this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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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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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm an indifferent cook, so I don't really have a dog in this hunt. But I'd like to continue to have natural gas to run my whole-home generator in emergencies.

[–] RvTV95XBeo 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For an individual today? Fine. Long-term at scale? It seems silly and prohibitively expensive to maintain a bunch of leaky natural gas infrastructure just for a handful of seldom operated generators.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Very true. If solar ever settles into a truly functional technology, we won't need generators

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If solar ever settles into a truly functional technology,

If solar what???

Solar beats the everloving shit out of any other power generation source. Not only that but batteries for solar backup are dropping in price right off a cliff.

If you haven't looked in the past couple years you really should: If you can afford the initial capital expenditure it's more than worth it in savings.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I look into it every few years. It doesn't yet pay for itself, at least for me, and I haven't yet found a company that I think will be around in 20 years to honor its warranties. I live in an area with hurricanes, so I need to know my equipment can be repaired or replaced in a timely manner. I would dearly love to find a system that lets me kick the power company to the curb, but it's not quite there yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ah yeah hurricanes definitely become a limiting factor there.

You do get a 30% tax credit though right now if that wasn't part of your calculus

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah. For now I can choose the wind and/or solar option with my power company which I do. Theoretically my power comes 100% from wind at the moment.