this post was submitted on 13 Apr 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:

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[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The problem is that you can't supply power plants at any scale using waste sawdust. They clearcut to make pellets to feed the power plants

[–] P00ptart@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Oh shit, that's way worse! I thought they were using recycled saw dust! WTF?!? How could anyone think that's a good idea?!?

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

I'm a woodworker. I have a small hobby shop on the back of my property, looks like a garden shed from the outside, I produce 8 or 10 barrels of sawdust a year. That's probably enough to heat my house through the winter. It all goes to the dump. Here's why:

There's nobody who wants to work with me. There are places that make fuel pellets at industrial scale in my area, they want nothing to do with a guy bringing them 2 or 3 rubbermaid trash cans full of sawdust a few times a year, they want regularly scheduled semi truck delivery. There are farmers that have more modest sized hammer mills and extruders necessary for the job, but they don't want to take the time to run a tool for some guy. I could buy the tools myself, for several times what it cost to heat my house with gas for a year.

So who produces sawdust or other fine wood chips at industrial scale? Sawmills, but they often use their own sawdust to make particle board. Furniture factories maybe? The few remaining that don't mostly use particle board?

Edit to add: There is a source of kinda free wood matter: Branches. The structural or furniture lumber industries don't use limb wood; it's too unstable. Trunks grow roughly parallel to gravity, branches grow more or less perpendicular, so they have a tendency to warp when milled, plus they're smaller and just not worth trying to saw into boards. So they tend to get ground up for wood chips or paper pulp or whatever would be convenient to the business.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The basic answer is that when the power plant is far from the clearcuts, they can pretend it's being fed using waste sawdust. Been a big issue with the UK importing from North America.

[–] Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 1 points 21 hours ago

Wow, that is depressing.