this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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[–] chuckleslord 9 points 8 months ago

Our politicians are owned by corporations. There's very little money in public transit compared to car infrastructure. Of course that's what gets all the money.

[–] htrayl 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Quite frankly we need a separate spending bill specifically targeting sustainable travel. I would say something like $2.5tn. (Real) high speed trains, commuter trains, trams, bike lanes, etc.

[–] FenrirIII 3 points 8 months ago

The automotive lobby will never let that happen

[–] QuandaleDingle 5 points 8 months ago

JUST ONE MORE ROAD! Come on, it won't hurt. It'll improve the flow of traffic, you'll see!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I also suspect a big incentive for keeping car infrastructure ona federal level is roads and car manufacturing are just manufacturing supply chains and logistica that can be switched to weapons manufacturing.

The largest car manufacturers became the behemoths they are due to WWII. After the war was over it seemed good to keep the jobs , skilled labor and factories going.

Highways were also specifically built for military maneuvering.

That said, public transport is way more efficient and makes communities safer, happier and more economically productive. I say we can have both. And the military will be less necessary if consumption is scaled back. But then the billionaires will have to pay more taxes because poor people wont be spending their retirement investments on cars so they can be more employable.

Blargh.