this post was submitted on 03 Apr 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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US experienced staggering growth in solar and wind power over the last decade (grist.org)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Also notable that this growth was hugely market-driven, in spite of what the conservatives will claim about how it's all communism. The renewables are just so cheap. Even with subsidies taken out of the equation, solar clobbers any fossil fuel and wind is competitive. Coal is crazy expensive. Natural gas is barely neutral. Sure, there are some (vastly overstated) intermittency issues with wind and solar (especially if one is pursued without the other since the wind typically blows when the sun doesn't shine) but the technology and policy to address that is progressing rapidly.

The shrewd investor should already be ditching fossils, not doubling down on them. LNG exports make absolutely no market sense; they are just a handout to big business that ALSO will destroy the planet.

The far bigger deal is getting the governments of the world to STOP doing incentives for already-profitable fossil companies. Stop giving them cheap/free permits. Stop letting them get away with not mitigating their pollution. Stop giving them tax breaks. Stop treating them favorably on the grid. Stop giving more pork to these useless, evil fucks.uture.