this post was submitted on 07 May 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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Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity | They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. The technology is expanding (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 6 months ago by silence7 to c/climate
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[–] NielsBohron@lemmy.world 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

We could have avoided burning a ton of fossil fuels if nuclear hadn't been demonized in the 60's, but as it stands, that ship has sailed. Let's skip that stage on the tech tree and move to fully renewable!

Edit: I guess I should say that I think nuclear will and should continue to be a pivotal part of any smart grid for a long time, since it fills a niche that "true" renewables can't yet. I just don't think pushing to build them now is ideal, as it's more pressing to decommission all fossil fuels plants ASAP by any means necessary (which might mean using only the existing nuclear plants while we ramp up production of other green energy sources)

[–] growsomethinggood@reddthat.com 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I think you are touching on something important in your edit, which is that diversity of energy source is important for long term grid stability. Solar+battery storage is looking really good right now and I completely agree we need to get on that asap. But there's no magic bullet, no one technology that negates the need for any other. Headlines inherently reduce complex issues into bite sized information, but it's important for science literacy to remember that things are complex and nuanced! We need wind and solar and hydroelectric and energy storage and nuclear and more.

[–] NielsBohron@lemmy.world 7 points 6 months ago

The tricky point here is that fossil fuels were a silver bullet for a long time! There is so much energy in those chemical bonds and they just bubbled out of the ground, so why wouldn't we use that for everything?

Trying to get people to understand nuance and using the right tool for the job is a lot trickier since most people inherently resist complexity as a solution for replacing a simple technology.