this post was submitted on 08 Sep 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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Americans misunderstand their contribution to deteriorating environment (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I imagine there are many US people living in places with 100+ degree days for months in a row -- Places which seldom got above 90 a half-century ago ... who do not understand that driving a car with AC to a home with AC is making matters worse.

The situation is urgent, yet we keep hearing 2060 2050 2040 2030 deadlines as if a fix could somehow be delivered by then . BUT: If we got to zero -tomorrow- , it'd stay as it already is for centuries. Every day without HUGE changes NOW it's getting worse.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

who do not understand that driving a car with AC to a home with AC is making matters worse.

For what it's worth, globally, heating buildings accounts for more than 4 times as much CO2 emissions as cooling buildings. Yes, this ratio might shift as the world warms, but the lower hanging fruit for climate change is to make heating more efficient and less impactful, not necessarily to focus those efforts on how we cool our homes.

[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago

Oh, for sure. Heat pumps are a-comin, dear Lisa.