this post was submitted on 31 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:

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Cost of Oil Wars versus Renewables (midwest.social)
submitted 6 months ago by MNByChoice@midwest.social to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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A report estimated the cost to stop using oil and natural gas for the USA in 2019 to be $4.5 Trillion and that this is similar to what we USA paid for the "War on Terror".

The 2003 Iraq War cost 1.4 Trillion directly and maybe 2.4 Trillion in finance charges.

Note: I am not saying these wars were necessarily due to oil, but they may have gone differently.

I wonder how much USA oil wars have cost compared to moving to solar, wind, and battery?

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[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You might find https://adrianlambert.substack.com/p/the-thermodynamic-limits-of-human relevant.

[–] MNByChoice@midwest.social 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

In what way is it relevant? (I read the opening paragraphs, and do not see the connection.)

[–] eleitl@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 months ago

The relevance is in the assumpion is that renewable infrastructure can be built and maintained without fossils and that energy is fungible, so that electricity can substitute all fossil use and sustain a technological society in general.