this post was submitted on 25 Sep 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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What if Everyone Did Something to Slow Climate Change? Researchers are looking at the impact that individuals’ actions can have on reducing carbon emissions — and the best ways to get people to adopt (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah. The beef thing has become the main call to action while ignoring that beef consumption has been falling since the 70's. It's also not clear how much of that carbon is part of the existing carbon cycle.

The solution is adding less carbon to the existing cycle which means stopping pumping including and especially "natural" gas.

Everything else is performative.

Only when we stop adding it to our environment can we have any hope at sequestration.

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

"natural” gas

It might seem a misnomer nowadays, but it really is a good name. It replaced town gas or syn-gas, which was artificially produced at coal gasification plants through pyrolysis and pumped into homes for heating, cooking, and lighting. It was a long time until natural gas replaced it. That shit was loaded with carbon monoxide and is the reason for the old head in the oven suicide trope.

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

That misses the point. It's methane. Burning it releases carbon dioxide and whatever doesn't burn or leaks is directly adding methane. The heat from burning it is more heat into the atmosphere.

Since we're pumping it from underground every bit of it adds directly to the carbon cycle.

There is too much focus on what is already in the carbon cycle and while we are adding to the carbon cycle, none of it matters.