this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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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.

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Colorado River losing vast amounts of water due to warming climate, study finds (www.latimes.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The paper is here

Archived copy of the article

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Oh? Yet another study that says climate change is going absolutely ass rape us if we don't do something about green house gases and fossil fuel usage? Nah this is just propaganda. And... There's low water levels cause the government took the water and is just hiding it in a big facility somewhere. And... The snowpacks that usually supply water to the Colorado were just moved by undercover agents to a ski resort. And... Megadrought across the southwest is just a natural occurrence that could happen anytime and has nothing to do with fossil fuels. And... The insanely high temperatures across the southwest over the last quarter century that are continuing to rise are just fake news. I mean it snowed a few months ago in Colorado!

I don't think we need to change anything. These kooky scientists don't know anything! I mean they can't even tell me if it's gonna rain tomorrow. Smh

/S

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

Note its not just climate thats causing the water shortage. The article even mentions that a bunch of that water is being used for livestock feed like alfalfa. It takes ~620 gallons of water to make a 150g hamburger and ~859 gallons for a gallon of milk (1). And 56 percent of the water of the colorado river is used for growing livestock feed (2).

Climate change is important to have in the conversation about our rivers drying up, but we can't forget about the elephant (or cow) in the room.

1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1470160X11004110?via%3Dihub

2: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/22/climate/colorado-river-water.html