this post was submitted on 12 Aug 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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Nights in Las Vegas Are Becoming Dangerously Hot (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (13 children)

I think there is a big difference between the passive warming / cooling of clothing vs the huge energy requirement, spent resources and emissions required to basically run your entire home / office / factory / hotel as a giant fridge.

[–] Barbarian 28 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (10 children)

Ancient people developed technology to cool their buildings long before electricity. Windcatchers, awnings, evaporative coolers combined with good old-fashioned thermal insulation were all very effective technologies for keeping cool in otherwise inhospitable places.

There are serious talks about reintroducing these in some places to reduce ballooning electricity use from AC.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I think the debate in that is passive vs active rather than just using technology. If the Hoover Dam were to become inoperable, would residents of Las Vegas be able to survive? And if it’s questionable what does aid, or worse a middle of the desert mass evacuation, even consist of? And this avoids even discussing current residents who in the face of increasing temperatures and energy prices may not be able to keep up with cooling needs.

[–] Barbarian 3 points 6 months ago

Oh, absolutely. That would be an instant massive humanitarian disaster. I was more trying to respond to this though:

just pointing out that since the first human put an animal skin over their shoulders we’ve been developing technology to live in places that we’d otherwise not be able to exist in.

I think there is a big difference between the passive warming / cooling of clothing vs the huge energy requirement, spent resources and emissions required to basically run your entire home / office / factory / hotel as a giant fridge.

Essentially going through some of the ancient technologies used for cooling buildings.

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