this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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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:

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Is nuclear power a fix for climate change? Experts think it's too dangerous (www.salon.com)
submitted 9 months ago by silence7 to c/climate
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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Personally, I'm expecting solar and wind energy to become so cheap to produce, i.e. multiple times cheaper than nuclear, that storage can be paid from that difference.

Here's a fun graph illustrating the current trends:

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago

I hope that's true, but so far, there aren't great solutions for large-scale electricity storage. For individual users, you can get large lithium-ion batteries that can store enough power for 2-3 days for a typical American home, but last time I checked those were in the $5000+ range, exclusive of the costs of wiring your home so that you have an immediate back-up in case of power failure.

And, just so I'm clear, I'm 100% in favor of renewables like hydro, solar, wind, and even waves.

[–] Davidchan@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 9 months ago

The only reason nuclear is not outpacing solar and wind right now is because nuclear phobia about accidents that happened before half their critics were even born and those flaws fixed a long time ago. If Nuclear benefitted from the same RnD and public support as other green energy sources we probably would have functional thorium reactors so cheap to run rural comminities could run co-ops operating minature versions to power towns under 1000 homes.

Despite nuclear being shunned and forced out using technology thats stagnated since the 80s its still competitive. With renewed funding and grants to develop further generations of reactors they could easily be the cheapest and safest per kwh bar none.

[–] bouh@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Competing for land space will surely not be a problem...