this post was submitted on 03 Dec 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 10 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Woah there, we've got to liberate countries for some reason

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

The USA could "liberate" them for their supply of wind. Scotland had better watch out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

On a practical level, that will probably not happen for a long time. My understanding is that most high performance lubrication is petroleum-based, even if only in part. We'd have to find alternative sources for those lubricants before we could completely drop oil.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We have natural oils and we are good enough in organic chemistry to turn that into what we need. The amounts needed are so small that it basically does not matter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not being pedantic, but do you have examples of natural oils that we could use as viable replacements? I would seriously love to learn about them.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

I'll believe it when it actually happens. Until then it is platitudes as usual.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Without major reforms to how politicians can get money this is just a bunch of rich people jerking off. We will never be free of coal and oil when our politicians are all sold in the dollar store.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

If the alternatives are cheaper then it will change. Coal is mostly used to produce electricity, so when solar and wind can compete they will start lobbying as well against coal as a competitor. Combined with citizens working towards and end of it, that can really change something. That is also true for things like evs and oil, gas heating and heat pumps and so forth.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go...

Unless legislation is passed, it's bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The reality is that the US has shut down a large chunk of its coal-burning power plants as uneconomic already.

This is largely an agreement to 'do what is cheap' which is the kind of thing which happens with relatively little government intervention (though some intervention can speed the process up)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is just the international commitment: internally the US was committed to passing off by 2035.

Which is fucking insane. We should be off coal by 2024.

[–] neanderthal 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That is less than 30 days away. I'm not sure how you expect that to happen? A realistic goal would be to have a global decline in coal usage by 2025.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We have like 400 days before the end of 2024.

[–] neanderthal 3 points 10 months ago

By 2024 could mean by the start of 2024. Pedantics can be annoying, but clarity is important, as it makes things hard to misinterpret or manipulate.