this post was submitted on 28 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.

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A call to replace air conditioners with heat pumps in California (www.canarymedia.com)
submitted 3 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] set_secret@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Just curious, so numbers are the deciding factor for heating, not environmental impact? For example if your were wealthy would you choose lowest impact option, or would numbers still dictate your choice?

[–] qupada@kbin.social 5 points 3 months ago

It is a good question.

Where I live, electricity costs around $0.28/kWh, but generation is typically >85% renewable (predominantly hydroelectric).

My heat pump (4.7 COP when heating) would cost $0.06 to run for every 1kWh of heat it produces, with only 0.03kWh of that electricity coming from fossil fuel sources.

Gas - which I don't have at my house - would have pricing in the neighbourhood of $0.15/kWh. Even at 95% efficiency getting 1kWh of heat from gas would cost $0.16, using 1.05kWh of gas.

35x the fossil fuel usage and 2.5x the price, for the same quantity of heat. Some luck of living in a moderate climate where an air-source heat pump almost never loses efficiency, to be fair.

[–] 0110010001100010@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Just curious, so numbers are the deciding factor for heating, not environmental impact?

This is correct. And given the way the grids interconnect it would be hard if not impossible for me to be able to quantify environmental impact. I would assume even though there is still a lot of coal generation in-use it would still be more environmentally friendly for me to run the heat pump but I just don't know.

For example if your were wealthy would you choose lowest impact option, or would numbers still dictate your choice?

If money was no object I would absolutely choose the lowest impact option. I would even do a solar install even though it would likely end up being a net-loss for my specific case.

[–] set_secret@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks for your honest answer.

I think many people believe gas is at least preferable to coal environmentally wise, but turns out in quite a few instances it's worse. (fossil fuel companies did a good job marketing gas as cleaner for a long time)

https://theclimatecenter.org/energy-efficiency/study-shows-natural-gas-fracking-more-harmful-than-coal/