this post was submitted on 20 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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Taking Big Oil to court for 'climate homicide' isn't as far-fetched as it sounds (grist.org)
submitted 5 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] Steve@communick.news 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Who's doing the deflecting?

Did you forget that "Big Oil" knew about global warming all the way back to the 70s; Then spent decades lying to the public and legislators both about it?

So who is more culpable? The legislators who didn't know better, or the executives who did, and lied to them?
The corrupted, or the corruptors?

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sure but legislators have been aware for like 50 years now and still haven't done anything at all significant

[–] Steve@communick.news 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

If you agree they've been lied to for decades since the 70s, how could they could they also know for 50 years?
That seems contradictory.

[–] mbgid@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Climate change has been in the public discourse since at least the 80's, so legislators did know. It just hasn't been in their interests to acknowledge it.

[–] Steve@communick.news 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The Venn diagram of public discourse and legislator knowledge isn't a circle.
And the public discourse was filled with FUD from Big Oil, no place more so than the halls of congress.

[–] mbgid@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

I understand your point but let's not ignore that fossil fuel corporations have made campaign donations and contributions to legislators for as long as those corporations existed. Whether or not legislators totally bought into the FUD (and I'm not sure all did, the same way not everyone in the wider public discourse bought into it) it was literally not in their interests to legislate against fossil fuel.

So, yes, we should hold them responsible.