this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
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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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Natural Gas Is Scamming America | Climate Town (www.youtube.com)
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[โ€“] TheDemonBuer 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think we're combining two related, but separate industries, here. I understand why fossil fuel producers want to continue to produce fossil fuels. That's the product they sell. I get that, but what's still not totally clear to me is why more electric utilities aren't switching. Utilities don't sell fossil fuels, they sell electricity. The utilities are the buyers of fossil fuels, they are the customers of the fossil fuel producers, and if there's a cheaper way of generating the electricity they sell, I would think they'd want to switch. From what you've told me, it sounds like some utilities aren't switching because solar isn't the cheapest way to generate electricity everywhere, yet. So, what would it take for solar to become cheap enough for all utilities to make the switch?

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

It would take oil and gas companies running out of money to lobby to make it just cheap enough that utilities decide not to get rid of the methane infrastructure they have on their sites in favor of switching to renewables.

There is inertia of oil and gas infrastructure all the way to the power plant and to the home.