this post was submitted on 10 Sep 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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[–] mriguy@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The problem isn't that electric cars weigh more than ICE cars, it's that people buy absolutely enormous vehicles that are way bigger than they need. The top selling vehicles in the US right now are the Chevy Silverado, the Ford F-series, the Toyota Rav-4. These aren't even cars - they're trucks. Yes, people should drive lighter vehicles. But this was a problem way before EV's. People act like conventional cars don't have tires or something. The fact that this is suddenly considered a pressing issue seems to be more FUD from people who really hate the idea of electric vehicles.

BOTH are problems. Yes people buy vehicles that are too big. But electric vehicles, whether it be trucks or sedans, weigh significantly more than their ICE counterparts. I’m in favor of EVs over ICEs, but the bigger solution is not just “more of another type of car”. We also need a world with fewer cars.