this post was submitted on 29 Aug 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.

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

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America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 11 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] exohuman@programming.dev 7 points 11 months ago (4 children)

We need nuclear power stations all along the coast converting sea water into fresh water.

[–] Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And a string of nuclear power stations to pump the water where it needs to be...

[–] ivanafterall@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

And small nuclear power generators to power all the maintenance cars and trucks.

[–] Kittenstix@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Don't forget the nuclear powered, air conditioned suits! Might as well make them bullet 'proof' while we're at it.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You joke, but we actually do need desalination plants — starting yesterday. Water will be the new oil soon.

[–] exohuman@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, we definitely do. We are already seeing the result of not thinking ahead in the southwest. I’m not really joking about the plants. We need nuclear plants to provide the clean energy to desalinate on the levels we need to sustain agriculture and cities without contributing to global warming.

[–] tgirod@slrpnk.net 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

... or maybe switch to a less water intensive form of agriculture ?

Edit : I mean, how sustaining a wasteful practice with a huge wasteful infrastructure is progress ?

[–] exohuman@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We can and should do both.

[–] tgirod@slrpnk.net 1 points 11 months ago

Maybe we should, but I'm not sure we can - because one (nuclear + desalination) acts as a disincentive to the other (actually chaning practice).

Also, building a nuclear reactor takes a lot of time (do we have it ?), changing agricultural practices can start right now and scale progressively.

[–] tgirod@slrpnk.net 2 points 11 months ago

Just to be sure this is sarcasm, right ?

[–] toothpicks@slrpnk.net 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

And then we can pour the nuclear waste back into the sea! Just kidding 😂 I'm not anti-nuclear

[–] Kittenstix@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Hopefully by then Nevada is a barren wasteland uninhabited by nimbys so we can get the Yucca Mountain project started.