this post was submitted on 07 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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[–] abraxas@sh.itjust.works -5 points 10 months ago

I mean, if we're looking at the graphs, beef really is the only "offender" (if you can call it that) and only in the current consumed amounts. If people ate a lot more chicken and less beef, the GHG effect from animals would be lower than the same number 500 years ago due to animal population culling and advancements in agricultural methane reduction.

At that point, the term "negligible effect" becomes unreasonably harsh. Even with the worst claims against the effect of livestock on the environment (many of which we might not see eye to eye on), it's simply objectively not an environmental issue if people are eating chicken and some pork as their staple proteins. You can call it an animal rights issue if you want. Considering chicken is almost objectively a correct and healthy food to eat, two thirds of the diet triforce (health, environment, animal rights) become non-issues.

And the cool thing, even if I disagree with the outcomes it's healthier for us to eat a bit less red meat as long as our meat protein intake stays reasonable from white meat and seafood.