this post was submitted on 26 Apr 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.

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Rivers are the West’s largest source of clean energy. What happens when drought strikes? (grist.org)
submitted 6 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/climate
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[–] Cagi@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Wind and solar. They have downsides, like they all do, you're right, but they don't obliterate sensitive ecosystems of threatened species. The downsides to nature are significantly reduced with wind and solar. Tidal looks good too, but I don't know enough about it to give it the official "Some Random Guy on Lemmy Stamp of Approval ".

[–] pumpkinseedoil@feddit.de 1 points 6 months ago

I'm no expert so I don't know what causes more damage, but the production of photovoltaic cells also is by no means environmentally friendly. People die, ecosystems get destroyed, ...

And people argue that birds fly into wind generators and die, idk how much damage that is comparatively but probably the least. So from an environmental perspective, as a layman, I'd rank them wind > water > sun > non-renewables (nuclear > gas > coal).

But wind (and sun) always changes, so it's impossible to only have wind (and sun). You need:

  • Something stable that carries a large percentage (for example water in rivers or at the end of lakes (so basically at the start of a river)).

  • Something flexible that can quickly be increased or decreased (for example pumped hydro storage power stations, bonus points there for also being able to use energy when there's too much wind/sun; or non-renewables (burn more gas, get more electricity))

So even if we assume that wind and sun are better than water we still need either water or non-renewables. I'd say that's an easy choice.