this post was submitted on 12 Jun 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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I'll note that this falls into the realm of highly-uncertain efforts with a significant chance of failure. It shouldn't be considered as an alternative to ending fossil fuel use, but at most, something to reduce the harm we've already caused.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

a well written, worthwhile read.

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

the Atlantic tends to have good writing. It's important to avoid confusing "good writing" with "full solution" — the two are not in the slightest the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I'm not sure what you mean. This is in depth, quality journalism on a niche topic within the sphere of climate change. I can't imagine anyone is trying to parse out a "full solution" from this, and the article touches on the evolving thinking in the community about how this type of work could be perceived as a distraction. The scale of the potential operation is fascinating.

Thanks for posting the article and your work on this community, I often find interesting pieces here I wouldn't otherwise come across!