this post was submitted on 04 Mar 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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The Asian Developments Bank: “Why 100% Renewable Generation Won’t Bring Energy Security”; ADB is wrong though (blogs.adb.org)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Please don't downvote this because this is a bad opinion.

Of course it's a bad opinion. I'm sharing this here because I want to talk about it being a bad opinion.

Why is it a bad opinion?

I actually agree with the basic premise but reject the conclusion. I agree that 100% renewable energy cannot bring about energy security in the context of endless growth, but I reject the conclusion that therefore we need to keep burning fossil fuels. The solution, I think, is for degrowth, a coordinated scaling down of production of worthless things while at the same time scaling up provisions of human well being. Make more homes, less golf courses. Make more vegetables and grains for human consumption rather than animal feed. Fund hospitals, not wars. If we scale back production while at the same time meeting a high level of human needs, 100% renewable energy will certainly be enough for human needs. 100% renewable energy will never be enough for capitalist endless growth, but it will be enough for a solarpunk future.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The main thrust of the argument seems to be two fold - it‘s not 100% is (almost nothing is) and it costs a lot upfront (so do fossil-fuel plants). Smells like like some serious astroturfing to me

The rest of your argument? The only thing I see missing is transport. It needs to scale to global levels and be free with respect to both carbon and cash

I would recommend reading Kim Stanley Robinson for better ideas than I could ever give - The Ministry for the Future and New York 2140 spring to mind.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Haven't read those but I greatly enjoyed his four books, the Mars Trilogy and the additional Martian short story collection. Quite a bit of Mars Trilogy was inspired by the political philosophy of Murray Bookchin, now appreciated for anticipating a lot of the political philosophy behind solarpunk and degrowth.