this post was submitted on 30 Jan 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.

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‘Smoking gun proof’: fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954, documents show (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The fossil fuel industry funded some of the world’s most foundational climate science as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents have shown, including the early research of Charles Keeling, famous for the so-called ‘Keeling curve’ that has charted the upward march of the Earth’s carbon dioxide levels.

A coalition of oil and car manufacturing interests provided $13,814 (about $158,000 in today’s money) in December 1954 to fund Keeling’s earliest work in measuring CO2 levels across the western US, the documents reveal.

Keeling would go on to establish the continuous measurement of global CO2 at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. This ‘Keeling curve’ has tracked the steady increase of the atmospheric carbon that drives the climate crisis and has been hailed as one of the most important scientific works of modern times.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

There was a period where we weren't sure if it was a natural change or man made. It's wasn't a long period, but there was definitely initial doubt.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

When it was in the public debate, we knew it was man made. The fossil fuel industry did a lot of PR/propaganda to shift public opinion and push false narratives like we didn't know. Despite these same companies being the first to collect data and models on the very thing they were denying.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

And yet, some still choose not to understand, today.