this post was submitted on 31 Mar 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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Big Banks Quietly Prepare for Catastrophic Warming (www.scientificamerican.com)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

future of air conditioning stocks, which it provided to clients on March 17. A 3 degree warming scenario, the analysts determined, could more than double the growth rate of the $235 billion cooling market every year, from 3 percent to 7 percent until 2030.

This is not banks preparing for catastrophic warming. It is the stock brokerage division of banks giving their boiler room reps a "hot tip" lead.

Banks should be worried about their fractional reserve lending (about to be deregulated to a lower fraction requirement) in housing, and the affordability issues created by tariffs, high interest rates from government debt unsustainability, and importantly insurance.

Poor insurability of housing and farmland is incompatible with high property values. Tropical Atlantic temperatures are already extreme, and forest fires/flooding all going to intensify.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It is the stock brokerage division of banks giving their boiler room reps a “hot tip” lead.

"When it gets hot, people will use more air conditioning." Thanks Morgan Stanley, that's some real insider knowledge.

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

Yes, banks should worry about all these risks. Climate change is a large systematic risk so it make sense to worry about it as well.

Meanwhile, megabanks like Wells Fargo are backsliding on their previous climate pledges and exiting from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, a United Nations-backed group that encouraged members to slash their emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

Multiple US banks and entities are backtracking their goals of lowering emissions, wich is the main solution to limit the risks of climate change.

They're setting themselves up, and us collectively, for higher risks of flood, drought, sea rise, ...

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

Banks are towards the head of line for bailouts in case/fear of collapse, so they can feel immune to any sustainability concerns.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Sustainability is not typically part of a bank's vocabulary.

But there are terms a bank can understand : systemic risk for the economy, the prospect of fossil fuel investments becoming stranded assets, negative effect on public relation and how it can be a competitive disadvantage if a bank do not attract customers who value human life.