this post was submitted on 18 Dec 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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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Although this is likely to never happen in the States, the fact that a large number of other countries like Canada and most of Europe are making these changes means it'll become impractical to keep a separate line of ICE engines going as demand for electric vehicles grows worldwide.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

This is happening in some of the States. California, Oregon and New York have bans for 2035 and Washington state even for 2030. The New England states seem to want to ban it too by 2035. Hawaii looks at a 2030 ban.

That would be a third of the US population.

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

A large amount of car manufacturers are already going electric. They see the change coming.

Most of our big ones by 2035.

https://www.gearpatrol.com/cars/g38986745/car-brands-going-electric/

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

That is not quite settled. The development of a new model takes something like four years and the basic tech a bit longer. The more places ban it, the more brands will actually honor their fossil phase out.

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

Eh, I have a genuinely hard time believing that companies who rely on what's going to eventually be 'free' and 'clean' energy aren't going to capitalize on it and make bank. Especially with the cultural zeitgeist of younger generations hating on fossil fuels.

It's a fools errand to invest in fossil fuels. In the end, those fuels can just be shipped to your local power plant anyway until better nuclear comes along.

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

The Saudis have active plans to work with car makers to sell super cheap IC cars into the African market. Qatar owns a 17% stake in Volkswagen already. That might be used for similar purposes.

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

Africa is prime for solar in large swaths of the continent though. It's really only rainy seasons when it gets sketch which can be supplemented.

It takes that Chinese and Russian infrastructure first though aye.