this post was submitted on 21 Mar 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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[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Worth pointing out the difference between standards and codes, here.

The standards are what we're really talking about. The codes get copied from the standards, but there's no requirement that they be -- it's just a lot easier for a locality to set the code to be "follow the standard."

The standards are not prepared by the government. They're separate entities, and nothing stops actual municipalities from varying/changing them or even outright ignoring them, at least absent a different superseding law (e.g., if your state law wipes out county/city laws). The main reason this is not done more frequently is, unfortunately, simple liability. A municipality that replaces a standard in their code exposes itself to lawsuits if people can claim the modified code hurt them, even if the code is provably less harmful than the standard.

For people who want to see the state of climate/"codes", as always, I will refer you to a recent David Roberts Interview. The state of things right now are not good and, unfortunately, a looming Trump re-election threatens things will get very much worse. But there are approaches here.