this post was submitted on 28 Oct 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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[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If you want to ban gas for residential heating because heat pumps are better, why are you banning it for comercial cooking which is a much smaller source of emissions, and lacks a good electrical replacement?

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Three reasons:

  1. Without the use for space heating, very little gas will be distributed, making the distribution system totally uneconomic for small users.
  2. The distribution system leaks methane. It's ~3% of what goes through it when there is high usage, but the amount of leakage probably doesn't go down unless you start decommissioning it.
  3. You want to protect the workers who have to breathe the fumes
[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Heating is irrelevant for commercial kitchen gas usage.

You’re just trying to yoke this terrible idea to a more sensible one for residential heating.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

No, it's relevant for the cost of distributing the gas. It's not cost-effective to run a gas distribution system just to commercial kitchens without the much larger distribution going to heating.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If that’s right, you don’t need to ban gas cooking, just ban residential heating and let the market take care of it.

Y’all just want to tear shit down to pat yourselves on the back.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Definitely could do it that way. But everybody is better off if we do it in a planned way instead of leaving people to deal with that kind of a mess.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So whats the plan to replace gas in commercial kitchens? Oh wait there isn’t one.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Two options right now:

  1. Run new electrical lines to them capable of providing for their actual needs
  2. Propane
[–] D1G17AL@lemmy.world -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Propane doesn't offer the benefits you seem to think it does. It's more expensive and the distribution system for it likely has as many issues as the natural gas does. Going after natural gas distribution while we still have larger and more significant sources of emissions is a minuscule bandage solution at best. At worst it solves a very minor source of emissions problems at a major cost in both money and convenience.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Those commercial and residential emissions - those are largely about the fuels burned in buildings. 14% of the total is enough to matter — and when we're running out of time to get emissions to zero, we need to cut it all to zero, not pick and choose.

[–] D1G17AL@lemmy.world -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

What evidence do you have that it would be cost-ineffective to pipe natural gas to only businesses? The only thing they do these days when someone opts out of using natural gas is turn off the valve at the street. The gas still flows to other businesses and neighbors. It doesn't matter what Berkeley does because Oakland, Richmond, Hayward and every other town or city around Berkeley is not going to ban the use of natural gas. It's a non-starter. It's pointless to do.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

There has been a ton of modeling on how declining numbers of ratepayers cause methane gas prices to skyrocket. If you actually get rid of almost all the people buying it, the last few are left paying a fortune for what was once common infrastructure shared by many people.

[–] spidermanchild@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

Right. And once it gets rolling, the disconnect (electrification) rate will undoubtedly increase. The sooner folks understand this, the sooner we can all get along to managing the wind down of the gas infrastructure in an intelligent way.

[–] D1G17AL@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not saying it's pointless but uh...https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-more-carbon-pollution-90-minutes-average-person-does-lifetime

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There are only tiny numbers of billionaires, and we need to get emissions to zero to stabilize temperatures, so we're all going to need to pitch in, even if that means something like "change how we heat and cook" instead of "switch to sailboats instead of diesel mega-yachts and private jets"

[–] D1G17AL@lemmy.world -3 points 2 weeks ago

Oh for fucks sake. Get off your high horse.