this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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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:

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Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 months ago by solo to c/climate
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[–] Skua@kbin.earth 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't see how you're not getting this.

Please recognise the difference between me not understanding you and me thinking that you are wrong.

All carbon emissions are getting us further away from the holocene climate.

All net emissions. If your process releases carbon at the end but captured the same amount of carbon at the start, you have not released any net carbon.

Maybe you're acting under the assumption that the trees wouldn't have grown

I'm acting under the assumption that they would have died anyway. As they do. When they decompose naturally, they release their carbon. Forests stop capturing more net carbon once they mature because they reach a point at which stuff is dying and releasing it as fast as new stuff is growing and capturing it.

The biggest problem with biomass is land use. In terms of area used per unit energy, it is terrible compared to basically every other option. Even hydro. This can be mitigated with good forestry practices, but it's a factor to be aware of and does rule biomass out as a really big contributor to a clean energy system.

[–] Tiresia 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I’m acting under the assumption that they would have died anyway. As they do. When they decompose naturally, they release their carbon.

Okay, glad to understand that the issue is that you didn't understand my first comment or any comment that came after it.

One last time: what I'm saying is that you bury the wood to prevent it from decomposing and releasing its carbon, as an alternative to burning it. And that as an alternate source of electricity you use something that doesn't produce as much emissions, like solar, wind, or nuclear. And if you think burying wood is bad for any reason, then setting it on fire is bad for the same reason.

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

At literally no point have I said burying wood is a good or bad idea, but I don't think we're going to see eye to eye here

[–] Tiresia 1 points 2 months ago

On that we agree.