this post was submitted on 07 Jul 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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Wood isn't the climate-friendly material you think it is (grist.org)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A new study shows that cutting down trees for paper, furniture, and fuel emits three times more carbon than flying.

The paper is here

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What's the point of comparing it to flying? That's completely meaningless. There's no possible building material that is "climate friendly" while we're still using fossil fuels for industry and construction. The only question of significance here is wether wood is more sustainable than other forms of building material. They make no attempt to make a comparison to the ecological impact of metal or concrete production.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree, that comparison is about as useful apples vs. lamp bulbs.

As a construction material, wood is almost certainly less taxing on the environment.

A lot of paper gets discarded sooner than a year after printing / writing, consumer goods may last a decade, but houses are built to last 50 years.

While a wooden house still stands, the land where its material grew may easily become re-forested, and the service life of houses can be prolonged - with maintenance, a house can last a century and there exist wooden houses many centuries old.