this post was submitted on 10 Sep 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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Tire wear and tear revealed as a major contributor to waterway pollution (newatlas.com)
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https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c03949

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[โ€“] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I live in a major metropolitan suburb. County population over 700k. It is over a mile to the front of my neighborhood, which is not even off of a major road. Are we as densely built as the city? No. Is there much room to put anything else? No. Rail? Unfortunately, hell no. People are so quick to tunnel vision in on their situation in their town and think its applicable to the whole world. Im not walking over a mile to potentially get to a bus stop. What about the disabled? They just mobility scootering miles to get to what is hopefully a handicap accessible bus? Inclement weather? There's so many things the rose tinted glasses don't see.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

TLDR: Reducing car dependency helps drivers too by reducing traffic and getting bad drivers off the road.

There's so many things the rose tinted glasses don't see.

A lot of people, like me, live in the US in similar environment so we are well aware of the issues. Super car dependent design like that is pretty hard to undo. I don't blame people for buying houses in these areas because it is often the best location and best financial decision. When I bought my house, it was the best location for reducing the amount of driving. Non SFH in more dense parts that aren't rentals are pretty much non-existent.

Im not walking over a mile to potentially get to a bus stop. What about the disabled? They just mobility scootering miles to get to what is hopefully a handicap accessible bus?

So, steps taken to reduce car usage help people that have to drive due to reduced traffic and hopefully getting people off the road that shouldn't be driving.

It is over a mile to the front of my neighborhood

The best you might be able to do in the near future is maybe lobby to rezone a property that goes up for sale to allow a small general store or other micro businesses that won't draw in much outside traffic.

It won't be a fast or easy process, but car dependency at the scale it is in the US is not sustainable.