this post was submitted on 30 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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Electrify All the Big, Noisy, Belching Trucks (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I like trains and I'm not American. You brought up energy density as the factor preventing long haul. Please don't appeal to authority as the argument but rather state what you think the energy density needs to be and why to make electric long haul viable.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The specific energy of batteries are currently an order of magnitude less than diesel. This is not a problem that is going to be solved by a slightly improved battery. The weight of batteries needed to carry long haul cargo makes it a non-starter.

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

This is also true for cars, but electric cars are viable even though its the same comparison between energy density. Would you be willing to have this conversation with actual calculations and specified arguments regarding the numbers?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'll do the calculations if you pay my consultancy fee.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

How about we both do the calculations and we cancel each others consultant fees?