this post was submitted on 28 Aug 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:

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

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Looked at from the outside, it seems that the role of the Republican party is to be so extremist that the Democratic party can avoid being specific about their political program and just pitch themselves as "not extremist". Basically, the Republicans have moved the Overton window in a way that would entirely empower the Democrats to govern from the right.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

Not the case right now. Looking at the poles it is nearly 50:50 between Trump and Harris right now, with the momentum on Harris site.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

not every oil co is american but some are.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

At this point, I’m reading her caginess on a variety of topics as an unfortunate but necessary tactic to combat the fact that big corporate and specific special interest groups (coughAIPACcough) will immediately deploy shitloads of campaign money against her if she says anything more than “wishywashy” about them in an effort to sink her campaign. In the context of Citizens United being effectively the law of the land, this is one of the few pragmatic and effective ways to not run afoul of that whole dynamic. It’s is definitely shitty, but an own-goal in that sense - leading perhaps to a Trump win - is worse. It’d be great if she gets into office, and then drops a TON of detail on these matters, with commentary in the statement indicating that this whole line of reasoning was why she didn’t provide these details before. Something like that might ultimately motivate Congress to do something about that (assuming Democratic (and democratic - small “d”) control after the election, of course).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

🤦🏽‍♂

To paraphrase: "We better do what the AIPAC wants or they will REALY start punishing us!"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Honestly probably not. At least not in a big enough way, as to actually meet somewhat reasonable climate targets. However Biden actually passed some pretty decent laws and just keeping them on the book is going to help a lot. Trump already promised to remove all of them. According to an analysis of CarbonBrief just keeping Bidens laws, compared to Trump would look like this:

If Harris can be brought to pass some decent climate laws, which given her record is certainly possible, then the US might actually reach its way too low climate targets. Obviously state and municipality level changes also can improve it too. However that work has to be done by activists. With Trump there will be no pro climate policy on a federal level at all.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Also the global impact would likely be much greater, due to the co-operation factor.
On the other hand, there is a time-lag to policy impact, also exogenous surprises (superimposing past presidents on that plot may be revealing).

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

Fuck that graph is depressing.

Wish I had received billions in voting power when I was born. But alas, if I had my brain would be broken and I would be incapable of empathy. Such is the way of inevitable destruction for humans.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Two things:

  1. This is the future and that means we can change it today. In this case with new better laws
  2. Falling emissions means weaker fossil fuel industry and stronger green industry. Hence lobbying can be turned around.
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

If you’re going to try to get people to vote for her, do yourself a favor and stop misrepresenting her plans. People generally don’t continue to listen to people who compromised their own integrity to manipulate them.


edit: like the person in this comment section who wants to pretend Kamala is using reverse psychology despite a decade-long career of pandering and unfettered support for corporatism. We're in a sham system, ladies and gentleman. Stop standing up and making yourself look like a fool or even a liar, pretending either side of this two party false dichotomy has even an inkling or conscience about what the voting public actually want. We never even had a say in the matter. To feign otherwise is the act of a class traitor.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Unfortunately so far it's been a losing issue to run on.

I think it's more palatable and fruitful during the run and in office to open doors ahead of you for solar, wind, EVs, and maybe CAFE standards. She might go after contamination.

Thermal coal is the one that we really need to get rid of. But boy oh boy everyone gets weirdly upset about those jobs.