this post was submitted on 24 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:

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

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Don't want to admit we've blown handling the ClimateCrisis? Just change the definition! (climatejustice.social)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's not nearly as common today, but occasionally someone will still make a comment about global warming and scientists being wrong. And I'll get to say, "yes, they were wrong. Average temperature is increasing faster than the initial forecasts." IPCC 2018 report didn't look the greatest, and it included effects of a carbon sequestering process that hasn't been invented yet.

At this point, we know the world will look different in 50 years (where water is, where crops are grown, where floodplains are). Avoiding major changes is now impossible. BUT, it's a continuum. We still have control over it being a new struggle to overcome vs a major catastrophe.

I was reading lots of buzz about the IPCC report and had an opportunity to visit a glacier in Alberta. On the hike to the glacier, they had signs showing where the glacier was over the years. At first, there would be a sign saying "1890" and 100 meters farther, a sign reading "1920". Then it was "1940" and a hundred meters away "1960". Then it became "2004" and 100 meters away "2008". I forget the exact spacing, but it was very obvious that the glacier is melting at an accelerating rate. That plus the IPCC report was my realization that climate change is happening, and we've passed the period where it's only observable on instruments. Most people are entering into the phase where it has real effects on our daily lives.