this post was submitted on 04 Nov 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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[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The reality is that the Democrats are investing huge amounts in green energy

The Biden administration initially expected the law to provide some $370 billion in spending and tax credits for clean energy projects, but other groups expect the figure to be far higher as more companies and households take advantage of the law’s tax credits. The Brookings Institution estimated the I.R.A. could be worth $780 billion through 2031, while Goldman Sachs set a potential total cost of $1.2 trillion.

[–] dontgooglefinderscult@lemmings.world 1 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

370 billion, mostly for tax credits that are actively being abused by bad actors, all that don't address the actual problems. Every house could have solar panels and every car could be an EV and it simply would not be enough to get anywherr near carbon neutrality, much less the needed carbon negative to avoid 2c by 2030.

The reality is China proved it was possible to lower emissions by actual green investment, building more green energy production last year than the total green energy capacity of the US. They've hit peak emissions while the US hasn't. This isn't meant as a China good thing, to preempt that nonsensical reply, but merely as a direct example of what the US could do given they have similar (though slightly lower) GDP. At this point in time China produces more green energy than the US produces total.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The US could do similar, but the Democrats couldn’t on account of all legislation in the last decade needing Republican approval to not get filibustered, and Republicans hating the idea of any subsidy that interferes with the “free market” outside of oil subsidies.

While the US government could absolutely be doing more in theory, in practice I think the climate legislation the Democrats have managed to get past Republican obstruction has been very impressive.

[–] dontgooglefinderscult@lemmings.world 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Dems have actively chosen to keep the filibuster despite having multiple opportunities to remove it as a rule.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Multiple opportunities, in the last few decades? To my knowledge the only point they had the votes to was that one three month period where they got the ACA though, before that was in the 70s when party line votes were pretty rare.

[–] dontgooglefinderscult@lemmings.world 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It's a simple majority vote on the start of a session, Dems have had a simple majority plenty of times

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 1 points 7 hours ago

A simple majority vote via the nuclear option could be undone just as quickly once things shifted, and from my understanding would never be an option in future if done once. To actually officially change the rules and eliminate the filibuster in a way that isn’t just procedural a two thirds majority is required.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 1 points 14 hours ago

US emissions peaked back in 2007

This leads me to believe that you're making an appeal to ignorance.