this post was submitted on 12 Aug 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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Nights in Las Vegas Are Becoming Dangerously Hot (www.nytimes.com)
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[–] dingdongmetacarples@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If the Hoover Dam becomes inoperable, the entire Southwest US is in trouble. It provides water for farms and power, both mostly in California. Las Vegas would actually be the last to feel the effects of Lake Mead drying up because they've installed a deeper "straw" to draw water from, along with a pumping station.

https://www.snwa.com/where-southern-nevada-gets-its-water/our-regional-water-system/intake-no-3.html

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's a lot of farming being done right in the US Southwest now that's only profitable because the water is massively subsidized. The first thing to do is to make them pay something closer to the real cost. Nobody should be growing rice, cotton or almonds in the Central Valley. That's just burning public money and squandering a scarce resource. If they can't figure out a more suitable alternative crop, let 'em go bust.

As for A/C, it's a lousy, wasteful solution to hot climates compared to passive construction, insulation, heat pumps and other technologies (some very old). But anyone in Vegas with a pool or lawn needs some immediate education. And I'd be reluctant to encourage people to live in places like that when there are more temperate places they could live in if they wanted to.

[–] dingdongmetacarples@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

The farmers have the most senior water rights, so there's a lot of legal hurdles to that solution. It's definitely something that needs to happen though. Letting them go bust means the Southwest US needs to get food from somewhere else, most likely shipped in on trucks. It's not as simple as people make it out.

Heat pumps are AC in reverse, so why's that so much more efficient? And most new homes are built with good insulation and lawns are illegal for new homes. Most grass has been removed and replaced with rocks, only older homes are allowed to keep their lawns. There's cash incentives to get them to remove it though. In fact, Las Vegas has actually decreased it's water usage in the past few decades, while increasing the population.

More energy is used in the US to heat homes than to cool them, so I'm really not seeing why people should live elsewhere. At least not from a pure energy use standpoint.