this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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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.

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Electric heat costs way less than reports say, new data suggests (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 11 months ago by silence7 to c/climate
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[–] ratman150@sh.itjust.works 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah my heat pump runs at ~2kwh but if the heat strips come on it's another 10kw.

[–] Overzeetop@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

From a technical perspective, this is why a colder than average winter will affect (air-source) electric heat pumps more than resistance or fuel sourced heat. As the outside temps go down, the efficiency decreases in a heat pump, so the curve is non-linear. For electric resistance and fuels, the outdoor temperature has a near zero effect, making the increase in cost linear.

Not that it matters too much. Electricity costs in most of the US are relatively stable whereas fuel costs can swing by a factor of five or more from year to year ($2/MMBTU to over $12/MMBTU in the last decade). Oil doesn't play much into heating anymore, but it can also swing by more than a factor of two (From a low of $2/gal to over $5/gal in the last decade). Electric, though, is up by 25% over the last decade (on average) and varies by less than a a couple percent from year to year, slowly increasing at around a 2% average rate.

[–] Uranium3006@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

but your strips only need to come on when it's very cold out. in almost all climates that's only the very coldest days, and in some places like LA it's never too cold

[–] ratman150@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

That's my point, my heat pump uses on avg 1/5th the energy of my heat strips. Comparing the two is at best disingenuous.