this post was submitted on 25 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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A lot of people point to trains efficiency as a way forward to minimize the environmental impact of the transportation sector. But are trains and railroad solarpunkable? Or is it just another "all eggs in the same basket" industry?

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[–] Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But for longer distances i don’t really understand why today’s fares are higher than using a car share between 2 people.

Fuel is heavily subsidized, trains are not. When you get a full tank you're actually paying only part of the real price.

Additionally, people tend to underestimate how much owing a car costs. City nerd has a video about it.

[–] francisco@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Will look for that city nerd.

Fuel is heavily subsidized, trains are not.

How do these subsidies work, that the rail companies cannot tap into those. The electrified trains have most of their electricity coming from fossil fuels which would benefit from the same subsidies.

I feel that an optimised engine on a low friction track carrying 500-1000 people should be orders of magnitude cheaper than a car.