this post was submitted on 09 Nov 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.

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To be clear: carbon capture like this is a tiny and expensive part of what needs doing over the next few years

It's getting a lot of support and publicity in large part because it's backed by the oil industry, which is trying to create social permission for continued extraction and burning on a much larger scale than the removal.

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[โ€“] Firebirdie713@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We have more than enough resources to do both, and small companies like this are the way we prove the concept to industries for future installations 'at the source'. Until you prove that it is a net positive, it can't be sold, and you can't improve on something if you've never actually seen the system function. We will need these systems to properly fix the climate crisis, and the sooner we start putting them to use, the faster we can improve them to the point of being able to make a difference.

Again, I am not saying we should be doing this instead of renewable energy, just that we need to be doing both at the same time. Plenty of other companies and groups are working on wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, and other forms of renewable energy. We do need more companies presenting more ideas of how to clean the existing mess, otherwise we risk people thinking that we shouldn't care about fixing the issue because 'the damage is done'. That sentiment is becoming a very popular talking point among people trying to discourage climate solutions, and having examples like this showing that recovery is possible helps drive people to support faster and better solutions.

[โ€“] Eheran@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

What do you mean... we have enough resources? We do not have spare energy to throw at this. We are far from a point in time where there is a regular excess in energy and where the low hanging fruits are taken care of.

We also do not have unlimited research capacities. Here too low hanging fruits are clearly more sensible to quickly reduce CO2 emissions.

The goal has to be the fastest possible reduction in CO2 emissions. This will not happen if we choose paths that are less efficient. Like hydrogen cars for example. Those or CCS are good for the fossil industry since they are ideal for greenwashing. This could even result in a net negative effect.