this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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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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How to Ditch the Biggest Fossil Fuel Offenders in Your Life (www.nrdc.org)
submitted 4 days ago by BoycottPro@lemm.ee to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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stabby_cicada made an interesting comment on how personal choice and leading by example can be combined with politics to effectively address climate change. This is a good article that combines the two approaches, it shows you some changes you can make along with reminding people the importance of voting, and being involved politically. The article mentioned the biggest user of fossil fuels in homes may be a gas fired furnace so if it's time to replace your furnace you may want to consider an electric heat pump.

One thing not mentioned in the article is if you have any incandescent light bulbs that receive regular use consider replacing them with LED. The payback period can be pretty fast for example if you replace a 60w light with a 10w LED assuming you use it for an average of two hours a day and you pay $0.20 kw/h you'll save $7.3 per year. This was calculated as follows:

(60 energy usage of old bulb - 10 energy usage of new bulb) * 2 hours per day average usage * 365 days in a year / 1000 to convert from watts to kilowatts * 0.2 cost per kwh = $7.3.

Over a 10 year period that's $73 in savings.

If the light bulb cost $2.5 to buy you'd break even in only 125 days (a little over 4 months) if we use the same usage assumptions.

Payback period can be calculated like this:

$2.5 cost of light bulb/(50 our energy savings*2 hours of average use)*(1000kw /0.2 price per kwh)

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[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I have never heard of someone in the U.S. being able to choose their electricity source or vendor. (Other than putting up your own panels)

Must be nice!

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Oh…. I didn’t know. Weren’t you guys supposed to be like all about capitalism and all that?

Anyway, here’s how it works. In my area there’s only one electrical grid, so that grid operator will collect transmission frees to finance their grid maintenance and shady corporate shenanigans.

That grid is connected to various sources, such as coal plants and wind farms. There are many companies that sell energy everywhere within the country, so I can choose whichever I want. Every company also has different products such as “mixed energy” or “100% renewable”, so I can choose the one that fits my ethics and budget.

[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

We do claim to be the home of the free market a lot, yeah!

That sounds like an eminently reasonable system. The only way I could improve it would be to nationalize or whatever the delivery grid.

[–] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It used to be nationalized but that idea was too socialist/communist/gay or whatever for our politicians, so now each area is run by a different grid company.