this post was submitted on 16 Sep 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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Food is a huge source of methane emissions. Fixing that is no easy feat. (grist.org)
submitted 2 months ago by RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Methane spends a lot less time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide; about 20 years after it’s released, most of it will have decayed, while carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But methane also generates heat much more readily than carbon dioxide — about 80 times more in its first 20 years in the atmosphere — meaning it contributes significantly towards global warming in the short term. It is good news — sort of — because by the same token, any reductions in methane emissions will have more of an impact on the climate right away.

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[–] 14th_cylon@lemm.ee 21 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Oh fixing it is quite easy, it is just that people don't want to.

While getting whole world to switch to cars with renewable power source is an enormous undertaking and we don't know whether it is realistic, this could be fixed tomorrow. If only people wanted to.

[–] aniki@lemmings.world 10 points 2 months ago

We can't even get motherfuckers to eat slightly less meat -- they ain't stopping till the subsidies stop.

[–] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 months ago

It's hard because people don't want to.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're absolutely right, but to be fair, it'd probably take a full growing season to swap all of the animal feed farms to human foods - so fixed by this time next year perhaps

Still much quicker than renewables and global electrification.

[–] 14th_cylon@lemm.ee 4 points 2 months ago

so fixed by this time next year perhaps

well sure, tomorrow was slight exaggeration for dramatic effect, but i think we understand each other.

[–] kapulsa@feddit.org 2 points 2 months ago

Yes, this would be very easy compared with many other problems we are facing.

Our society in its current way relies a lot on cars. Far travels are not yet easily possible without planes. Electricity is not easily replaced (needs some time to build, we need batteries etc.). And we need to tackle all these problems and face the challenges that come with it. But food is so easy. We just need to change some optics of food. We wouldn't even lose any nutritional value (we would even gain so many health advantages) but people insist on having tortured animals in their food instead of the same nutrients and taste provided by plants.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Everything is easy if you can get everyone to agree. World peace, end of poverty, end of inequality, end of hunger/starvation, end of climate change.

Turns out this isn’t a very productive line of thinking. All hard problems are coordination problems.