this post was submitted on 17 Dec 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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[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I see so many people thinking that this isn't going to be a problem for them because they are thinking of heaters and AC and also that they'll probably die while it's still livable.

But meanwhile they put kids on this world, who will call our generations the worst people to have ever existed.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 days ago (2 children)

We at least didn't have kids, and I'll probably accidentally drink myself to death anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Same here. Cheers!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Despite what capitalism would have you believe, humans are part of nature. With the same effort that has allowed us to destroy nature faster than any other species, we can maintain or restore balance better than any other species. It makes as much sense to argue against the next generation of humans to "restore the ecosystem" as it makes sense to argue against the next generation of bees.

Let them call us, those born in the 20th century, the worst people to have ever existed. It's not far from the truth. But why let that stop us from doing the right thing: giving birth to them so they can fix this mess for future generations or die trying? Why let our shame deny the ecosystem the best chance at recovery?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

With all the respect, Your argument feels just dogmatic. If we can solve the climate crisis, we must do it, not hope for someone else to. All this generational talk feels just like an excuse to keep the status quo. There's no magical generation coming to save the world, just people just like us.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

You're right that we need to fight, but we will grow old and die before we've returned the world to a state our children deserve to live in. I don't mean to diminish our duty, but to say that creating the next generation of people to continue that fight is part of that duty. Not for our children's sake, but hopefully for our great grandchildren and every generation afterwards.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm saying it's extremely selfish to put kids on a world you're not fighting hard enough for because it doesn't concern you.

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

Ah, that's fair. I meant you were complaining about people that had kids in general.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Because living in a world with extreme weather events where you can't leave your house for weeks because of heat waves and never before seen storms, and possibly damage to your home(this has already happened where I live), where a home garden will die to heat waves, with constant shortages of food and water, is not a life I'd wish on my enemy, much less someone I love.

We are already starting to see more extreme heat waves and weather, we know it's happening, and we're drilling for more oil than ever, so the chances the next generation will suddenly start making big changes when the past two have done worse than nothing while being fully informed seems extremely unlikely to me. I'm pretty optimistic on most everything, but there is not a single sign pointing to this being resolved by humans within the next 100 years, if ever.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

People can adapt, things just aren't bad enough yet to get them to. There's still the illusion many people convince themselves of that everything is fine. When that illusion is incompatible with survival, people will change.

If the weather isn't survivable for long periods, we can build underground shelters. If there are shortages of food and water and home gardens die, we can build storerooms and greenhouses (perhaps underground with artificial lighting) and wastewater recycling. Use wind power (or solar, if the panels can withstand the weather) for electricity to grow the food, recycle as much as you can, and spend any excess labor doing what you can to improve the chances for life on the surface to recover. It sounds terrible compared to our current luxury, but societies have lived (and had kids) through worse.

If you don't want to bring children into a world comparable in quality of life to a 13th century medieval European city, okay. But know that if there is a future, it will be because some people did have children. (Alongside lots of other important reasons).

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

This is a genuinely nice sentiment, but it is worth noting that the world is way more populated than most past generations, and while any hope for us will fall largely on the squares of future generations, their job would be so much easier if there were a lot less of them.

Some developed countries seem to have this notion that declining birth rates will be the end of them and while that can be somewhat true for how economic systems are set up, the world was objectively a lot more sustainable before the boomers generation, population wise

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Economic sustainability has almost nothing to do with population size. The vast amount of unsustainability comes from wasteful consumerism. Furniture that lasts years instead of centuries, clothes that last months instead of decades, holidays 10,000 km away instead of 1 km away, single-use plastics for every single thing, etc.

People that live within an ecosystem have net negative emissions if they care to put in the effort. Every person that exists can live and work to make things better, so how can it be a disadvantage to have more of them?

There is a point when every bit of nature has a steward tending to its development/survival/recovery closely enough that another person won't be a net ecological benefit, but with a global population density of one person per two hectares we're not there yet.

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

This may be true but it also assumes idealism that everyone will be open to being a good steward of the planet. The way I think about it, lower population is sort of a buffer against an inevitable portion of the population who, no matter how direct and obvious the impact of climate change is, can't be convinced to help society. And unfortunately, at the time of having kids you can do everything you can to teach them to be interested in helping the planet but they still might not, and that would come with a huge amount of guilt in my case.