this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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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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Are Flight Offsets Worth It? A lot of them don’t work and some might even be harmful. But there are things you can do if you really have to fly. (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

EPA recently updated the "Social Cost of Carbon" which is an estimate of the dollar amount of damage each metric ton of CO2 emitted costs society from pollution, natural disasters, humanitarian issues, etc. In 2023 the cost was ~$204/metric ton. A flight across the Continental US emits about 1 metric ton per economy passenger.

So carbon offsets should be priced in the neighborhood of $200/metric ton. But many of the carbon offset services are pretty scammy or fraudulent. As an alternative, I'd suggest considering a simple donation to an environmental charity in the same dollar range. Check out Coalition for Rainforest Nations as an option!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for referencing and linking the Social Cost of Carbon info. That's a good way to look at this issue.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

You may want to read that link, not sure I'd be thanking anyone for sharing that particular primer on the Social Cost of Carbon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Social Cost of Carbon"

YIKES, that's probably not the article I would reference when trying to introduce people to the social cost of carbon - it's full on fossil fuel industry propaganda, you may want to give it a read.

Also, the $200/t is an estimate of the societal cost of emitting carbon, not the cost of avoiding or removing carbon. There's plenty of ways avoidance/offsets/removal programs that can decrease global emissions for a fraction of that price - it just sets the upper end of what is (for better or worse) a "good deal" for the economy. I.e., if it costs more than $200/t to avoid emitting, it's better for the economy to just let the planet burn.

Agreed that today's carbon "offsets" are cheap because they're garbage, and good offsets are and should be more expensive, but they don't have to be $200/ton to be effective, they just have to be under that much in order to be better than dealing with their consequences.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh wow, thanks for pointing that out, an oversight on my part. I replaced the link, but damn it's hard to find good sources about this. EPA website is very technical and not much I could find breaking it down well that was not industry-funded.

And yeah there's other ways to look at spending money to offset emissions that are hard to reduce, like air travel. I figure this gets people thinking in different ways and these charities could use the funds.

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

No mention of direct capture - they should be able to give an accurate capture amount right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

@silence7
No one has to fly. Luckily 7 billion people don't, or the ecological and climate mess would be even worse. Flying is the new climate denial. Know it's bad and do it anyway, impactoary denial.

A good first step would be recognising the difference between needs and wants

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/life-after-oil/2016/02/11/how-far-can-we-get-without-flying/

>Hour for hour, there’s no better way to warm the planet than to fly in a plane.

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https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207886-it-turns-out-planes-are-even-worse-for-the-climate-than-we-thought/

>It turns out planes are even worse for the climate than we thought
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2019/jul/19/carbon-calculator-how-taking-one-flight-emits-as-much-as-many-people-do-in-a-year

>Taking a long-haul flight generates more carbon emissions than the average person in dozens of countries around the world produces in a whole year,