this post was submitted on 25 Nov 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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Opinion | Relax, Electric Vehicles Really Are the Best Choice for the Climate (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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We got the first to replace our 10-year-old, gas-powered Subaru, and after only two years of driving, the E.V. has created fewer emissions over its lifetime than if we had kept the old car. It will take our second E.V. only four years to create fewer emissions over its lifetime than the 2005 hybrid Prius it replaced. That’s counting the production of the batteries and the emissions from charging the E.V.s, and the emissions payback time will only continue to drop as more emissions-free wind and solar power comes onto the grid and battery technology improves.

The author of course did not look at having one less car, and substituting an ebike or mass transit for part of their driving, which would have lowered emissions by a larger amount.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Trollybusses are indeed an excellent filler in transit quality between a bus and a light rail solution. An ideal metropolitan mass transit solution has tiers. The first tier is "Walkable 15 minute neighborhoods," the second is "A bus to get you to the trollybus," the third is "A trollybus to get you to the light rail system," and the fourth is "A light rail system to get you to the next town over." And obviously, you don't have to hit every tier in the mass transit scheme to get from your current location to your final destination, but the mix of types of transit helps each type of transit support eachother, allowing transit users to get from place to place quickly and cheaply. My argument is mainly "you start with a bus" because the implementation cost is low. It's a bridge solution that helps you get from your current level of mass transit to your ideal goals, and one that you'll likely want to make use of even when your ideal transit solution is implemented, as it has a degree of flexibility that no other solution offers.

The other thing is buses can even make sense in exurbs and even rural areas. I grew up in a rural area in Appalachia that implemented a county level bus system that taxpayers immediately argued was going to be a waste of money, but when it was implemented, the buses out in the most remote portions of the county saw the most usage as it allowed elderly passengers, and very poor passengers, to go visit their relatives in town, as well as anyone with a broken down car to make a trip to AutoZone to get the part they needed to get their car back on the road again. A lot of the time, it's not just about making it possible for people to get to city services, it's also about getting city services out to the people.