this post was submitted on 11 Oct 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.

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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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[–] [email protected] 66 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

This will be great for exposing fuckhead companies who are emitting way more than they claim

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

And then fining them the equivalent of raising their employee pay to a livible wage for a month!!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Let's start by pointing it at OpenAI.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago

Hopefully “actionable” means that a sister satellite can vaporise the owning company’s ceo and director from orbit, that would be nice.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How will the natural gas lobby claim it's so much better than coal now that we can see methane leaks? NASA doesn't seem to care about capitalism

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

But NASA does care about Congress approving its budget requests. And the Republican controlled House and Republican filibustering Senate minority do not want anything done about climate change.

Thus sadly, it may lead to blowback against NASA by the currently insane US right. There's already talk about elimination of NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration), privatizing its weather forecasting, and restructuring NASA's Earth observation initiatives that involve climate research.

Regardless of who wins the presidency next month and who has the majority in either house of Congress, the Republican party will try to block such research or dismiss its findings.

If Trump wins, he and his Agenda 2025 cronies (including his VP) will manipulate him to rip anything like this out. Plus Trump's boss Putin needs to keep selling fossil fuels as the main thing keeping Russia's economy afloat.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Yes we live in dark and depressing times. Future generations (if they exist and retain historical record) will judge us harshly with good reason, though the ones most likely to survive are the ones selling out our futures now.

But free market freedon fuck yeah we're fucking free we're so free to die

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Now we can see all the petrochemical companies do crime!

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

Any chance this is sensitive enough to pick up methane emissions from particularly gassy individuals in their homes? Asking for a friend.

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

Seems like a useful monitoring and accountability tool. :) Especially if its quantity estimates can be made accurate.