this post was submitted on 07 Feb 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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EVs won over US early adopters, but mainstream buyers aren't along for the ride yet (www.npr.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Imo, it’s because EVs are dumb, expensive, and so far inefficient due to how many batteries are needed for the cars vs how far they can go on a single charge.

Having less cars on the road in general would do more to cut carbon emissions - EVs should replace fossil-fueled cars, yes, but we should be advocating for more public transit and alternative forms of transit like walking and biking before looking towards replacing regular cars with EVs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I get the appeal of saying something provocative like "EVs are dumb" (which could be initially interpreted as an advocacy for ICE cars), and then clarifying your position. Makes for an interesting comment.

However, it's a technically incorrect way to phrase it. Buses, for example, can be ICE or electric. It's not dumb to have public transit electric. You're (correctly) advocating for public transit over personal vehicles, but you shouldn't frame it as electric being a negative. In both personal and public transportation, electric tends to be far better. The only exception atm is for longer trips. Even then though, having a 20 minute break to charge every 300 miles isn't terrible for humans as we get to stretch our legs for a bit, and it's not so much longer than a 3 minute break every 400 miles.

Overall, no EVs are not dumb, they're the future of both personal and public transportation. We should lean towards public, but that public should be electric.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Listen, I am a huge urbanist, would love to see the US and the world transition to car-alternative transit modes. The reality is, cars are not disappearing. Even in the most transit friendly countries, cars still make up an enormous portion of the modes of travel. We need EVs as much as we need alternative modes to be feasible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

More work from home would help too