this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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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.

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The hunt for the most efficient heat pump in the world (arstechnica.com)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A new generation of engineers has realized they can push heat pumps to the limit.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I designed my heating system around a fairly efficient non-condensing NG boiler that takes 40W for the fan. I can run it and the circulators off my battery bank no problem, and handle a sustained power failure. But only because of the natural gas.

I've been integrating a water-water GSHP into it to provide summer cooling and a supplemental heat source from my solar panels. It works well, but in my climate (Rural Canada) I would be insane to completely remove my gas boiler IMO. Heating demand is just way too high on the sort of days where the power goes out. I've been working on plans for a wood boiler but insurance has put their foot right down on anything that burns wood in the last couple years.

Here in Canada we can't get lithium at a reasonable price so I have 10kWh of lead-acid (which as you know is actually 5). Doesn't go very far on a cold winter day with 4 hours of sun and snow on the panels!

On the upside I haven't had to hook my generator to my house in years, I'm really happy with my "grid-independent" system.