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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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The Asian Developments Bank: “Why 100% Renewable Generation Won’t Bring Energy Security”; ADB is wrong though (blogs.adb.org)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by mambabasa to c/climate
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Please don't downvote this because this is a bad opinion.

Of course it's a bad opinion. I'm sharing this here because I want to talk about it being a bad opinion.

Why is it a bad opinion?

I actually agree with the basic premise but reject the conclusion. I agree that 100% renewable energy cannot bring about energy security in the context of endless growth, but I reject the conclusion that therefore we need to keep burning fossil fuels. The solution, I think, is for degrowth, a coordinated scaling down of production of worthless things while at the same time scaling up provisions of human well being. Make more homes, less golf courses. Make more vegetables and grains for human consumption rather than animal feed. Fund hospitals, not wars. If we scale back production while at the same time meeting a high level of human needs, 100% renewable energy will certainly be enough for human needs. 100% renewable energy will never be enough for capitalist endless growth, but it will be enough for a solarpunk future.

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[–] MrMakabar 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Published: 7 September 2015

This is nearly a decade old. Since then prices for wind and solar have come down a lot. Solar panels were at 0.68$/W in 2015 and ended up at 0,26$/W in 2022. This obviously makes renewables more competitive. Also looking at current UN population projections. They project peak population in Asia in 2055. Less people means less consumption. So that should help. Some countries, like China, Japan and South Korea have declining populations today.

So honestly it is a built it once and then just keep it running kind of situation. Obviously Asias countries are in very different situations as well. Pakistan really should improve the material condition of its population, whereas Japan, should focus on replacing its fossil fuel infrastructure.

[–] mambabasa 3 points 8 months ago

Good to know then.