this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
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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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Can we afford to be afraid of nuclear power? (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 5 days ago by Davriellelouna@lemmy.world to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] Don_alForno@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

For example, I live in a city of 5 million people that gets very little direct sunlight (weather is cloudy most of the time + city is located 60° North), has highly irregular seasonal winds, has rivers too small to make hydro make sense on such a scale, and barely has good hills for pumped hydro. It is almost exclusively powered by nuclear energy, because under these circumstances, there's barely a greener alternative.

I heard they're trying out these new devices that can transport power over long distances. Apparently you just need some big ass towers and long cables. Super cool cutting edge stuff.

(The wind is always blowing somewhere.)

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Sure, but transporting power over very long distances comes with two issues: losses and disruptions.

Seasonal winds, when they actually happen, are very strong, commonly breaking the cables and necessitating repairs. The longer the cable - the higher is the chance something will break somewhere, and leaving a city of 5 million without power is a no-go. So, the city uses nearby power source (as close as it is allowed for a nuclear plant to stand next to a huge city) and primarily underground cables.

Also, the energy losses associated with such power transfer will be quite massive even at very high voltages. Which, again, isn't cool when the end consumer needs up to 9 GW of power at any given moment.

[–] Don_alForno@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Sure, but transporting power over very long distances comes with two issues: losses and disruptions.

It's what we do now. Most cities don't have dedicated power plants right next to them, we have national and even multinational grids. If it works for fossil (and nuclear) plants, it works the same for renewables.

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Most cities are substantially smaller and grids there can be made more cheap and reliable without elements getting so much in the way.

I agree we should do more to center grids around renewables even if they're far away; but there are some instances where this just isn't practical, and nuclear technology offers a reasonably eco-friendly (as compared to fossil) way out.

Using nuclear power allows the city not to burn 30 million tonnes of coal every year (i.e. the biggest cargo ship on Earth every 5 days), which I would say is a win, given the circumstances.