this post was submitted on 03 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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The thermodynamics of electric vs. internal combustion cars (www.theclimatebrink.com)
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[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Here's a snapshot of the UK grid's energy mix this morning: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live

Gas is the largest single component, but gas plus coal together comprise only 42% of the energy mix. The rest is nuclear and renewables (though I quibble about biomass being counted as a renewable).

And if you look at the change of the energy mix over time, fossil fuel usage has been declining, though taking massive powerplants offline is not a quick process.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I appreciate the stats.

Gas is the largest single component, but gas plus coal together comprise only 42% of the energy mix. The rest is nuclear and renewables (though I quibble about biomass being counted as a renewable).

And if you look at the change of the energy mix over time, fossil fuel usage has been declining, though taking massive powerplants offline is not a quick process.

Its going to be difficult to dislodge combined cycle natural gas. Its very efficient, very cheap to spinup. Yes its still a fossil fuel, but its the best of fossil fuels. 60% efficiency means getting 50% more energy per CO2 (compared to 40% traditional plants). As far as I'm aware, natural gas is cheaper than most battery technologies.

Nuclear is good, and continues to be a major supplier at night (when people are likely charging cars). Natural gas drops by 5GW at night, so that's a good sign and the grid at night might be less carbon (even if there's less overall energy due to missing solar). So more nuclear energy into the mix might mean that night energy was better overall. Hmmmmmmm. Okay, I'll accept your point overall.