this post was submitted on 18 Jul 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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US House Republicans propose planting a trillion trees as they move away from climate change denial (apnews.com)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Large-scale tree planting can remove some CO2 from the atmosphere, but nowhere near as much as humans add by extracting and burning fossil fuels. See https://skepticalscience.com/1-trillion-trees-impact.html for a detailed assessment of what this looks like.

The IPCC has a chart showing what actions need to be taken over the next few years. Afforestation is one piece of many things, all of which we need to do.

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

We actually had that through the VISTA and Americorps programs in the 90s and early 2000s (I believe Americorps is still around). I was a volunteer for VISTA in 2003, just as the Bush Administration shredded the program. They signed us up on the promise that our student loans would have their payments covered while we volunteered, then refused to deliver for six months. It wasn't until then Senator Hillary Clinton got involved that they reversed their decision, and by that time I and half the class were forced by financial reasons to drop out of the program. The living stipend they gave us was only $740 a month, and we were forbidden to take outside jobs. Throw student loan payments on top of that and there was no way to survive.

The Bush admin knew this, and they continued to dismantle the program, using the disastrous drop-out rates of the class of 2003 as an excuse for further cuts. VISTA is now gone, and with it the specific part of Americorps that was focused on poverty relief.

The reason we don't have these programs anymore is because the conservatives have deliberately dismantled them, not because the left hasn't tried again and again to use government towards building real value in our society.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My favorite part about history is learning how conservatives fucked up things that used to be good.

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

We should really just call them regressives because that is what they are.