this post was submitted on 28 May 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] 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Except Texas. Because Texas sucks and would rather kill people for a few extra dollars.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Don't be too depressed about it. The Texas grid actually isn't doing too badly in its emissions trends, in spite of their best efforts. It's so easy to interconnect resources to it that renewables don't need to stare down awful queues and huge fees to get onboard and selling power.

That's sort of the other side of the story from what this policy announcement is about -- for the rest of the grid, a combination of FERC, state regulators, utilities, and such have created a system where it is very hard to get new generation online because of infrastructure problems.

This is a gross simplification, but the way it kind of works is that in Texas, infrastructure is up to ERCOT and the utility. Generation is a lot more decoupled from its eventual transmission. It doesn't face the same terrible barriers to come online because of the deregulated market.

Since solar is a fractional cost per unit energy than gas and coal, it out-competes them any time the sun is shining -- it can sell way cheaper and so gas/coal will either have to sell hugely below cost to compete or else they'll have to curtail. Wind is still a bit more expensive on average, but when the wind is going it tends to be able to do the same since it has no marginal cost. And the same situation also means that anyone who can make economically grid storage (which is already getting possible thanks to rapidly declining battery prices) can also out-compete the literal and figurative fossil generators.

Both Texas and the US East and West grids need MASSIVE transmission upgrades to deal with an increasingly-electrified future, though.

Don't misunderstand, Texas is a total mess. A profound lack of planning and both reliability and resiliency. But there's lessons to be learned from it -- decoupling production from transmission and some degree deregulation of that production can take advantage of very powerful market forces that already favor renewables. A post-transition future isn't just better for consumers because of eliminated emissions, it should also be cheaper power.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

GOP will fight it with every breath, then if it passes, take credit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Privatize the profits socialize the losses.