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Biodegradable plastics are not a climate solution on their own (www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
submitted 1 week ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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A new global life-cycle analysis finds that if not properly disposed of, biodegradable plastics could increase methane emissions and plastic accumulation.

The paper is here

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[-] Kalkaline@leminal.space 7 points 1 week ago

Anyone who has a compost pile at home can tell you these things are far from biodegradable as the general public understands the term. You need massive piles with enough thermal mass to keep the bags above a certain temperature for a few weeks as I understand it. It's just not a reasonable expectation for these to decompose in communities that don't have a separate compost pickup bin.

this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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Climate

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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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