this post was submitted on 22 Dec 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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Unusually, for the actual rocket launch, the CO2 isn’t really the biggest deal here. It’s possible to use rocket fuel without any carbon in it at all – NASA has been using liquid hydrogen for decades, and Jeff Bezos’ rocket used it too. But commercial hydrogen is made in a very carbon-intensive way, although it’s possible to make with zero emissions.

So it’s hard to untangle rocket launch emissions. We need more research before we can be really definitive, although we know it’s not great. As a ballpark, one researcher has suggested that per person, a space tourism flight is 50-100 times worse for the atmosphere than a long-distance plane flight.

In SpaceX’s case, the Scope 1 emissions are the emissions from the rocket fuel, transporting rockets and SpaceX employees about, and any fuel burned during testing and building.

But SpaceX doesn’t publish its emissions widely. Tesla, Inc., one of Elon Musk’s other ventures, is also surprisingly opaque about the emissions required to build its electric cars – something other electric car manufacturers have been much more open about. And Musk himself doesn’t seem particularly interested in addressing this. In fact, he recently tweeted that corporate environmental and social governance – a common method of reporting and addressing environmental impacts – was “the devil incarnate”.

Daddy Elona on the other side launching rockets like hot potates, while some people trying to lower their thermostat and eat ecofriendly food. is it vain ? idk ..

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[–] query@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But commercial hydrogen is made in a very carbon-intensive way, although it’s possible to make with zero emissions.

Even in an ideal case, you're using up energy that could've been used to reduce emissions elsewhere.

[–] the_q@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Yeah and this unnecessary race to space makes no sense for the betterment of this planet and its people.