this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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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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The Forest Service plans to protect the nearly 25 million acres it manages where towering trees still stand, the first national plan to protect old-growth forests from commercial logging

This is a step which should have been taken decades ago, and is a piece of ending deforestation.

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[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 18 points 11 months ago

i would love to be part of the generation that did this

[–] 567PrimeMover@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago

Good. Where I live (upper midwest) we had tons of old growth timber that was completely exhausted in the 1800s. All of our forests now are incredibly young with no chance to mature as they're basically all tree farms now. We need to protect what little old growth forests we have left

[–] skyfaller@slrpnk.net 2 points 10 months ago

While this is a good and necessary step, most old growth forests are already gone because they were not protected. Mature trees and forests that are less than 150 years old also need protection if we are to ever reverse the destruction and begin restoration, and expand protected areas. https://www.salon.com/2023/12/20/underwhelming-biden-admin-tosses-token-protection-to-old-growth-forests/