bike, sharing the other car(s) for the trips that they cannot bike for. It is more work to share a car instead of each person having a car. I know a lot of two driver families that have 3 cars just because if one car breaks they want a backup, they can get rid of the backup if they would bike for more.

Most already have a bike (not ebike, but a regular bike is good enough), it just doesn't occur to them they could ride it for errands instead of just trail rides on a nice saturday.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I totally agree. If you can replace a car with a bike or ebike, that's going to be financially worth it. Then the only questions become about safety and infrastructure.