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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[–] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 28 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] intelisense@lemm.ee 15 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They solve the wrong problem - we need fewer cars, not electric cars.

[–] Oddbin@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago

Yeah, but we're shit at doing that so how about we do the "easy" part of getting less CO2 and local pollution by shifting everything Electric right now and push for better overall. This is a case for doing something in the right direction, not waiting for the perfect solution.

Unless you have a time machine and we go back to the 80s and start the conversion then like we should have.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 6 points 5 months ago

Came here to say this. Many changes need to be made, and some will be more effective than others, but we can't afford to do nothing.

[–] aeharding@vger.social 23 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Electric cars are a solution to save the auto industry, not the planet

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 8 points 5 months ago

Electrification will happen somehow, electric cars will be part of that. But especially places like the us need to also become less dependent on cars

[–] toaster@slrpnk.net 3 points 5 months ago

tl;dr ☝️

[–] hashferret@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Electric cars + carsharing. The notion that we can completely dismantle or replace car-centric infrastructure in the timescales necessary to address climate change is wishful thinking, but of course so is the idea that we can just electrify everything we currently do and it'll all work out. Some of the pushback to EV production has merit and we simply cannot replace every ICE car on the road in the US with an EV. We need fewer cars and we need them to be used more effectively and sensibly. I love off roading, I totally understand wanting to be able to drive a lifted 4x4 when it's appropriate. The trick is not having to drive a 20mpg vehicle on your commute everyday, or to the grocery store. Living car-less in the US needs to become more practical and that means we need to serve all of a persons needs. Public transit, bikes, and walking can serve us well enough in our daily lives. But leisure, hobbies, and other edge cases also need to be supported through things like affordable carsharing services or rentals. If someone needs to own a car to occasionally go hiking in the mountains then that car needs to be built, maintained, and will likely be a convenience crutch as opposed to if there were a viable low cost (and preferably electrified) rental for destinations that transit and other methods cannot reach.

[–] hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

No. If you think they are, then please look up how much of the plastic in the oceans and nature in general is from car tires. Also an electric car does nothing if the electricity is produced from fossil fuels,

[–] set_secret@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Incorrect, evs are still better than petrol, even under coal power, so it does do something. Also the grid will continue to get greener as coal shuts down and EVs will get greener too.

Peer reviewed source:

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/3/1241

Also there are plenty of additional studies showing this too.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago

Actually, because of just how inefficient small scale combustion is and how much fuel goes into getting that gas to the car in the first place, even if you run an EV directly off the most polluting coal plant in the North America it’s still significantly better for the environment. Admittedly if you use a more average energy mixture, the benefit is far larger, but there is still a benefit.

[–] Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Make them float with anti gravity instead of giving them tires? By the stars, the apes of this star system have so many skill issue problems...

[–] TheChurn@kbin.social 1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

One thing that the article didn't touch on, since it was focused on input costs, is the extra pollution from using EVs.

EVs are substantially heavier than ICEs of the same class, due to the battery. This leads to extra wear on the tires, break pads, and road surface -> even more micro plastics and particulate air pollution.

We need to reduce our ecological footprint, not merely change it from oil to reactive metals.

[–] GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 months ago

Brake pads tend to last longer due to regenerative braking. The rest of your point stands.

[–] Oddbin@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I never changed my pads in 65k miles so that's not true sorry.

They are on average slightly heavier but we're talking 100-200kg. That's nothing, 10-15%, definitely not "substantially". Less if you add fuel to the ICE.

There's not any extra pollution. There's an investment cost and then tyre wear. Which you get from an ICE. Along with, you know, all the pollution from the combustion engine. Which is at most 24% efficient (more likely middle teens) and only continues to pollute rather than electric vehicles which don't.

Electric cars may not be the ultimate solution but they're a damn sight better than the status quo so let's stop this kind on hysterical posting eh?

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 2 points 5 months ago

The ‘substantially heavier’ is doing a lot of work there, given the change is only about 5 to 10% on average and typically EV’s are still not the heaviest vehicles in their same class. Compared to the car obesity epidemic in North America, the drivetrain is irrelevant. A European EV for instance is nearly always going to far, far lighter than a modern US gas car.

Also, becuse if the road degradation is exponentially tied to tire wheight it is almost always a function of trucks, busses, and freeze thaw cycles, cars tend to be to light to cause significant share of the damage.

Break dust is an odd thing to bring up, seeing as one of the other common gripes with EVs is that they use their breaks so extremely rarely that they corrode and might be ineffective in an emergency.

Tire dust is an factor, but again one that’s more impacted by the increase in North America’s car size than drivetrain and which is reduced by getting cars back to sane sizes and out of dense areas like cities, not pretending that a 80 to 90% reduction in one of the largest causes of climate change is somehow the same.

[–] jlow@beehaw.org 1 points 5 months ago