this post was submitted on 09 Dec 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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Electric cars are not THE solution.

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[–] WhyFlip@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Who ever said electric cars were the solution?

[–] callyral@pawb.social 4 points 2 weeks ago

A lot of people think that. The solution to car pollution is less cars and more forms of transport. It's trains. I like trains.

[–] Mihies@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago

Binary view is a poor one. EVs have a lot of benefits and also some drawbacks. As everything in the world, they are not perfect. The trick is that they have much more benefits than drawbacks.

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[–] ape_arms@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Is it technically micro plastics? Vulcanized rubber particulates?

[–] Mjpasta710@midwest.social 5 points 2 weeks ago

Its not only rubber for car tires. There's a lot of extras to add longevity, and change performance in certain conditions.

Plastic is mostly made from hydrocarbon chains. So are rubber polymers it seems.

Not sure if it matters if the plastic is from a tree or pumped from a really old tree.

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[–] vinnymac@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We need a clever solution to this problem, because our govts are unlikely to solve this through new infrastructure or policy changes.

I’ve been reading about this topic for a while now, and I always thought the tech these guys invented was worth further investment: https://smarttirecompany.com/

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Less rubber is good but we really need a rubber replacement that is biodegradable.

Nickel alloys are expensive and require some nasty mining so shape memory tires are a stopgap solution at best.

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

Material sciences is a difficult field. People spend years researching one small area just to shelve their research as not viable, too cost prohibitive, or impractical for large scale manufacturing.

I haven't seen any research into durable biodegradable materials that could hold the weight of vehicles unfortunately, so I think investment will be hard to come by. Though I don't disagree with the premise that something that can degrade over time, but also not harm the environment would be an ideal solution to the problem. I imagine if such a thing were created it would be able to be applied to many other industries, not just transportation.

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 1 points 2 weeks ago

Michelin and Bridgestone have shown off proof of concept biodegradable tires but nothing to the market yet. It is possible, and will take incremental progress as you say. I’d like to see more work and updates on this.

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 2 points 2 weeks ago

How can you not own a car while living in a city with >1m population, are you mad? /s

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

We need miracle battery technology. And we need miracle wheel technology.

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