this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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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.

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Even as Tropical Storm Idalia heads toward Florida, hedge funds, pension plans and the ultrarich are increasingly putting their money into these insurance-linked securities

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s a relief! And here I was, worried that the apocalypse was going to be unprofitable for the 1%.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Insurers unload some of their risk by selling cat bonds, which require investors to pay damages resulting from a natural disaster, if specific conditions are met. The bonds offer fat returns, but carry the risk of total loss of principal if the worst happens.

Quite the opposite! The apocalypse will cost them a lot of money. Maybe that would incentivize them to work to avoid it, although I doubt it.