this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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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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Are trains and railroad solarpunkable? (self.climate)
submitted 1 year ago by francisco to c/climate
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A lot of people point to trains efficiency as a way forward to minimize the environmental impact of the transportation sector. But are trains and railroad solarpunkable? Or is it just another "all eggs in the same basket" industry?

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[–] Excrubulent 4 points 1 year ago

I wonder if maglev trains are a good solution to reduce the production of all the dust, lubrication, etc that comes from a wheels-on-rail sort of train. You don't have spining wheels with bearings all exposed to the outside. Rather than using maglev for high speed, we could use it for its reduced environmental impact. Obviously it would be a lot more resource intensive to make each mile of track, but once it's established and matured as a technology it could be much lower maintenance. Also the noise pollution would be much less.