this post was submitted on 26 Oct 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] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think the problem is that we haven’t even run into that problem yet.

Every time you see an article on the latest storm/fire/flood, they’ll always find a quote from Prof Jack Johnson of Hofstra University who says something like “It’s impossible to attribute the cause of this event to climate change.” Sometimes they’ll say “any single event,” and sometimes they’ll follow up with “but models predict we should see more of X of climate change doesn’t turn around.”

People read that nuance, and their brains shut down. People are used to being told what to worry about. Hell, people are used to being lied to about what to worry about, and having a different thing to worry about next week.

Look - I know what it’s like. I’m a scientist, and I talk like that all the time. I always want to be very clear and direct, and I want to be transparent about what we know, what we think, and what we have a good idea about.

But not on this topic. Not any more.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, it is true though. It's difficult to attribute any individual storm to climate change. A statistically significant rise in the number and intensity of storms though would be a strong indicator. Does anyone know if there's a website or scientific journal currently tracking this?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That’s really my point though. It is literally true, and we, as scientists, feel a moral obligation to point that out. Journalists similarly feel a moral obligation to find a scientist that will give them a quote they can pull to say exactly that.

And we are tracking things all over the board in terms of storms and intensities and such, but even those articles come with caveats about how we are tracking more storms and fires now and so on. All of that is, again, literally true.

However, the average reader of USA Today isn’t thinking like that. A scientist looking at the data is thinking “Holy crap we are fucked.” They think “I’m sure if it was important scientists and politicians would be saying “Holy crap, we’re fucked!” We are being done in by a crisis of caveats.

And just for the record, I do think we’re fucked. Like, it’s not going to get fixed. To be perfectly honest, my level of investment in the survival of humanity as we know it has decreased to the point of not caring all that much, and I suspect we’re going to see an extinction event that will wipe out a huge number of species. We know how this movie is going to end, and the idea that we can change it is an illusion because that’s just not how people work at the end of the day.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Mom's gonna fix it all soon.

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

So just blanket attribute them to it.

The media exaggerates and makes shit up all the time, at least this would be beneficial.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I disagree with this. Don't give deniers any more ammunition than they already have. There's enough verifiable data on the topic that we don't need to shoot ourselves in the foot by resorting to sloppy science.

That said, I would love to see every news story end with: "In recent years there's been a statically significant increase in severe weather due to climate change."

[–] neanderthal 2 points 1 year ago

There was an article posted the other day about that. I agree. Various media outlets needs to start stepping up and getting loud about it.

I love that idea. On TV weather, talk about it constantly.

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

You’re worried the people who already ignore all the evidence and believe it’s all lies will, what exactly?

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

People like that point at any article with weak data as validation that climate change has no basis. It's better to not give them that opportunity.

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

They don’t need that opportunity because they’ll just make shit up.

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

Still, better to use solid data when making arguments.

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

Facts clearly don’t work.

We’ve known them for over a century and done nothing.

I’d rather see the media using its huge influence over the population to be at least be making them worried about climate change instead of ignoring it.

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

Again, there are many people that use the "doom and gloom" climate change prophecies that haven't come true yet as an excuse to ignore the problem entirely. Better to be factual and correct.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Call it climate collapse and the news will eat it up

[–] neanderthal 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The issue isn't so much the initial name, but that the cause be attributed to fossil fuels, which are responsible for the bulk of it.

[–] Cruxifux 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Remember when they told us all that it was actually cow farts causing climate change? Lol

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Methane from cattle belching is part of it...but it's a smaller part than fossil fuels

[–] Nudding 6 points 1 year ago

Personally, I think it's too late to pull the brakes, the oil companies control the world now, and we might as well just call it the climate apocalypse.

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

I thought climate crisis became anyway the official term after climate change had no effects ala business as ususal.

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

Climate catastrophy has also a nice ring to it.

[–] RojoSanIchiban 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The hurricanes are cooking with gas.

[–] Clbull 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

We're doing nothing because it's not affecting the rich.

I can almost guarantee that if category 5 hurricanes were hitting New York or DC every few months, we'd be taking action overnight.

[–] CheeseNoodle 3 points 1 year ago

You're right there'd be a masive government funded intitiative to build housing elsewhere that would then all somehow end up being luxury condos that no one actually lives in but rich people use as a form of wealth storage.

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

It's wild. I initially thought the news was artificially hyping up the storm because of the somewhat quiet year for landfall storms and because I had checked the storm the night before and it was practically nothing....

But no. Just drank up all that very warm shallow beach water and did something impossible but now possible. Horrifying. Really does feel like a horror movie that keeps going.