this post was submitted on 24 Nov 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.

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‘You can walk around in a T-shirt’: how Norway brought heat pumps in from the cold | Device installed in two-thirds of households of country (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (11 children)

I've seen a lot of articles claim heat pumps don't work well below -15c, but they never mention there are ways around that. I live in Canada in an area that regularly gets much colder and a lot of people around here have heat pump systems... the only difference is instead of the other side of the heat pump being outside, we bury them underground below the frost line. (Geothermal)

It does drive the cost up somewhat, but they still end up paying for themselves in the long run. Added bonus is in the summer, most system are reversible and will also cool your house much cheaper than traditional ac units.

[–] MountainGoat 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Aren't there other supplemental heat options, too? So if it's "too cold" they can put a gas or electric warmer on the system to bring the temp up. With their 200%+ efficiency it would be like running a space heater.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Ya you could... you'd be better off though just getting a system that suits your location though, but the initial cost is usually the biggest issue. I live where it commonly gets in the -30 to -40c temps, and I know of 25,000 square foot shops with geothermal pumps that stay nice and warm all winter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yes, I have an air source heat pump (basically a reversible air conditioner) with typical coils in an air handler with electric resistive heating coils as backup. Essentially, they can work with any backup system, whether it's an electric or gas furnace, or other space heating units elsewhere.

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