this post was submitted on 10 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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Submerged in about 40 meters (44 yards) of water off Scotland’s coast, a turbine has been spinning for more than six years....

The MeyGen tidal energy project off the coast of Scotland has four turbines producing 1.5 megawatts each, enough electricity collectively to power up to 7,000 homes annually.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

One of the more badass sources of power. You've got uranium from supernovas, some form of captured solar energy, tapping the heat from the planet's core, or, in this case, directly slowing down the very rotation of the earth while pushing the moon away.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

That planetary core thing will probably be quite a way off, tho it last for millions of years. But the whole planet is swathed in tides, in-and-out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah and any friction from tides(instead of free movement) slows the rotation and pushes the moon away. It's using the leverage of the gravity to perform work against the planet itself. Devices like underwater turbines, by extracting energy from the tidal currents, effectively increase this friction, which in turn amplifies the effect. The amount of energy naturally pulled out of this system is entirely dependent on the size of the tidal bulge and the shape of the seafloor/coast.

As for geothermal, we do use it, but only in hot spots.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sit down sometime, make a realistic model of tidal power usage, and then figure out how long it'd before before 'the moon being pushed away' becomes visible. Once you can do that, then come back here and tell us about your calculations.

Of course the tides 'rubbing against' the Earth's surface have been 'pushing the moon away' at a far, far greater rate for billions of years. Big deal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I also don't think that geothermal power installations stand to solidify the earths core and remove our magnetosphere. I just think it's cool that it's literally where the power is coming from.

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