this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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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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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Fun fact: battery swapping was first offered in 1910.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_swapping#History

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

"What is the probability that the post will refer to Taiwan?" -- me, before opening the link :)

Yep, they have figured things out over there. :) Getting it right requires overcoming some obstacles, though:

  • standardization
  • modularization (if the vehicle needs more power, it has more than one battery of the same type)
  • a future-proof control / ownership scheme

Standards do not emerge easily unless some player on the market is capable of achieving monopoly (a bad thing) and creating a de facto standard. Typically, to create a standard, an association of manufacturers is needed. Sometimes, a state or municipal body may also have to step in. For consumers to join the system, there must be some level of guarantee that the standard won't be temporary fad.

If the obstacles can be overcome, benefit for society is tangible and considerable. People will save time that would otherwise be spent waiting, and batteries can be slow-charged, prolonging their lifetime.

About the Taiwanese scheme, one can read here. They have a vertically integrated system where the same company provides charging places, batteries and scooters, and provides tehcnology to other scooter manufacturers so they can make compatible scooters. It has a market share of 33% so it's not a monopoly, but a big player. Their system is not perfect, there is room for improvement, but it's reasonably good in my opinion. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gogoro