this post was submitted on 09 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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‘A critical moment’: UN warns world will miss climate targets unless fossil fuels phased out (www.theguardian.com)
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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think we’ve already demonstrated our willingness to change, which is to say, we’ve already demonstrated how unwilling we are, as a whole, to change.

Isn’t much else to it. We will act too late, too little, and we will have some extremely hard times to endure at some point.

My only regret is that I will have brought children to this world to eat the consequences… 😩

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So happy my partner and I decided to never have children. Humanity is doomed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yup were fucked, and I'm not fucked so no children anyway

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When you say "we", what I hear is "conservatives". Normal people are willing to change. Conservatives are not. And since they protect the billionaire class, we are all stuck.

Conservatives are killing us. They know this and mock us for being upset about it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, gonna hard disagree there.

The first off-ramp we had to get off of fossil fuels was nuclear energy. It wasn't the conservatives who blocked that exit.

If nuclear energy buildup in the 1990s had followed the trend of the 1970s and 1980s, we could have kept CO2 below 400 ppm.

The three groups who conspired against that decarbonization were: the coal lobby, anti-nuclear activists and labour unions (because coal unions were strong back then).

Only one of those groups were the rich conservatives.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Only delusional people thing the Democrats actually want to help them. They're all crooked, the Republicans are just more open about it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't even think its fair to blame it all in conservatives. Our governments are failing us as a whole

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Our government in the U.S. has been some flavor of conservative this whole time. Neo-liberals are conservatives. They are smarter and better dressed, but they are still just conservatives who serve the ultra-wealthy.

If we want progress, we need progressives.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If we want progress we need to get corruption out of government. Nothing will change no matter who is in office until that happens

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

So... remove conservatives then. Corruption is a conservative trait. Neo-liberals are conservatives, so they should be removed with them.

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

So stupid to think only conservatives are victims of corruption. so naive.

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

What the total fuck are you talking about? Conservatives aren't the "victims" of corruption. They are the ones engaging in corruption. They are the ones who benefit from it.

Defending conservatives is fucking grotesque. Stop. They neither need nor want your defense.

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

Im not defending anyone, you are missing the point. they both suck the democrats engage in corruption too if you dont think they do you are an absolute dumbass. If you knew how to use your brain you would understand the difference between defending conservatives and hating everyone equally. Neither of the two sides are doing ANYTHING for you, everything BOTH SIDES DO is to benefit the rich, they just frame it differently. Same end goal, keep money flowing to the rich and special interest and lobby groups. Its simple.

So maybe you should stop defending democrats and ask for some real fucking change other than both garbage sides perpetuating the same broken system. Dumbass.

With your username im sure youre open to actually constructive criticism of the democrats /s.

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

First of all, you have called me stupid in every comment you've made to me. I have not returned that insult to you at all. I imagine if we were speaking face to face, you would think twice about that. I would take you more seriously if you would stop using insults as part of your position.

Secondly, the Democrat party is primarily composed of neo-liberals. Neo-liberals are conservatives. They go on the same smoldering pile of bodies as the conservatives when the time comes. As conservatives, they are corrupt, money-driven pieces of shit, just like 100% of Republicans.

The Democrat party does currently have a few progressives, however, who appear to not be greed-driven pieces of shit. If the party were composed of mostly people like them (progressives) instead of neo-liberals (conservatives), I would be satisfied with the Democrats.

I recommend you re-evaluate how you use insults in your debates. They are not helpful to your position and could result in you ending up on the wrong pile if you slip up and say that shit to someone in person.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Isn't that tautological?

I will hit this wall if I continue to speed at it with 100 km/h...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Hey, the first rule of the tautology club is the first rule of the tautology club!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

It is. Can't wait for something to actually stop fossil fuels and move us to new methods of transportation. The greed is pushing us toward our own demise.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yes but what about

E N D L E S S

G R O W T H

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Won’t someone please consider the shareholders?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

An erection that never stops? Sign me up!

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

Protip: if you're taking Viagra and the erection lasts more than four hours, it's vitally important to seek medical attention; an everlasting erection is a ticket to losing your genitals.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This line on the chart needs to always go up or Bezos will cry :-(

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

weve tried nothing and were all out of ideas

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We're doing a lot more than nothing, but renewables aren't yet growing fast enough to cause fossil fuel use to decline globally.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every time we had a new energy source, we just added it to the mix. We always had to activly cut the usage of the old one to cause a decline. So renewables just can not grown fast enough to cause a decline in fossil fuels. They however can replace them, if we cut them in a smart way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's not really true at all. Significant parts of the world have managed substitutions in recent decades, in particular the decline of coal use in the US and EU looks like replacement, rather than "adding to the mix" on a regional level, and neither part of the world is exporting coal to the places that are burning it.

What we do is a choice, not some inevitability of adding new energy sources to the mix.

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

The US is a net exporter of coal and since 2007, when gas really started to grow, coal imports have fallen and exports have somewhat increased. The good part is mining it in the US is just too expensive, so mines do close down, but it is not a clear win. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/imports-and-exports.php https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-prod-source-stacked?country=~USA

As for the EU, there is a working emissions trading system, which limits emissions, so there is active cutting of fossil fuels and coal is the easiest to replace.

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

this seems incredible to me. especially given the co2 emission-equivalency with the deforestation of the amazon. i haven't clicked the link, but do you know whether that calculation takes deforestation into account?

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

Yeah, deforestation is a much smaller impact thing at this point than fossil fuels. Big enough to matter, but only a bit of the overall problem.

Per the IPCC:

Based on multiple lines of evidence using interhemispheric gradients of CO2 concentrations, isotopes, and inventory data, it is unequivocal that the growth in CO2 in the atmosphere since 1750 (see Section TS.2.2) is due to the direct emissions from human activities. The combustion of fossil fuels and land-use change for the period 1750–2019 resulted in the release of 700 ± 75 PgC (likely range, 1 PgC = 1015 g of carbon) to the atmosphere, of which about 41% ± 11% remains in the atmosphere today (high confidence). Of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions, the combustion of fossil fuels was responsible for about 64% ± 15%, growing to an 86% ± 14% contribution over the past 10 years. The remainder resulted from land-use change.

And CO2 is big enough that this means that fossil fuels are the biggest piece of the problem:

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah but what about those poor billionairs?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

CO² taxes for oil wells/fracking and refineries?

Would make research on alternatives to plastic & co more interesting too.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

We know