this post was submitted on 11 Sep 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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What Biden has done is to cut the issuance of drilling leases to the minimum required by law, pass the Inflation Reduction Act, enact a regulation to force vehicle electrification, and similarly force fossil fuels out of most power plants.

What Biden has not done: stop issuing drilling permits or impose export restrictions on fossil fuels. The former has some serious limits because of how the courts treat the right to drill as a property right once you hold a drilling lease, and the latter is simply untested.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think that's ever been in serious doubt; the same simulation mechanisms used to produce climate modeling were used to figure out that nuclear winter is an issue in the first place. It's just that most people would prefer to address global warming without mass murder.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So just nuke Antarctica. No one dies except some penguins, global warming ended. And they said it was hard /s

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That doesn't actually work. Nuclear winter is caused by the stuff which gets mixed up with the blast. Hit Antarctica and all you get is water.

On top of that, it's where air descends from the stratosphere, so whatever particulates you do generate probably won't achive worldwide distribution at significant concentrations

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

All you get is water but it's not just water.

Water in the admosphere is an extremely strong (but short lived) greenhouse gas.

And while it was hit, it could also be irradiated. While a nuclear blast has less radiation impact than a nuclear plant burning, throwing many nuclear bombs in one place may have other impacts. Contaminated water can be assimilated by living things. And while in the body, it can do damage.

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

There's also more freshwater in Antarctica than in the rest of the world. Quite a waste, and enough of it to contaminate every source across the planet.