this post was submitted on 11 Mar 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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Yes, heat pumps slash emissions even if powered by a dirty grid | Installing a heat pump now is better for the climate, even on U.S. electricity generated mostly by fossil fuels. Here’s why (www.canarymedia.com)
submitted 7 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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The article doesn't go into it, but a key advantage they have is that heat pumps move heat, rather then trying to generate it. So they can move a lot more heat into your house than would be generated by running the electricity they use through a resistor. This makes them effectively more than 100% efficient (the exact amount depends on temperature) as compared with burning a fuel or resistive heat.

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[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 34 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Heat pumps can run in very cold weather; and the worst that may happen is that you need some additional resistive heat to handle the demand. You don't need a completely new system to supplement heat with current technology.

And a heat pump is an air conditioner that moves heat both ways. A lot of heat pumps today operate in dual mode, so they can act as air conditioners as well

[–] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 7 months ago

Straight up since my grandma got one installed at her house she hasn't had to use her in wall heaters or her fireplace

And in AC mode that thing is great