this post was submitted on 15 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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As heat soars, the Southwest ditches ‘swamp coolers’ for air conditioning | Highly efficient evaporative coolers used in dry Western states for decades, but being replaced as temperatures rise (www.washingtonpost.com)
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[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Heat pumps used for cooling aren't any more efficient than an air conditioner, as they are exactly the same technology. The only difference between an air conditioner and a heat pump, is that the heat pump has a valve that lets it work in either direction (to heat or cool), while an air conditioner lacks that valve, and thus only ever cools on one side, and heats on the other.

A window air conditioner turned around so that the exhaust is facing inside the room acts as a heat pump.

While air conditioners/heat pumps are efficient, they still use a lot of electricity. A heat pump is usually considered efficient in comparison to a resistive heater, which is 100% efficient compared to a heat pump's 300%.

[–] rollerbang@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

What about AC units that do heat as well? There are also COP ratings for heating with AC, same as for cooling.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 1 points 20 hours ago

Those are proper heat pumps, they have the extra valve. I'm not used to them since my window AC units back when I had them were from the late 80's and mid 90's 😅