this post was submitted on 29 Dec 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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[–] ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 165 points 1 week ago (13 children)

I always want to reply with that chart on every post about some magical new climate technology. Nothing really matters until we stop pulling carbon-based fuels out of the ground and lighting them on fire. That’s it. That’s the only thing that matters. Wind and solar are great but we’re still approving gas/coal/oil projects, at least globally.

It’s like with the water crisis in the American West. They guilt trip individuals into feeling bad about taking showers but it’s like 80% agriculture. And the majority of that is for animal feed. (I’m not saying everyone go vegan. That’s about as unrealistic as asking everyone to stop fucking to keep the population from growing. I’m saying don’t grow alfalfa in the fucking desert and then blame people who bathe.)

[–] ODGreen@slrpnk.net 57 points 1 week ago

This is an excellent point. The energy transition is more accurately an energy addition. Some renewables on top of a still-increasing pile of burning fossil fuels.

Same with EVs. More are being sold every year but more ICE cars are being sold, too.

Until the fossil fuel industry actually shrinks, things are hopeless.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Seeing those alfalfa farms all over my desert state turns me into an extremist.

[–] iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There are huge vegetarian populations though (think about India), app it's not completely against human nature....

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 74 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

And for what?

For that.

Lines must go up.

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[–] the_wise_wolf@feddit.org 54 points 1 week ago (7 children)
[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 55 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You won’t. We’re combatting near-exponential growth. Each year we need to increase our efforts just to prevent worsening, let alone reversal.

This is because the largest accelerant is completely out of our control now. As the ice caps melt, desalinating our oceans, rich black soil is exposed. This soil absorbs and retains heat far more readily than the white ice, accelerating the warming of nearby ground ice. As bacteria begins to break down the newly thawed decaying organisms, large amounts of methane is released into the atmosphere. Methane traps 28x more heat than CO2, then it breaks down into CO2 and water after a decade where it continues to retain heat for centuries.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not quite correct on methane's half life. The 28x number is based on normal effect and breakdown over a century's time. Over 20 years it's around 84x more than CO2. Over the first few years it can be far over 100x. The caveat of using these numbers now is that they were based on a stable cycle of methane and its fixed-rate reducers in the atmosphere, something that has obviously changed.

The IPCC still sticks to the 28x number though, because it looks better on the spreadsheets. When they even include methane feedback loops, which to my knowledge they still haven't really worked into the hard numbers. Why? Because we're not very sure on how much is being released from year to year, as it's hard to measure. So since the IPCC only works with known variables, they just leave it out of the equation. Makes sense, right? :clown face:

You're right on the rest though. The best result is the methane breaks down quickly, into more CO2 and water vapor. Both GHGs, and the additional water adding to the water content in the atmosphere. Yet another feedback loop.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

Wow. Thank you for the detailed correction!

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[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 50 points 1 week ago (11 children)

Perhaps we should start actually trying

[–] TheFriar@lemm.ee 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Fine. I'll finally give up plastic straws.

[–] Opisek@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

Breaking news, global warming stopped.

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[–] theacharnian@lemmy.ca 33 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Whatever dent we make today will be visible in decades. This is Moses in the desert, people, if we do what's right, we won't see the promised land, but our descendants will

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Bible stories aren't real either.

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[–] Justas@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And yet you can see the small dent the collapse of USSR made.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 22 points 1 week ago

The solution is simple: we just need to collapse another 100 USSRs and drop that to two USSRs per year. We did it guise, we solved the climate crisis!

[–] apotheotic@beehaw.org 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That period between 1990 and 1995 where there seems to be 3 consecutive years where it slowed to a relative crawl... Imagine if we did that. What if we plateaued there for a few years - decades even - and then started dropping. A wonderful thought.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I think that’s partly due to the fall of the soviet union, which caused a noticeable drop in carbon emissions.

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