this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
134 points (98.6% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5306 readers
448 users here now

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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Wolfgang Cramer’s first involvement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was in the 90s. He worked on the second assessment report, delivered in 1995, which affirmed the science of anthropogenic climate breakdown. At that point, no one could say they did not know what was happening.

Almost three decades on, Cramer was part of the international scientific team that prepared the sixth IPCC report. Its conclusion, delivered in March, issued human civilisation a bleak “final warning” – the biosphere stands on the brink of irrevocable damage.

Now, as diplomats meet in Dubai for the 28th round of the Cop climate talks, in a year predicted to be the hottest on record, and as carbon emissions continue to rise, Cramer is one of 33 IPCC authors among 1,447 scientists and academics in signing an open letter calling on the public to take collective action to avert climate breakdown.

“We are terrified,” they warn. “We need you.”

all 21 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I can't even convince people that I'm a human being but I will be nice to bugs that wander inside

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

If you want to see aggressive activists, look no further than car drivers. The moment a city starts talking about pedestrianizing a road, an angry violent mob of car drivers burns tires and vandalizes. Car drivers are easily triggered the moment they think their life will lose the slightest convenience.

Whereas with climate activists, there are not generally many singular impacting events to get outraged about.. in part because of the constant tiring slew of non-stop bad news that has a continuous numbing effect.

Many actions that are needed will inherently piss off car drivers. We need personal cars to become unaffordable. Public streetside parking for 1 year should cost $3000, not $30. In California, a democrat in a democrat-stronghold area got voted out of office for trying to levy a fuel tax. Although republicans are worse than dems on climate, dems will turn on each other whenever cars are on the chopping block.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

@activistPnk @GreyShuck I am waiting to see the results of the next experiment here. On Monday, we're getting a new high speed bus in its own bus lane that controls the traffic lights all along its route to have priority over cars. How the drivers react should be interesting.

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

Sounds like a great move. I hope as well that medics and fire trucks can override the signal with higher priority.

BTW, did you get a notification @GreyShuck? I just wonder if @'ing a user actually works in Lemmy. Since you only gave the nick without domain, I would not think that would work. (I got a notification myself but that’s because it’s built into Lemmy when replying)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

@activistPnk here in France I think First Responders always have been able to change the lights, or ignore them with sirens blazing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It just feels hopeless. Activism, protests, hell, even irrefutable scientific evidence aren't enough to convince anyone in a position to enact actual positive change. It all comes down to the almighty bottom line.

Until environmentalism becomes more profitable than raping the planet, nothing is going to change. I try my best, but there's only so much I can do as an individual. Its pretty depressing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Climate stress is a thing now. A good de-stressor IMO is to take individual actions. E.g.

Note that individual actions are obviously not a replacement for activism against systemic problems. It just gives stress relief to eliminate reasons to blame yourself while still pursuing collective climate action.

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

Protests are just asking people who have a vested interest in keeping things going to change. They haven't really worked since occupy got smashed, because people in power know they can just get away with deploying tanks and bulldozers.

However, one person's actions can make it much more expensive to keep going in the wrong direction. Direct action gets the goods. Google "monkeywrenching." There's a long history of people saving themselves when people on power refuse.

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