this post was submitted on 08 May 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.

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Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results for humanity, poll of hundreds of scientists finds | Planet is headed for at least 2.5C of heating with disastrous results (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I'll note that 2.5°C of warming by 2100 is a significant improvement over the trajectory we were on a decade ago, even if still far from where we need to be

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Height absolutely matters because frontal area, along with Cd, affects drag directly. Drag is the primary force that needs to be overcome at higher speeds per the road load equation. Your opinion has nothing to do with it, it's all just basic physics. You're right though that fuel economy has been mostly increasing for decades, but that is in spite of vehicle largess, not because size is irrelevant. Imagine how much better off we'd be if folks didn't commute in trucks for no reason at all. And a big yes to transit, biking, and human centered development.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1237-may-9-2022-fuel-economy-all-vehicle-classes-has-improved

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

I understand how drag works, I was more referring to what seemed to me as a comment on how increased height in vehicles has made fuel economy worse, when that is not exactly true. Yes it does decrease economy, especially if compared to the height of a car, but if we are referring to "used to", the newer taller vehicles are still more economical than their shorter older predecessors

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

There are however billions more vehicles since the 70s, so I think it's kinda a moot point.