this post was submitted on 18 Jun 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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[–] TheIvoryTower@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Fuck China, but when it comes to carbon emissions, they could burn coal for another 50 years and still not be as bad as the united states.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's not true at all; they're burning more than the US is now, by a fair bit. The US has a lot of historical cumulative emissions, but China is close to overtaking those.

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

That's exactly what I mean.

More importantly, the per capita rate for the US (and Australia and Canada etc) is far worse. You may hate the chinese government, but can you explain to me why Chinese people dont have the right to drive cars and run refrigerators, but people in the US do?

[–] red@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What the hell are you saying? This has to be a joke.

[–] TheIvoryTower@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

No joke. What exactly don't you understand?

People in the US have been burning carbon at an extraordinary rate since the Industrial Revolution, in the 1900s.

Still to this day they burn carbon at a rate of 14.44 tonnes per person per year.

Chinese people burn 8.85 tonnes per person per year.

They burn that carbon running cars, generating electicity, living their lives.

If we are measuring how much CO2 countries have contributed, China has decades of shitty energy production up on the US. They may be a ruthless authoritarian communist state, but they are the not the ones responsible for climate change.

Also, half of the emissions they create are producing your cheap plastic crap to be bought on Amazon

[–] red@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago

The part where you said Chinese people don't have refrigerators and aren't allowed to drive cars.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 months ago

China emits nearly twice as much as the US these days. At this rate China is overtaking the US in 25 years or so. Probably sooner as US emissions are dropping, whereas Chinas emissions are increasing.

Obviously Chinas per capita emissions are below the US, but they are still nearly twice the global ones and above those of the EU or UK for example. When you look at cumulative per capita emissions China is about averge. However that includes a lot of emissions from dead people and for China those are nearly zero. If you only look at cumulative emissions since 1990 China is about as bad as the EU on a per capita bases. However with 30% of annual emissions.

So please do not pretend that China is not responsible for climate change. They absolutly are.