this post was submitted on 30 May 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] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I’m worried this will only fuel the climate change deniers.

My most recent one said: “It isn’t proven that it will affect us humans negatively”. Dude we’re in the 6th mass extinction… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It will probably go the way COVID deniers did. If you do too much and prevent it altogether, people won't believe you or say you overreacted. If you don't do enough, people will complain that you're not doing your job.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

sysadmins in a nutshell

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

fuel the climate change deniers

they will always do that anyway, otherwise they wouldnt still be deniers.

we can always punch them in the face.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Maybe, like COVID, the deniers will die first. Then the rest of us can get on with saving our asses.

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

Unfortunately, that's not generally the case. Everyone is affected, in particular also the ecosystems that support our lives.
And we're seeing disproportionate effects in poorer countries, because those cannot afford AC, isolated housing or rebuilding from the increased flood, storms, forest fires etc. that are already taking place.

There is some things one can do when recognizing the changing climate, like:

  • selling your beachfront property,
  • moving into colder regions,
  • selecting crops that can deal with the harsher weather,
  • ensuring a flood can seep away in your city,
  • planting trees to provide shade + the cooling effect of evaporation + hindrance for storms.

But yeah, it's still going to be a wild ride for everyone.

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

Just like COVID, it's going to be poor people who will die first/are already dying

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

JFC DON'T tell them! They'll start to get lazy and relapse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

The problem with that is that a lot of green technology is of a big investment in the beginning, but cheaper to operate type. So once you have them, it is hard for fossil fuels to compete. We also do not have low fossil fuel prices right now. Both oil and gas are rather expensive and coal can not compete with gas in most places. More so green technologies also have a lobby. So you have the fossil fuel industry in decline, which means less money for lobbying. The laws and systems to replace them are in working already. The simple truth is that passing laws is much harder then to prevent a law from being passed. Obviously the fossil fuel industry has already failed to do the later in many places.

This is one of the reasons we currently see a lot of far right groups poping up everywhere. Fossil fuel has to rewrite the laws. Centrists do not want to do anything and leftists are for the most part for more anti fossil fuel laws. So the far right is their only hope to grow the fossil fuel industry.