this post was submitted on 25 Mar 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.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 7 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 75 points 7 months ago (1 children)

1 atmosphere, so sea level pressure, per Diána Ürge-Vorsatz

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I feel like a ton of C02 at air pressure should be bigger.
I know it's correct, but it looks like the amount of exhaust produced by a car idling for a few minutes, at a visceral level you just expect a literal tonne of gas to take up more volume.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I assume CO2 is only a portion of the exhaust. Not sure if that’s what you were meaning already?

Edit: No idea of the quality of this source, but:

So what's coming out of a car exhaust is 13 per cent CO2, 13 per cent water (26 per cent sub-total) and 73 per cent nitrogen gas. The air that you're breathing right now is 78 per cent nitrogen gas, 21 per cent oxygen, and one percent everything else.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Whatever it was about on Jan 27, 2024 in Vienna in the evening during the Science Ball. Probably about 10°C

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago

If it weighs that much why did they have to strap it down. Huh….. Huh /s

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (2 children)

If we jump in there can we have a really really good nap?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago (1 children)

People tend to end up dead within seconds of entering any kind of oxygen-free atmosphere. People who follow them in to attempt a rescue without a tank of air generally end up dead as well, creating a whole chain of dead.

Don't do that.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Does Lemmy have an equivalent of woosh or ThatsTheJoke?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Madge, you're soaking in it!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

You've just created it!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Suffocation by CO2 is a pretty painful way to go, so I wouldn't recommend.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I've taken a breath in a high-CO2 environment a few times. The whole body freaks out instantly. Not fun.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Nitrous on the other hand 👀😏

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Wait?! Is this what they mean by carbon capture?

[–] nul 13 points 7 months ago

Next step is interrogation

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Well, not in such cubes, but I have heard the plan of piping the CO2 into underground caverns.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

Expected it to be bigger, still terrifying

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My brain is not wrapping around this so well.

The co2 in that cube at normal air pressure would weigh 1000 kg?

Doesn't air only weigh a kilogram per cubic meter?

I know co2 is heavier, but is co2 that much heavier?

Like 20 times heavier?

No, I just looked it up, air is 1.2 kg per cubic meter and CO2 is 1.8 kg per cubic meter.

Someone set me straight, I don't get it.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

At standard temperature and pressure (STP) it looks like CO2 has a density of 1.96 kg/m^3. 1 tonne = 1000 kg, so a tonne of CO2 has a volume of (1000 kg)/(1.96 kg/m^3) = 510 m^3 at STP. A cube of that volume would have side length (510 m^3)^(1/3) = 7.99 m, so roughly 8 meters per side.

I don't know how tall that person is, but if we assume around 1.6 m (5' 3") then the cube side length should be about 5 of her. Seems pretty accurate to me.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago

Thank you, this helps, brain wrapping successfully now.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Not sure it actually demonstrates the extend of the issue. My favourite way to look at it (via ThunderF00t@youtube I believe):

  • dry ice is essentially frozen CO2 ( CO2 in solid form)
  • cca 40 billion tuns per year (cca 5t per person / year, 8 billion people)
  • 1km side cube of dry ice weights cca 1.5 billion tuns (1.560 kg/m3 says wiki)

=> Burj Khalifa has 830 m - imagine huge cube of dry ice 20% taller ( or 3x eifell tower)- all that CO2 boiling off in massive clouds - than add 25 of them - each year. We've been doing this at some scale for decades....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Okay?

What's the takeaway from that?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

We're dumping tens of billions of tonnes per year in the atmosphere. Enough to make a difference

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yes, I'm aware. My question was about the inflatable really?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

When I say US citizens put out 13 tonnes per capita of CO2 a lot of folks have no ideawhatt that means. Is that a lot?

The answer is yes. The US is essentially sticking about 5 billion of these into the air every year, and they dont come down...

CO2 looks clear to our eyes but is opaque in infrared, meaning last year humans blanketed the sky with 35 billion of these heat absorbing gas baloons, that will never come down in our lifetime, but willl make our world hotter.

The few hundred billion we've already put up there is already leading to starvation in poor countries and mass bleaching of coral reefs and disruptions inoceans flows our ocean eco system depends on, oceans... You know, a huge source of food.

So were merrilly marching into a never ending dust bowl that according to the fossil record will terminate with an ice age that will last millions of years.

It'll be great explaining to your kids how cars and cruises and sugary bubble soda was worth sending them into never ending wars for food.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Most people have a hard time visualizing how much a tonne of CO2 is, and that weird thing helps people understand how big it is, and can make them more worried about pollution, and more likely to seek change.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I guess I'm confused on the definition of a "tonne" of CO2. Am I to believe that if that cube was completely full of CO2 that volume of CO2 would weigh 1000kg?

Nevermind, just looked it up. It's actually a measure of volume, just 1000 cubic meters, which makes perfect sense.

Edit: it was actually the first one, although a "tonne" as a measure of volume does exist.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You had it right the first time, 1 tonne (1000 kg) of CO2 at standard temperature and pressure would have a volume equivalent to that cube.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Gas doesn't seem heavy until you handle gas canisters full and empty.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I mean, those are much higher than 1 atmosphere though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Sure. Don't often store more than 7,000 L STP and that's a 2m cube.

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