this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
60 points (98.4% liked)

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

5243 readers
408 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
60
The Solar Revolution Is Dying in Waiting Lines | A bloated backlog of renewable projects awaiting approval means a quick transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels will be anything but. (www.bloomberg.com)
submitted 7 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
5 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] admiralteal@kbin.social 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Jesus, I've been quoting a 1 terawatt figure when arguing with people about how bad our interconnection queues are. It's at 2.6?! That's fucking brutal.

The market is rejecting fossil fuels. Solar is just way, way, way cheaper and wind is substantially comparable (wind at $32/MW-hour, compared to somewhere between $5-30/MW-hour for natural gas depending on the region) And in my opinion, wind still hasn't really hit its learning curve. I expect it's prices will have a plummet in my lifetime, as soon as places like northern Europe, New England, and the dust bowl states start seriously buying it.

If the grid operators were on their shit, we'd be shutting down natural gas plants in favor of renewables for purely economic reason, as already basically happened with coal for gas.

We aren't even talking about having to add new transmission routes. A lot of the upgrades needed are just smart sensors so that we can run lines closer to their real capacity rather than keeping them at enormous factors of safety in fear of very rare events. A lot of the upgrades needed are just reconductoring, which is only a small fraction the price of new routes. If the utility monopolies aren't stepping up to the plate, it's time to get a new contract.