this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
321 points (99.1% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5240 readers
384 users here now

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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
silence7@slrpnk.net
321
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 8 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
60 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

The caveat there is that he lives in Town Home. Someone living in a stand alone home will have four exterior walls and a higher b/u heating requirement. I'd also like to point out that Chicago isn't even close to the end all / be all of cold. He makes a big deal out of -12f but other areas in the country will go to -30 or even -40 nearly every winter.

The furnace in his place is comically oversized though.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 9 points 8 months ago

His point was that the guidance used by sales staff tends to be far higher than design guidance in building codes. Then, he proved the design guidance two different ways to show it worked with his home.

And the design temperature of -12 °F used for testing is only 13 °F higher than the record low of -25 °F. If his system had to deal with a record low, it is still going to keep the house above freezing.

[–] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

He mentions that his parents live in a single family home in the same area and get along fine with heat pump.

Plus, from personal experience, the heat pump in my SFH only started needing emergency heat when the 20 year old compressor started to go, and since I've replaced it I've never had to use the emergency coils. I do have a fire in the fireplace on very cold nights, but that's mainly to alleviate strain on the grid.