this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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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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[–] Neato@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Heating is accelerating. IF we stop adding greenhouse gases to the air, the heating should stop. It won't go back down without removing massive amounts of CO2, though.

[–] Hexagon@feddit.it 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It won't stop unless we also remove the greenhouse gases that we put there

[–] OKRainbowKid@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unless I misunderstood, the article claims otherwise.

[–] narp@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, net zero, which some companies and countries pledged to reach until 2050. Unfortunately it's delusional, because they count on technological fixes being invented in the future and until then it's "business as usual".

Industries like cement, chemical and steel will never be net zero without carbon capture for example.

[–] Cannacheques@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Organic plant based cement is already a possibility, yet we're still using the good old mixes purely to avoid change

[–] burgersc12@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I feel like this is closer to the truth. Isn't there a theory that theres about a 2 decade lag between the CO2 (or equivalent) being released and the effects of heating?

[–] Spzi@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

IF we stop adding greenhouse gases to the air, the heating should stop.

Unless we crossed a tipping point. If so, the heating could continue although we stopped.

[–] BigMcLargeHuge@mstdn.social 6 points 1 year ago

@Neato @silence7

But how will the shareholders get that 17th yacht?

[–] signor@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So we can continue on with increasingly worse warming of the planet, OR we can follow the plot of snowpiercer.

[–] Neato@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah. Go Matrix and scorch the sky. Definitely no unintended consequences.

[–] Tavarin@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

There are safer ways to sequester CO2.

[–] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

The atmosphere stores negligible heat (only weather, not climate), but the ocean has a much greater capacity than the atmosphere, for both heat and CO2 (mainly in the form of HCO3-), and it takes a long time (centuries - millenia) to fully mix the ocean. Also it takes ages for icecaps to melt. If you really stop adding CO2, concentration in the atmosphere will go down slowly as it mixes into deeper ocean, but not back to preindustrial, the surface temperature will likewise go down slowly and partially after a slight lag, but ice will keep melting (-> sea-level rises) for a while. Other gases and aerosols make short term response more complex.
There's no rule of thumb that summarises it, but I made an interactive model - here.