this post was submitted on 04 Feb 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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It begins: Ethiopia set to become first country to ban internal combustion cars | automobiles cannot enter Ethiopia, unless they are electric [Edit: Strong indications this is unreliable] (electrek.co)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Edit: It's looking like this wasn't reliably reported

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[–] Varyk 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I agree that car accessories like radios, seat belts, and CD players have improved significantly, but that does not translate to ICEs themselves being significantly improved.

Combustion engines:

1923 - 14 mpg

1966 - 13.5 mpg

1991 - 16 mpg

2019 - 25mpg

Electric cars:

2009 - 85 mpge

2019 - 113

Drivetrains, fuel efficiency, sustainable fuel (solar panels built into the body of the car), battery tech improvement, and so on.

Electric cars have all of the accessory improvements you're talking about related to ICEs, but are also rapidly minimizing all the relevant material, environmental, and even maintenance costs of manufacturing and operating vehicles to become more sustainable at a much more rapid pace than ICEs have.

[–] 31337 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Those numbers will go down once everyone is driving 4wd EV Suburbans with half-inch steel plate armor (you know, just so they feel their kids are safe) :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I'm hoping the current lack of sedan/small car options and growing bad press surrounding large vehicles will lead to a resurgence of small cars in 7-15 years, but I doubt it will in reality

[–] Varyk 1 points 9 months ago

Haha, yeah, we'll have to see the balance between technological progress and the burden of American ego.