this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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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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While wind is more expensive than solar, and has issues highlighted in article, the higher capacity factors, and production outside of midday, means less battery capacity is needed to serve renewables, and batteries get charged more often.

A key to bringing down transmission costs for wind, especially offshore where transmission is the highest cost component, is hydrogen production. Picking up H2, or refueling, by trucks and ships can provide cheaper energy than transmission lines. Pipelines are even cheaper with enough volume, and double as storage.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The issue with hydrogen is that is diffuses and leaks straight trough metal pipes, and makes the metal brittle in the process. But... that property could also be used to create super dense storage, by intentionally diffusing it into something like aluminium

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Plastic/FRC pipes solve the leakage problem. They are also salt water resistant. Soft steel NG distribution pipes have low leak rates as well. Converting hard steel NG transmission pipes is possible by lining them in plastic. In any near future, H2 only new pipes would be built. H2 is more valuable when it is pure because it has higher efficiency electric conversion than NG, as well as being an ingredient to several important chemicals.