this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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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] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

CO~2~ levels never were like that since humans existed. We don't know how suitable a planet transformed this way is for human life.

There is exactly one planet in the known universe which can host humans, and we might be in the process of changing that. An experiment without backup.

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

As last resort we can always trigger a nuclear winter. /s

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thus solving the problem once and for all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The way I prefer to see it is whether we want to maintain the current "lifestyle" status quo. In the grand scheme of things we might look forward to the future we want for our grandchildren, but for the most part most people are more worried about taking care of what is good in society that we want to keep around.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

And there is no worry that it will destroy the planet either. Earth has already weathered hundreds of terrible catastrophic global level events in the past and has survived.

There is no real danger to the planet. This has all happened before.

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

Sure, life that can adapt will. But that's not the main concern. It's the immeasurable and enormous potential loss of human life and every other innocent creature that people are morally concerned about.

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

That's the point I was trying to imply with my sarcastic first comment.

Climate change deniers always like to point out ancient prehistoric changes that occurred on earth thousands or even millions of years ago ... and they are right.

What they seldom understand is that the earth can weather these unbelievable changes but life, especially human life can not.

I never worry about the planet. It will be around for about another billion years in one form or another. It's always a question of whether or not any living thing will survive on it's surface.

I was being stupid with my first comment and I don't mind being stoned for it .... I just wanted to point out that climate change is not a problem for the planet ... it's a problem for the survival of all human life.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Ah, I didn't catch the sarcasm! Poe's law and all that

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That's rather a red herring: the risk is to our ability to support nearly so many people as we have, rather than that we'll shatter the Earth into tiny fragments like the Death Star attacking Alderaan

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

theres danger to life on the planet