this post was submitted on 30 Jul 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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[–] ImWaitingForRetcons@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

And what is the rest of EU’s energy mix?

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] then_three_more@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So it looks like about 69% comes from low carbon sauces (combined renewables+ nuclear)... nice.

[–] MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

73.4% not 69%. 26.6% is fossil fuels.

[–] then_three_more@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I wasn't counting biomass

[–] Oneser@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

The EU runs on 70% on-understandable process and regulation, everyone knows that! Good to see renewables pick up the rest.

[–] eleitl@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Please don't say energy when you mean just electricity. Primary energy demand is what we need to focus on.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

22% of new registered cars are electric (fully or hybrid). Still going to take a while but beginning to make a dent. Re-focussing on rail is another approach but that's also a long-term thing, infrastructure doesn't get expanded over night.

Another big chunk is heat, both domestic and industrial. There's been huge dents due to better insulation and using more waste heat (mostly industrial settings), when it comes to source of heat that's a more difficult thing. France is big on electric heating so they're switching over automatically, Germany historically uses tons of gas and even with the new laws in place it's going to take decades before everything is switched over to heat pumps and stuff.

The last big chunk is industrial feedstock, I'm including steel smelting in that. Long story short Canadian and Namibian hydrogen is in the pipeline. Not literally, but investment-wise. The first smelters using hydrogen are already online, ready to get switched over from blue to green, and I'm quite sure BASF already knows exactly which pipes it needs to double up and which to repurpose, their precursor production stage is already flexible AF, able to react in practically real-time to what's cheapest on the market they'll be ready once the hydrogen comes flowing.

[–] eleitl@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

This is what I meant https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy

Hydrogen from water electrolysis needs massive (look at world gas demand for scale) excess renewable electricity production and support infrastructure which isn't there nor are there credible buildout and financing plans for it. Even if it would happen it would cause demand destruction due to its high price.

This isn't an argument against doing it. It's just about the status quo and mid-term future.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago