this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
111 points (97.4% liked)

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

5205 readers
660 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 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
111
Meet the Young Activists behind the New California Youth Climate Lawsuit | Young people are taking action on climate because too many adults are not (www.scientificamerican.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Archived copies of the article: archive.today, ghostarchive.org, web.archive.org

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

The problem isn't that nobody is trying; it's that the fossil fuels industry has more power still, so what we've been able to pull off so far isn't sufficient.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

For real, I went to protests, made signs, mailed an ungodly amount of flyers, donated and voted for changes. Barely made a difference for the years I put in, massively uphill and rigged battle. They just started and are bitching us adults aren't doing anything, we are tired from constantly fighting with little to show for it and are more concerned with paying rent next week bc we have actual responsibilities and obligations as adults ontop of everything else.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Lobbyists run the government

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The only way you can counterbalance that is by getting involved. Phonebank with an activist group. Donate to a campaign. Use whatever access you can get to push the case for doing the right thing. Create a virtuous cycle of people whose job depends on decarbonization, who then help elect candidates who want to help get off fossil fuels.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I'm not sure, but I think that is the point they were making. The fossil fuels industry isn't some machine or an alien being, but a collection of humans, each of whom is very deliberately choosing wealth and power over correct behaviour. Likewise the politicians who deliberately choose to let them or, worse, help them get away with it. And don't get me started on the economists who treat corporations as machines or aliens who must be appeased rather than harnessed to the benefit of society.

The general public has known for at least 20 years what is necessary. The political class has known for at least 40 years. Industry has known for at least 50 and probably 60 years. Depending on how you read the research, scientists have known for as long as 150 years.

Actually, if you consider carbon emissions as just another case of dumping waste into the environment in the naive hope that nature will take care of it, everybody from all classes and sectors has known what was needed since at least the creation of the first national park designed to protect nature from destruction.