this post was submitted on 15 Nov 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] 1 points 1 day ago

Because chinwags like the COP are accomplishing nothing, and there's not enough direct action.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because we keep emitting?

There's no mystery to this, there's too much money in petroleum for too many people for us to just stop using it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

we just need to use natural gas as a bridge fuel trust me, let's just build pipelines and special refineries and special cargo ships that can handle these new fossil fuel supply chains. just a bridge fuel though just until solar catches up don't worry they're just multi decade leases of course we're going to hit net zero trust me just use gas it's clean burning trust me just ship the gas across the world it's the greenest choice there is just trust me

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just one more petroleum derivative fuel bro, one more and I promise we'll be off of it for good trust me bro just one more

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

It's hilarious how fracking is not seen as the junkie desperation it plainly is, hunting round their body to get the needle into a usable vein. Pumping in shit to eke out another hit even though it poisons the land.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 days ago

Ya huge mystery huh?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Big polluters know their resources are finite. They’re deliberately cooking the planet because after some threshold has been reached, they’re going to pivot their enormous infrastructural and industrial capacities into geoengineering.

We’ll be paying BP and Shell to keep the planet cool eventually.

</Tinfoil hat>

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 days ago

That's indeed tinfoil-hattery. These companies care about quarterly profits and they extrapolate the future from the past (where nothing bad ever happened to them). They may find another business model eventually but they'll make it up on the go.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They're extracting as much as possible until the starship is ready and the base on mars is complete.

Or

The new alien overlords like it hot.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Bruh even a +5°C war-torn Earth is an infinitely better place to live than Mars. Mars would just be quieter.

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

It's only going to take a few more years as hot as the last two, for the ice mass at the poles to be depleted enough that the Earth will be absorbing more heat from the sun than it reflects.

This is called the Blue Ocean Event and it will set off the Clathrate Gun.

Once those happen (and they're going to, soon) the planet is quite literally going to be cooked in it's own atmosphere. Not much survives being cooked.

And while we're on the topic of apocalyptic and yet fully foreseen disasters that most people are still somehow oblivious to:

Did you know that we're going to be 40% over capacity on fresh water globally by 2030?

And that when this drought reduces humanity's numbers by several billion (and if the BOE doesn't happen first), the rest of us are still going to starve to death anyway, because 90% of top soil globally is at risk of depletion by 2050.

You might want to look all those things up, and maybe book a therapy appointment or something.

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

I hear your concerns, man. But a cursory look at the current science behind how we describe things like BOE and Clathrate Gun don’t leave us with mere years between now and instant hotpot catastrophe.

I don’t think it’s useful (if your goal is to promote the mitigation of these events and a livable world for future generations) to catastrophise at that pitch and make it sound like we’re fucked.

We’re not fucked. Things are going to get a lot harder. A lot harder. Much badness. But we’re not fucked. There’s room to work here. And we need to start doing a LOT of work without making it sound like starting wouldn’t do us any good.

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

I get that you have hope, but magical thinking isn't going to fix this unless you are literally capable of magic or you have a time machine powered by positive thoughts or something.

We are already globally over capacity on fresh water. Crops are already failing. The earth is already at heat storage capacity. Carbon emissions are still rising. Population numbers are still rising. Capitalist industry is still posting record profits.

Most people won't even consider a vegan diet and campaigning for community gardens and bike lanes isn't going to magically increase the heat storage capacity of the oceans.

So I am genuinely asking you, mitigation of resourse depletion, works how? Mitigation of thermodynamics works how?

What type of hard work do you think can fix this?

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

Accusing me of magical thinking and then elaborating on or reiterating your point sort of closes the door on this discussion.

I could copy and paste a bunch of stuff, add a bunch of links. I don’t think it would bring us closer.

The scientific consensus (as I understand it and you’ve yet to convince me otherwise) is that global freshwater supplies are unevenly distributed but far from depleting; crop failures are regional and gradually being mitigated by advances in agriculture; oceans can still continue absorbing heat with severe ecosystem impacts, but there isn’t any reason to use language like “full capacity” limits unless you’re misrepresenting the facts to scare people; population growth is slowing, with consumption patterns, not numbers, driving resource strains.

I want to reiterate: you are not helping the issue by telling people the end is nigh. You’re also not being honest, so long as you’re claiming to have kept abreast of the way experts in these fields are talking.

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

At 5° there wouldn't be life to fight wars. Or land.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

Cause Oligarchs that make money from it sponsor these and own everything

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago

Very specifically, because we are building out additional power infrastructure for AI. That means we keep the dirty sources online longer.