this post was submitted on 06 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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[–] dontgooglefinderscult@lemmings.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Renewables don't have tight profit margins, you're think of nuclear, maybe hydro.

Solar approaches a 100% profit margin after 20 years, wind only ever gets to 90ish but still has the same timeline. Without subsidies, neither oil or coal gets profitable.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

No, i’m thinking of solar.

Over decades a solar system will pay back itself many times over, but that’s irrelevant to the question of how big of a money pile can business throw at politicians in the here and now.

That’s determined by the profit margin for companies manufacturing and installing them, which tend to be rather thin given the highly competitive nature of the market. No solar installer anywhere near the profit that oil companies are raking in, and the people owning the panels are usually paying off the loan to install them, using the profits to build more capacity, or saving, not buying off politicians.

Without subsidies there would be far less profit for oil companies, which is exactly why it is so important for them to ‘reinvest’ some of their recent massive profits into continuing and expanding said subsidies and slowing down the adoption of alternatives. Buying off the government with its own money is a benefit since it leaves more for them.

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

Individual solar is nice, but it's a fraction of a percent of solar capacity. No one is talking about that. Actual solar plants and installations are run by dedicated companies with huge profit margins that currently are all in expansion phases. They make up the majority of solar power installed and operated.

That market is competitive, but not hyper competitive and dirt has a decent lobbying budget, hence Dems including solar subsidies to appease Texas of all states.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 1 points 1 month ago

I also wasn’t talking about individual solar. Utility solar is nearly always divided between manufacturing, installation, and the operator. The operator is the only one benefited by solar’s long term return on investment. Everyone else makes their money in construction, which is very much price competitive.

In my experience none of these groups however have even a fraction of the cash of a company like BP or Exxon Mobile, and what piles of cash they do have tends to be investment in rather than profit from. As it’s a lot harder to spend investors cash on buying regulators than it is to spend incoming profit on it this limits the amount that they can spend on such an endeavor.

There are also a lot more places banning utility scale solar and wind than are oil and gas, so delaying renewables rollout seems like an evidently effective strategy for limiting their lobbying power.