this post was submitted on 31 Mar 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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Election of Donald Trump ‘could put world’s climate goals at risk’ (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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If you're an American, and you want to stop Trump, it's important to be actively involved:

  • Check your voter registration - there's been an active effort to purge voter rolls, and if you moved or changed name, you'll need to register again anyways
  • Talk with people you know about voting for Democrats up and down the ballot. Personal endorsement matters.
  • Volunteer — it makes a real difference
  • If you can afford it, donate to the Biden campaign. Even fairly modest amounts of money from a lot of people add up to being able to hire staff and run ads.
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[–] JohnDClay 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Those fugitive emissions from crude gas ('natural' gas) are crazy! It blows my mind that it could make the greenhouse impact even worse than coal. Those methane sensing satellites are really important so what we can actually check the emissions to see how bad they are.

[–] Immersive_Matthew 12 points 8 months ago

Right. I really think the USA and Canada need to pull their heads out of the oil and gas executives assea and do the right thing for the entire planet. They can be the cause or a major win for the decline of civilization. We are hitting do or die inflections here.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The thing about methane is that it breaks down within a few years, so the impact is largely about rate of release, unlike CO2 where concentration remains elevated pretty much forever in human terms.

This means that if we stop extraction of gas, it ends up having only a modest impact on how hot it is after that

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

it does break down... into CO2 and water vapor (also a very powerful GHG).

All levers need to be pulled, even the methane one, as they have "eq" forcing effects which are accelerating warming, which risks accelerating more tipping points. This isn't a situation where we can pick and choose what not to do, and ending methane emissions from fossil fuels and animal farming sector is a low hanging fruit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

My understanding is different https://theconversation.com/climate-explained-methane-is-short-lived-in-the-atmosphere-but-leaves-long-term-damage-145040

Also, we cant afford any of it. As soon as we end up in a dustbowl situation a world war will likely be the result.

Once nations are in wartime survival mode, carbon resuction will be out the window and I sincerely think we'll turn the earth into an uninhabitable hellscape where everyone dies.

Everyone. It may take a while for the last people to go, but I do mean everyone. People will construct elaborate bunker systems and try to make self contained farming centers, but the reality is that stuff is way harder than it looks and all it takes is one disease, one fire or power disaster, or one psycho to destroy the crops, whoch is likely after a hundred or so years and woop, everyone dies.