this post was submitted on 03 Nov 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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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My biggest reason for not knowing who Jill Stein is is that Jill Stein doesn't exist a month beyond any elections in either direction.

She is simply a spectre of a false belief in voting practices.

[–] ghen 6 points 1 day ago

She was a pretty big voice in the Occupy Wall Street movement before she started taking Russian money in force. Now she's a nobody.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How the hell can the presidential candidate of the Green Party own a MILLION DOLLARS OF OIL AND GAS SHARES? How can you complain about Israel murdering children in Gaza, when you own shares in Raytheon, which sells and produces weapons for and in Israel?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Where are you seeing this?

The article claims that she has total stock market index funds in her retirement account and not individual oil and gas shares…

They even link the full financial disclosure that reveals as much: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/un8w34x8anzochjjik2dw/2024-Stein-PFD.pdf?rlkey=no0vsygaof1096tgm3843kwup&st=10vwoc8x&dl=0

This is literally insulting to anyone with any understanding of “investments”:

In January 2024, Stein reported having between $250,001 and $500,000 invested in the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund (VXUS), which invests in TC Energy Corp, owner of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Stein profits from the Keystone XL Pipeline she claims to oppose.

This is a super sketchy way to portray a very normal total market index funds…

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago

And everybody knows that total market includes fossil fuel and arms companies. That is why there are ESG funds, which do exclude the really nasty companies. Those are pretty easy to buy and can also cover a large field of investments. She has lobbied for divestement from fossil fuels, so she should very much be aware that those options are around, while this has been pointed out for nearly a decade. So really no excuse for that.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Surely, if you're the Green party leader, you would simply not invest in that particular index fund, and probably would not invest at Vanguard either. When people say you should "divest from fossil fuels", it obviously also means taking your money out of these index funds.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago

I want to get rid of fossil fuels by investing with a company that gives money to fossil fuels!

Surely you can see the problem there?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

the american green party supports greenbacks, not green nature

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (13 children)

Stein and the Greens are also rabidly anti-nuclear, continuing to repeat outdated and debunked nonsense. We can’t plausibly maintain this level of energy use on renewables alone.

That being said, the writer’s claim that Harris is better on climate than Stein is absolutely ridiculous. The Biden/Harris admin set records for fossil fuel extractions, strongly support fracking, waived environmental protections to build Trump’s border wall faster, and want to ban imports of EV’s and solar panels. Plus, their escalating militarism is a carbon nightmare.

Rhetoric won’t save us.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm pro nuclear as well but we absolutely can maintain this level of energy consumption on renewables alone.

The question is cost and risk - I'm for diversification of our grid which includes nuclear.

But it is getting to the point where renewables with backups will be cheaper than coal. That's absolutely something you can run the entire grid off of. You can balance storage requirements with excess production capacity that gets shuttered over the summer etc etc

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The backup is nuclear.

I don’t really care what it costs. We’re trying to save the habitability of the planet. Damn the cost.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

OK, then we just deploy a whole lot of storage capacity as fast as we can to support solar and wind. Nuclear only makes sense if it's cheaper than that, and it's not.

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

Cheaper long term, yes. Higher upfront cost.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Not quite sure which way you're pointing. Nuclear is ridiculously expensive up front. It has to run for a long time at 100% to make any kind of economic sense.

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

I’m not concerned about economic sense. I’m worried about keeping the planet habitable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

And we have another path for that. We really don't need nuclear at this point.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I was a Green Party supporter until Jill Stein kinda took over and I began learning how hypocritical she is. That was 10+ years ago

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