this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2026
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Climate

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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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40% of global ship traffic is simply moving fossil fuels around! Renewables make much of this traffic obsolete (slrpnk.net)
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[โ€“] WoodScientist@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

They don't have to be though. We do not need petroleum to make plastics.

[โ€“] BurnedDonutHole@ani.social 1 points 41 minutes ago

I didn't say it has to be... It's the reality. In the context of bioplastics the challenge is that the 17.5% of people in high-income countries are currently the only ones with the infrastructure and the disposable income to easily adopt expensive non-petroleum products and produce them as well. As for the other 82.5%, petroleum-based plastics remain the standard because they are significantly cheaper to produce and easier to manage in traditional waste streams. So, unless these replacement comes in cheap and easily producible forms we are far from replacing anything in the near future.