this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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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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From this report

I'll note that California is a bit unusual, having imposed energy efficiency standards on buildings decades ago (much of the US didn't) and having actively taken steps to substitute solar, wind, and storage for fossil-fuel based electric generation

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[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

EVs make up a very small percentage of the market. The majority of cars are gas powered, and more people are buying more cars, so it's not like the number of gas cars is decreasing, just some of the additional cars are EV. It was be very hard for California to be climate neutral while it's still so dependent on cars.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

25% of all vehicles sold, and 4% of vehicles on the road in 2022. Considering the continued growth it’s likely higher by now. That’s not a huge number but it’s starting to be enough to bring emissions down, especially in combination with the decarbonization of the electric grid.

However, I agree that the best and easiest solution is to move away from the private automobile as the main mode of transit.

[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sure, but there are likely 4% more cars on the road now than there were in 2019. One graph I see shows about a 1% YoY growth of the car population in the US. EVs might have saved us from a 4% increase in car emissions, but car emissions are still increasing. I am really not convinced that EVs are the solution to the US's massive car emissions. Ban production of all gas cars in 2024 and then maybe there's a solution in sight.