this post was submitted on 10 May 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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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Carbon Dioxide Just Took an Ominous, Record-Breaking Jump | The world’s gold standard CO2 observatory just experienced its biggest year-over-year increase. (www.bloomberg.com)
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[–] Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 21 points 6 months ago

Multiple factors have contributed to the record rise. El Niño, the naturally occurring climate pattern that warms the eastern tropical Pacific, has been ongoing since last year. The change in ocean temperatures influences weather around the world, leading to drought in many parts of the tropics. The drought and heat that come with an El Niño event means that plants grow less, taking up less CO2 as a result. Increased wildfire activity also releases more CO2 into the atmosphere.

Burning fossil fuels is also a major driver. Emissions hit a peak last year, rising to 36.8 billion metric tons. That’s driven CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere higher, worsening a dizzying array of disasters, including heat waves, extreme rainfall, wildfires and floods, including amplifying some El Niño impacts.

“The emissions from the tropical forests are superimposed on these very large emissions from fossil fuel burning, which is bigger than ever,” says Keeling. “It's not that El Niño events are unusual, it's the fossil fuel burning is unusual in a historical sense. It's an extreme. It's never been higher.”