this post was submitted on 10 Jun 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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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[–] oakey66 61 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Industry study is where you can stop reading. The industry in question has been lying to everyone about the impacts of climate change for over half a century.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

When they say "we can use carbon capture to create permission to keep on extracting and burning more than we're capturing" believe them.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Carbon capture, illustrated:

Eleanor from 'The Good Place' sweeping a large mess under a rug.

Not to say we shouldn't try to pull CO2 from the atmosphere, but I just don't see how we can do that without it also being permission to keep emitting at current levels.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you look a the physics and engineering challenges of attempting to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, you'll very soon reach the conclusion that it's better to stop CO2 emissions at the source, or to reduce activities that cause CO2 emissions.

The only people who would rather put pollution into the atmosphere, then spend vast amounts attempting to take it out again, are those whose profits come from selling the oil.

[–] delgato 1 points 5 months ago

The technology is here and it is developing at a rapid pace. There are a lot of clever ways to remove CO2. Keep in mind “CDR” - carbon dioxide removal and “CCUS” - carbon capture, utilization & storage are two different approaches to reducing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. CDR includes soil carbon sequestration, bio-char, ocean alkalinity. CUS is storage of supercritical CO2 between the pore space of permeable rock.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

That's why industry people keep yelling about it, even though some very large scale attempts at it were already failures.

They'll keep pushing the scam for the same reason we all have to use paper straws; misdirection.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There's no reason to extend use of oil by 84 years. There are strong reasons to terminate its use as soon as we can.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Opinions such as this simply don't understand that "oil and gas" isn't just "fuel".

There isn't any component of modern life that wasn't created with at least some level of a petroleum based product.

That "electric car" we rave about? Its tires are rubber. Its moving parts are lubricated. Its wires are sheathed and grounded by plastic. Its faux leather or nylon interior is petroleum based. Same thing if you ride a bike.

If we go into your house, Anything you own that has any amount of rubber, or plastic, or half a thousand other materials is petroleum based.

Getting rid of oil isn't nearly as simple nor as quick a process as opinions like this seem to want.

Yes, oil needs to be phased out. But it's a hell of a lot more complicated than hippies think.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

You are right, but to be fair most things that are petroleum based are made with it because of economic reasons. Many things don't need to be it's just cheaper that they are. That's because of a combination of factors. If tomorrow every oil field in the world disappeared we would see alternatives for almost everything almost instantly because there would be huge financial incentive for it and many of those things already exist, they just have to compete with a very established and subsidized raw material

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

For anyone wondering whether to click: yes, the article is very critical of this and gives a lot of space to experts who think that this is an absolutely terrible idea. I think the value here is in knowing what the oil industry tries to do and how they try to lie to justify their crimes.