this post was submitted on 19 Apr 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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The hidden potential of bicycles (www.resilience.org)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The average modern person, by one calculation, spends more than 1,600 hours a year to pay for their cars, their insurance, fuel and repairs. We go to jobs partly to pay for the cars, and we need the cars mostly to get to jobs. We spend four of our sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering the resources for the car.

Since the average modern American, by one estimate, travels 7,500 miles a year, and put in 1,600 hours a year to do that, they are travelling five miles per hour. Before people had cars, however, people managed to do the same – by walking.

By contrast, a person on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than a pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

when we can power the whole grid on renewables

Hooo boy, theres a massive leap behind that statement. Don't forget the production and decommissioning of that infrastructure, and the vehicles.

Electric cars are slightly less bad that ICEs. They're still utterly unsustainable and part of the problem, not the solution.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Exactly, cars are an atrocity, slightly less when electric but not by much, they're still the same killing machines clogging up our world, polluting everything with noise and microplastics.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Of course. I don’t drive and don’t plan on ever having to again. I was just saying this type of framing in an article doesn’t help the cause. It is fodder for the people peddling misinformation about why we shouldn’t do anything about climate change. The pro-climate change groups will always latch onto this type of shit when they can find it. Like the whole “no more hamburgers” thing or the “crickets as food” thing or the “no more vacations” thing or whatever the fuck they’re always spouting on fox. It’s a strawman, of course. But we shouldn’t be serving it up that way.

That’s what I was saying. Not that we need to be pushing EVs. Just that this type of article saying, “maybe we can live in a world where one day we move back to pedal power” is the exact sort of PR problem the pro-climate movement keeps falling into.

Münecat did a great video on the PR pitfalls of the crunchy spokespeople these movements always seem to put forward. We all understand a solarpunk utopia would be great. But picking out the least desirable aspect of it for the largely lazy population doesn’t help the cause.

That’s all I was saying.