this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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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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The climate change we caused is here for at least 50,000 years – and probably far longer (theconversation.com)
submitted 11 months ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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In February 2000, Paul Crutzen rose to speak at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Mexico. And when he spoke, people took notice. He was then one of the world’s most cited scientists, a Nobel laureate working on huge-scale problems – the ozone hole, the effects of a nuclear winter.

So little wonder that a word he improvised took hold and spread widely: this was the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch, representing an Earth transformed by the effects of industrialised humanity.

The idea of an entirely new and human-created geological epoch is a sobering scenario as context for the current UN climate summit, COP28. The impact of decisions made at these and other similar conferences will be felt not just beyond our own lives and those of our children, but perhaps beyond the life of human society as we know it.

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[–] vivadanang@lemm.ee 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think solar occlusion is the way to go; you could harvest solar power 24/7 and beam it back via microwave; you could directly occlude the amount of sunlight impacting the earth, enabling fine and localized changes, and it wouldn't require pumping unknowns into the atmosphere and hoping there isn't some kind of whiplash effect down the road.

it's just expensive as fuck due to the amount of material; a lunar manufacturing operation is a must.

[–] heeplr@feddit.de 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think solar occlusion is the way to go; you could harvest solar power 24/7 and beam it back via microwave;

That's magnitudes more expensive than stopping fossils right now. Not to mention the impact on ecosystems worldwide.

[–] vivadanang@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Oh no - I in no way advocated that - fossil fuels must be stopped. Period. I just worry that in the short term - 100-200 years - it won't make much of a difference to the heat running out of control. And in order to 'stop' fossil fuels takes time - even with a ruthless implementation. We're going to be lucky to stop the world from exploration of fossil fuels and not burning the already known shit - but also, I suspect mass deaths from heat will galvanize enough of the world population to see it through.

Meantime, an automated construction system on the moon that lofts sections of wafer thin occluder panels into position gradually building a system described in my post.... might actually prevent the worst parts of runaway heating by stopping a small but significant percentage day after day when needed.