this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
653 points (96.6% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5189 readers
363 users here now

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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
653
Biden says global warming topping 1.5 degrees in the next 10 to 20 years is scarier than nuclear war (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
143 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

What Biden has done is to cut the issuance of drilling leases to the minimum required by law, pass the Inflation Reduction Act, enact a regulation to force vehicle electrification, and similarly force fossil fuels out of most power plants.

What Biden has not done: stop issuing drilling permits or impose export restrictions on fossil fuels. The former has some serious limits because of how the courts treat the right to drill as a property right once you hold a drilling lease, and the latter is simply untested.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The next 10 or 20 years? I just read an article that hit it already and will likely do it consistently over the next several years. The next 10-20 will likely few closer to a 3.6°F (2°C) rise.

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

Year-to-year surface temperatures vary significantly. Look at a graph like this:

and it's clear that we could easily have a string of years below this year's temperature

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

We could but the current El Niño is supposed to be pretty significant. We also have significantly less sulfur oxide being spewed by international shipping which has a large cooling effect on the oceans. It is good that we cut down on that pollution and there are things we can replace it with that will have similar effects and are less damaging but there is currently nothing planned that would essentially replace that coming effect.

While you are correct that there is a good amount of variability in the temperature, I think it is just as likely that it will be variability the other way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think I know the one you're talking about, and the headline is somewhat misleading. This comes with the disclaimer that I don't want to downplay the severity of any of this, but it's important to have the right context.

What's happened is that we've had two months in a row with extreme temperatures. Those alone peak above +1.5C. It had been this high before, back in 2016. However, we're not going to have an average of +1.5C of extra warming this year, or in the next few years.

It's still bad, just not that bad.