this post was submitted on 31 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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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U.S. oil production hit a record under Biden. He seldom mentions it. (wapo.st)
submitted 10 months ago by silence7 to c/climate
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The politics of oil are particularly tricky for Democrats, whose chances for victory in next year’s elections can hinge on whether young, climate-focused voters come out in big numbers.

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[–] MrMakabar 2 points 10 months ago

There are other options. A lot of petroleum consumption comes from transport and we have electric trains on some scale for a century. That is a really good option to help out with freight transport and a longer distances passenger transport. HSR can even compete with flying fairly well. Proper urban design enables more walking and cycling. Lead based batteries have been used for small trucks for quite some time. It works, but only for very short journeys.

For the rest we have ethanol for example. Brazil did that on a huge scale and developed a special kind of sugar cane, which makes biofuel not all that insane. Oil based chemistry is really just organic chemistry. We can do not with plant based non fossil fuel oils or biogas. Btw biogas and biodiesel are also interesting options, which we have on some scale for a long time.

For replacing oil boilers for heating we have district heating systems using industrial waste heat and things like electrode boilers for a long time. We have had nuclear for decades and hydro is pretty much the oldest type of power station.

Most of these options are bad today, as we have better ones. But getting rid of oil was always possible. Especially with the lower populations we had a few decades ago. It would have been hard work and cost a lot of money though.