this post was submitted on 13 Sep 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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Democrats seek to tax fossil fuel companies over climate change (thehill.com)
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While the Republican majority in the House means that this kind of thing won't pass this session, it gives a sense of what Democrats might try to pass if they win enough seats.

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[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What about cutting subsidies? Make the price of fuel more realistic to force reductions.

This would primarily impact low income families who can't afford electric vehicles and who are dependent on fossil fuel sources for cooking and heating. It's worth discussing these options, and at some point the issue will have to be forced, but the impact needs to be mitigated with forethought.

real solutions have to be hard.

This isn't necessarily true. Wind and solar power have become the most cost-effective power generating options, to the point where almost all new grid power generation is one or the other (see the Lazard report on Levelized Cost of Energy). Building anything else in the current market looks like a financial mistake. I'm pretty sure this is why the recent attempts to build new nuclear power never get beyond the initial planning - the falling cost of wind and solar keeps undercutting their projected $/MWh. This happened because of government subsidies driving the development of wind and solar until they became viable, and it didn't require a direct negative impact on anybody.

The real takeaway here is that government subsidies are very effective for turning prototype technologies into effective solutions.