this post was submitted on 20 Jan 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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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[–] envelope@kbin.social 18 points 10 months ago

This is the stupid shit we get for letting Iowa always be first in the nominating contests.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Like, the solution has become very clear and apparent.

Solar panels and batteries on all homes. Wind energy wherever possible with gridscale backup. Electric vehicles for anything with an axle-weight below 10k. Hydrogen (if we must) for everything above 10k, until we have batteries with weight to performance ratios that can support trucking with electric.

Climate change and carbon reductions are only a technical issue if you insist that every one be working all of the time to justify their existence. Appreciating that most of almost everyones work is just 'busy' work in the exercise of justifying our existence, we could easily solve this issue.

[–] snooggums@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago

Appreciating that most of almost everyones work is just ‘busy’ work in the exercise of justifying our existence, we could easily solve this issue.

Not to mention how much pollution commuting to do the busy work causes!

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Hydrogen (if we must) for everything above 10k, until we have batteries with weight to performance ratios that can support trucking with electric.

Hydrogen is even dumber than ethanol.

The better solution is to minimize the number of vehicles that need to be long-range and self-powered in the first place by aggressively improving rail infrastructure (including electrifying it), and then run the bit that's left on biodiesel sourced from waste feedstocks.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean I only begrudgingly support hydrogen, because in theory, it can be produced by renewables and we do need something more energy dense for things that move heavy things.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The trouble is, hydrogen is really bad at being energy-dense, requiring either cryogenics or dangerously-high pressures to fit enough in an automotive-gas-tank-sized space.

Frankly, if you want to insist using hydrogen, the best thing to do with it would be to react it with CO2 to make synthetic gasoline and use it in the internal-combustion engines and gas stations we already have.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think you store it in salt.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Not in a car, you don't. You're thinking of proposals to store large amounts of it at rest in former salt mines, but that doesn't help you actually use it in a vehicle.

[–] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Actually, big rigs being all ev is fine for last mile / in-city delivery.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago

You want any shipping to back heavily on rail for any distance, don't you?

[–] Skua@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago

Germany's electrified highway system looks very promising for longer distance truck transport too. It's basically the same system that overhead electrified rail uses. That way the battery only needs to be able to get the truck to and from that highway, the distance covered on the highway is charging time.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not all candidates. Just all democrat and republican candidates.

[–] Bipta@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] blazera@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago

Self fulfilling prophecies

[–] Wanderer@lemm.ee 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Economists believe is something called externalities. Its very important and it corrects the market. If something is good for the world then you government needs to make it cheaper by subsiding it. If it's bad then their should be a tax on it. Economist gernally strongly support this but the public seem to be against this.

This here is giving money to farmers. It's basically the opposite of externalities. It's really stupid.

[–] metaStatic@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago

anything that isn't a solution is violence against the people who can't afford to survive 3 degrees of warming and we need to defend ourselves right now.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Compare this to gasoline. Same engine, right?

For cars older than a decade, is it or is it not marginally better than inefficient and toxic gasoline?

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 6 points 10 months ago

There's a fair bit of evidence that the ethanol is worse:

the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher