this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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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.

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Is it time to give up on the 1.5°C climate target? (www.youtube.com)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by spaduf@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Contents

00:00 - Intro
01:01 - 1.5 aint SMART
02:19 - What does 1.5 actually mean?
03:13 - How do we know?
04:44 - Can we do it?
05:31 - What's at stake
07:00 - 1.5 by when?
08:04 - Shall we give up on 1.5?
09:17 - 1.5 is slipping out of reach

TL;DW: Probably not yet but we only have a handful of years to turn things around. Current modelling suggests that a 20 year average temperature for 2023 sits at about 1.26° C

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[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I mean actionable policy plans absolutely necessitate concrete goals. In this case, missing it seems to be more reflective of massive problems with our modeling than any sort of failure to act. When that goal was set absolutely nobody was seriously considering the possibility we would surpass it in the early 20s.

[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is the modeling the problem? I thought we just had one particularly hot year but we still haven't passed 1.5°C when the average is considered.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Well there's two relevant points there:

  • The 1.5 degree warming targets set by the Paris Climate Accords are based on a 30 year average. One of the main points of the video and a recent popular point of conversation for climate communicators has been that this is simply too long a time span to be used as an actionable metric. This would mean that it would take at least 15 years of average temps being that high before it officially triggers anything.
  • Current models absolutely suggest that period will start sometime in this decade, which was absolutely not the case for SOTA models in 2015
[–] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks!