this post was submitted on 08 Oct 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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Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier (phys.org)
submitted 2 months ago by ODGreen to c/climate
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Maybe EVs are not a comprehensive climate solution??

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[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that to effectively fight climate change you need to cut emissions in five to ten years,

Which automatically excludes "The Great eCar Transition" as that takes generations.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Generations? The average American passenger vehicle is 14 years old, so if tomorrow all new cars were electric, you would have haved car transport emissions within 15 years, and be at a 75 percent reduction within the first generation. Cut out fossil fuel subsidies so people are paying the 8 or so dollars per gallon it actually costs for gas and incentivize US manufacturers to actually build affordable cars and you’ll see much quicker adoption that what normal wear and tear causes.

Of course that isn’t going to happen tomorrow in the US, but you are also going to have a lot of vehicles already sold in the decades prior and which tend to stay on the road longer.

Compared to the fifteen or so years it takes to build a single light rail line, much less intercity high speed rail, and you are not going to be able to replace half of all car traffic in a single build cycle, much less reach 75 percent within thirty years, by which point you’re trying to replace all traffic in the very small towns and unincorporated areas that even nations renowned the world over for their public transit connectivity often struggle to reach.

Does the US need to build more mass transit, yes. Can it do so faster than it already buys new cars, no.

[–] veganpizza69@lemmy.vg 1 points 2 months ago

Go look at their models instead of doing napkin math.

Then go look at where the displaced ICE cars go, let me know how many of those are going straight to the junk yard.