this post was submitted on 12 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:

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Revealed: Big Oil Told 70 Years Ago That Fossil Fuel Emissions Could Impact ‘Civilization’ (www.desmog.com)
submitted 1 week ago by solo to c/climate
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New documents show how a deceptive PR strategy pioneered in 1950s California first exposed the risk of climate change and then helped the industry deny it.

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[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I assume you mean net zero, which isn't zero emissions but countering existing and hopefully lower emissions with some tech to remove its output. Actual zero emissions is...well, that's cessation of human activity. And there would still be emissions from the feedbacks already started with either.

Let's be clear, human emissions even at our current rate are just a percentage of total emissions, and act as a pushing force to drive things further. Taking that away is better, but it doesn't stop the direction we've set things in motion. If we could somehow pull carbon back down to under 300ppm or even less...that would start to brake things, at least reduce the heat input finally, but so much other damage has been done that I think even that kind of miracle wouldn't be enough.

I get your stance, we have to do what we can now to minimize the future results, and I agree. I just disagree on where even the best actions from humans (which are very idealistic) would get us.

[–] silence7 3 points 1 week ago (4 children)

The main problem with carbon removal is that it's expensive, and removing it doesn't produce a product you can sell. So in practice, doing something like what you describe within a generation requires a system of taxation which absorbs 40% or so of total economic output, and uses it to sequester carbon. That seems, to put it mildly, politically very difficult.

[–] Timolarch@mastodon.social 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

@silence7 @Rhaedas

Isn't the exception biochar?

[–] silence7 2 points 1 week ago

Maybe. It's of fairly limited resale value compared with the cost of producing it and transporting it. I don't know of anybody making it near me with the expectation that they can profit as a result; I mostly see small-scale production when doing things like disposing of hazard trees

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