this post was submitted on 19 Apr 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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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Are Electric Cars the Solution? (www.resilience.org)
submitted 5 months ago by toaster@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] Grappling7155@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Have we ever thought they were a solution and not just a stopgap?

Until proper alternatives are fully operational, EVs are not the worst thing.

You’re undercutting your own argument here.

EVs make sense in rural contexts, but that is and will always be a niche application. We can’t afford to ignore the bigger picture - most people live in cities. There are more efficient and better options to decarbonize cities than electric cars.

As the other commenter pointed out, electric cars are a step. A lot of people living in cities are ready to go farther now though. Let’s not ignore them or get in their way.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

About 56% of the world lives in urban settings. I wouldn't call 45% of the population a niche market, however I would say that even a significant portion of the rural population could be better served with non-car transportation options. Removing fossil fuels as much as possible from our energy use will still be vital to averting a major crisis, and alternatives will need to be found for those 45%, too, especially since they will use proportionally more transportation energy than their urban counterparts.