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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If you’re a US citizen, no matter where in the world, start by making sure you’re registered to vote. Many districts are gerrymandered, so you’ll want to register as the party that’s likely to win congressional and/or state legislative districts where you live, and vote in that party’s primary.

In addition to voting, you’ll want to influence politics beyond that. Your local races are a good place to start; cities and states control local land use and things like building codes.

To affect Congress, you’ll want to pick swing house districts or swing senate seats. Volunteer for a Democrat and donate accordingly.

For President, the reality is that the Biden/Harris administration has done far more than Trump would even consider, starting with the Inflation Reduction Act, for which Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate, and continuing through numerous executive actions. Getting involved in this race means volunteering, ideally for a climate-focused event like the Tuesday & Thursday phonebanking and if you can, donating to the Harris Victory Fund. If you’re giving really large amounts of money, and the logistics of it work, go to an in-person event and talk to the candidate or other official about climate:

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In recent days, Brazilian climate experts have mulled why. Some city council and mayoral candidates are financially supported by activities that profit from deforestation, such as logging and mining, Agência Pública reported. Reporters found that in several areas with high deforestation—and thus wildfires—leading politicians tended to be silent about forest stewardship.

Brazil’s largest political parties generally do not tout climate consciousness as a top issue. The party that appears the closest to doing so is the ruling Workers’ Party. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promoted forest protection and green energy in international forums. But Lula governs in a coalition with centrist and conservative parties and has embraced fossil fuel exploration domestically.

To Angelo, a former science editor at Brazil’s newspaper of record, Folha de S. Paulo, climate was discussed so little in the campaign in part because “mainstream media tries to replicate the conversations that are happening on social media,” rather than journalists trying to orient the news cycle around policy questions.

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The imaging spectrometer aboard the Carbon Mapper Coalition’s Tanager-1 satellite identified methane and carbon dioxide plumes in the United States and internationally.

Using data from an instrument designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, the nonprofit Carbon Mapper has released the first methane and carbon dioxide detections from the Tanager-1 satellite. The detections highlight methane plumes in Pakistan and Texas, as well as a carbon dioxide plume in South Africa.

The data contributes to Carbon Mapper’s goal to identify and measure greenhouse gas point-source emissions on a global scale and make that information accessible and actionable.

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"Even temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius before bringing temperatures back down — a scenario known as an “overshoot” — could cause sea level rises and other disastrous repercussions that might last millenia."

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This has been one of the inherent problems with any kind of carbon removal — there's no real way to profit from it, so it was unlikely to happen at scale bigger than a PR operation unless government either pays for it or requires firms to pay for it.

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A fossil fuel tycoon tied to Neil Gorsuch and other corporate power brokers are pushing the Supreme Court to help approve a controversial oil train and kill environmental protections.

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