this post was submitted on 18 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:

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Good luck...we can't even get companies to stop poisoning drinking water for entire cities..you won't stop Elon from doing whatever he wants when he and his buddies can just buy new laws.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

That was before Fox "News" and the GOP made cooperation, or the pretense of cooperation, a mortal sin.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 months ago (4 children)

How about we wait until the science is actually in before kneejerking around? We have had the science equivalent of a shower thought, actual work and analysis needs to be done before jumping to conclusions.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

How about we wait until the science is actually in before sending hundreds and thousands of satellites into LEO?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

That's an interesting idea to consider (if I understand you correctly in that you are stating that there should be a central research authority that regulates what companies are allowed to do). Though, I wonder if it's still better to sue for damages after the fact and create regulations to cover the oversight. There's also the issue of data — you can't exactly study an issue before it exists. If you are instead inferring that a company should conduct this sort of safety research themselves, it creates a sort of prisoner's dilemma: companies wouldn't be to keen on sharing their research with others, and if they are forced to, a company wouldn't want to be the one to waste the money on it for others to profit off of.

I'd also like to note that this sort of regulation has no business being the decision of a single country, but, instead, it should be the decision of a global government, as it is an issue that affects the whole planet. How such a global government should be structured, though, I am not yet certain. The UN doesn't exactly cut it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Let's fire some shit in the atmosphere first and then let scientists figure it out when it's too late anyway. Absolute boomer shit

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Urm i think the rocket needs to wait instead of us

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But it's going to make him slightly richer! How could you be so selfish?

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

Omg imagine elon having 100billion dollars, that would be so lit fam

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Best be hoping Tesla collapses and Elon gets his with the SEC. When TSLA falls, he will lose his connections and no one will be willing to protect him, just another loser millionaire white guy and sometimes the government does go after them.

Elon will likely be fried at that point because he will have committed the worst crime in America: messing with rich people’s money.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

Best be hoping Tesla collapses

Why?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Especially fucking Bezos.

Natural Gas rockets? What a small step for man, massive step back for mankind.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Natural Gas rockets? What a small step for man, massive step back for mankind.

Why do you dislike methane as a fuel? Also, in case you were unaware, as a side note, SpaceX's newest rocket, which is currently under active development, Starship and Super Heavy, uses methane as a fuel.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

SpaceX’s newest rocket, which is currently under active development, Starship and Super Heavy, uses methane as a fuel.

Okay thanks, I like it EVEN LESS NOW. We have better rocket fuels which degrade into water vapors. Using Natural Gas rockets is the environmentally unfriendly option that make corporations more money.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

We have better rocket fuels which degrade into water vapors.

Which fuels are those? Also why would one want their rocket fuel to degrade? I can see fuel storage issues with that. Furthermore, keep in mind that the reaction of CH4 and O2 (combustion) creates H2O (water) and CO2. The only fuel that I'm aware of that creates only water when it's combusted in O2 is H2 (hydrogen). ~~An issue with hydrogen as a fuel, when compared with methane, is its mass ­— lower exhaust mass lowers the specific impulse.~~

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

SpaceX has been receptive to design changes to starlink in the past to minimize impact, like decreasing reflectivity and reflection angles for astronomers. They might be receptive to moving to different alloy for the body construction.

Magnesium comes to mind that would be light but expensive. Steel alloys might be cheap and heavy options for later when starship is operational. Would those have similar effects on ozone, or is it only the aluminum oxides? Carbon fiber also looks promising. It could be pretty cheap and light if you can keep it planar rather than custom formed. Someone had mentioned wood in a different thread, but I'm uncertain if that'd work because of off gassing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Japan I think launched a wooden one, will see what they find out

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This feels like a copypaste of the same comment from a similar thread a few days ago.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah it is. My comment then too.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

I find it funny that even the problems he "invents" are not new.

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

Oh, okay. I won't then.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Of all the valid reasons to hate elon for, this is not one of them. The emissions from the entire world's satellite re-entries are basically nothing on an atmospheric scale.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

There article is about a paper showing that there's a significant increase in aluminum oxide in the atmosphere. The particulates from that are part of how the small amounts of chlorine in the atmosphere are able to destroy ozone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Wow. I read that as ozone laser and was super confused.

[–] SomeGuy69 4 points 6 months ago

I'll write Elong to stop on Twatter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

And how do you know it's magnitudes higher if you haven't seen any studies taking it into consideration?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

How much do you think (micro)metoerites bring in daily?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

https://phys.org/news/2024-06-satellite-megaconstellations-jeopardize-recovery-ozone.html

When old satellites fall into Earth's atmosphere and burn up, they leave behind tiny particles of aluminum oxide, which eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer. A new study finds that these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022 and will continue to accumulate as the number of low-Earth-orbit satellites skyrockets.

Those micrometeors aren't mostly aluminium.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Those micrometeors aren’t mostly aluminium.

Do you have a source for that? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but I've found a number of sources that show that meteorites contain aluminum:

To be fair, I don't think any of those claim that any meteorites are "mostly" aluminum. But is that a true requirement?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I did write "mostly" for a reason. Aluminium is used a lot in aerospace due to its low mass. There is a lot of matter falling from space naturally, but the composition is key to the effects that will have on the atmosphere. Satellites, spent stages etc. have different compositions to meteors.

Over 20 elements from reentry were detected and were present in ratios consistent with alloys used in spacecraft. The mass of lithium, aluminum, copper, and lead from the reentry of spacecraft was found to exceed the cosmic dust influx of those metals. About 10% of stratospheric sulfuric acid particles larger than 120 nm in diameter contain aluminum and other elements from spacecraft reentry. Planned increases in the number of low earth orbit satellites within the next few decades could cause up to half of stratospheric sulfuric acid particles to contain metals from reentry.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

I question the potentially sensationalist title. Why specifically target "Elon Musk"? Would it not be more accurate to pin the responsibility on the entirety of SpaceX? I could certainly be mistaken, but I feel that the decisions made at SpaceX are not only Elon's.

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