this post was submitted on 29 Jul 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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Start killing oil executives? It won't fix anything but at least they'll suffer the consequences of their actions for once

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1424-5-things-you-learn-about-rich-people-working-at-nice-hotel.html

Quite an old listicle I read more than 10 years ago, but I still remember #1; "The Armed Security is Terrifying"

First he details how massive security was for the vice president of the US. Then for another high-profile politician, with Secret Service.

But by far the most security we've ever had was for big oil executives. We shut down two entire floors for them that only a select few hotel employees were allowed on. I was not one of those employees. Unlike the Secret Service dudes, rich people private security is as twitchy and heavily armed as every single character in a Michael Bay movie.

It's not going to be easy, but I'm up for it.

Let's make the ultra wealthy people so afraid they'll start hiring tasters again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Until they are too afraid to leave their bunkers, we haven't done enough. As long as they HAVE bunkers, we haven't done enough.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's more that we've walked into a minefield, and we're going to keep on losing ecoystems like this as we keep stepping forward. Makes it incredibly vital to stop burning fossil fuels as soon as we can.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

No

It makes it incredibly vital that we get shareholders and the C suite more money.

Anything else is optional and not very important

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What do we do now?

Two things:

  1. Make more money for share holders

  2. Nothing

  3. Die....

We'll do three things:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)
  1. Transition to renewable energy faster

  2. Consider environmental pollution an act of war, because we really are getting to that point. Yes this will be seen as the west “pulling the ladder back up after themselves”; ask the corals if they give a shit

  3. Those won’t be enough, maybe we can put some mirrors in orbit to cool the world down just a tiny tiny bit, then de-orbit it the mirrors.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Big fold out sun blocks in space?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

How about we all stop pretending we don't know what tje answer is and stop allowing the ultra-rich to steal and ruin everything.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well shit. I thought we were supposed to ask the scientists.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well they told us what to do, and we aren't doing it. So they are asking what options are left to them now

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

scientist reaches for a rifle

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

American Scientist noises are intensifying and I like it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

Ecoterrorism when?

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

Well, it's not good when the scientists are asking me for advice.

Ummm... Did y'all try painting them yet?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

is it nothing? I bet it's nothing

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

let's grab some ice from Halley's comet and dump it in the ocean.../s

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thus solving the problem once and for all!

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

...ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!..shutup...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Lets grab some water from the sea, freeze it, and launch it at Halleys Comet.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Matt Groening has a talent for bringing together smart people to tell us how fucked we are.....

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You have the highest IQ on the planet, don't you not sure?

Xkcd did a "what if" on this. It doesn't end well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

did you not see the futurama? hahahahahhahaha

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Have you not seen Idiocracy? XD XD XD XD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

More like, "What else do we do, now?" They've already been working to propagate heat-tolerant corals, but the climate is changing faster than they can grow them, so many corals are likely going to die in the meantime.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago

Good thing we've since invented plant-based sponges, whew! Carry on!

[–] [email protected] -4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Withdraw your support for the system, stop voting, become anarchists, cultivate local communities rather than global communities.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

As an anarchist who would welcome other anarchists - sadly, I doubt if that's a reliable recipe to stop climate change.

Limiting (hopefully stopping) climate change can be done under almost any political system... except perhaps dictatorial petro-states. However, it takes years of work to tranform the economy. Transport, heating, food production - many things must change. Perhaps the simplest individual choices are:

  • going vegetarian (vegan if one knows enough to do the trick)
  • avoidance of using fossil fueled personal vehicles
  • improving home energy efficiency (especially in terms of heating)
  • avoidance of air travel
  • avoidance of heavy goods delivered from distant lands

The rest - creating infrastructure to produce energy cleanly and store sufficient quantities - are typically societal choices.

As for corals - I would start by preserving their biodiversity, sampling the genes of all coral and coral-related species and growing many of them in human-made habitats. If we're about to cause their extinction, it's our obligation to provide them life support until the environment has been fixed.

Also, I would consider genetically engineering corals to tolerate higher temperatures. Since I understand that this is their critical weakness, providing a solution could save ecosystems. If a solution is feasible, that is.

Corals reproduce sexually so a useful gene obtained from who knows where would spread among them (but slowly - because typical colonies grow bigger asexually). Also, I would keep in mind that this could have side effects.

As for tempeature - it will be rising for some time before things can be stopped. Short of geoengineering, nothing to be done but reduce emissions, adapt, and help others adapt. The predictable outcome - it will get worse for a long while before it starts getting any better.