this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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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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[–] CleverNameAndNumbers@lemmy.ca 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I find articles like this so frustrating. It feels like it is aimed at being a wake-up call to the reader, but at the same time offers no solutions, no advice and still lays the blame at the feet of the average person for not doing enough. "What we have done to ourselves" is not advocate enough I guess?

Perhaps I'm not the target audience for the article. I grew up in an environmentally conscious home we'll before it was trendy and have been worried about climate change for as long as I can remember. It's hard to see an article like this as anything other than an effort to drive traffic...

I'd be happy to hear what others got out of the article if it was more positive than my read of it.

[–] nottelling@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Climate despair is the new climate denial, and these doomer editorials are oil industry propaganda pivoting.

If we can't do anything about it then nothing has to change and rich people keep getting everything they want.

[–] RaincoatsGeorge@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

Dead on accurate. These oil execs know they’ll be dead before there’s any significant impact to them. They justify it as the cost of doing business and ensuring they continue to get a fat paycheck. There’s clear evidence of major corps like the tobacco industry seeding doubt and spreading misinformation when it came out how dangerous their product was. Hell even look at things like the corporate influence in the creation of the food pyramid. Really? Everyone needs a giant fat serving of carbs?? They sure do when there’s money to be made.

It’s no different with climate change. Spread misinformation, seed doubt, when that doesn’t work pivot and play on the despair as your angle. Whatever keeps the paychecks flowing and people focused on anything but the truth.

The greed of humanity will ultimately be our undoing.

[–] PeddlingAmbiguity@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm honestly super sick of this take. I keep seeing people say that the oil industry is responsible for doomers, and it's as bad as climate denial.

Is it though? Of all the people I know, the only ones that take the situation at all seriously are the ones that actually truly believe we are in serious trouble. Only those people are voting primarly based on climate issues, taking part in protests, or making changes to lifestyle. The vast majority of people don't actually believe we are in serious trouble. The vast majority of media is still feeding us the line that things are basically going to be fine with some incremental changes.

Oil companies are advocating for market solutions to the problem and continuing the status quo as long as possible. The idea they are trying to cause the greater population to actually believe they are doomed is insane. A population that actually believes they are doomed might take drastic action.

[–] nottelling@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I dunno, I have the unfortunate experience of association with a lot of libertarian types. All of them believe we're in serious danger, all of them believe it's too late, and all of them are leaning hard into that "fuck you I got mine" mentality because it's too late for anything else.

They do nothing to help except vote libertarian or green.

[–] empiricism@sustainability.masto.host 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@nottelling @CleverNameAndNumbers

"rich people keep getting everything they want"

Even rich people don't *want* death and destruction. They want money!

[–] gornar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Like the song goes, we can't always get what we want!

[–] uphillbothways@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)