this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2024
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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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Inside the Republican Attacks on Electric Vehicles (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 8 months ago by silence7 to c/climate
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[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The frontman for the #1 EV car in America (Tesla) ain't exactly a liberal you know.

EDIT: Note that Elon Musk is very much a hate-filled memer. His arguments kill other clean technologies, such as California's high speed rail project. (See how Hyperloop was proposed as a fake project to kill the high-speed rail public transit politics).

I'm not "against EVs". I'm mostly against the bullshit that Elon Musk has brought to this discussion. EVs can be more efficient (especially as LFP chemistry is mastered, unfortunately by the Chinese, but hopefully we can bring that tech to the USA). We need to work on more advanced chemistries (LFP, or better), we should work on cleaner technologies, more durable batteries, etc. etc. Biden is right to also focus on American Workers / American Built batteries (so even if the Chinese LFP chemistry is superior, we need to "bring it home" or build a superior tech like Silicon Batteries, etc. etc. )

Tesla is falling behind technologically. Their only trick so far has been to kill other projects that threaten them (ex: ethanol, hydrogen, high speed rail projects, etc. etc.). That's fine, Tesla has played its role in meming pro-environmentalism to the greater public, we just gotta remove the toxicity in the EV argument and bring us back to a pro-Environmental stance IMO.

Elsewhere, I'm pushing green tech like Hydrogen and Switchgrass Ethanol, Kerosene and Syngas. Experimental tech should remain that: experimental. We need to keep investing into them and hope for the best. EVs are just one potential future, experimenting with other chemistries in the meantime ("just in case" we find something better) needs to be left open. There is a potential future where H2 is superior if some problems are solved. EVs are just ahead right now, but not necessarily over the next 10 years. An environmentalist would support scientists continuing to explore these other paths as long as a green future / carbon-neutral technology remains in view.

Only asshats like Elon Musk try to shit on competing technologies. So try not to be that kind of toxic EV supporter.