this post was submitted on 26 Dec 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:

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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Aren't contrails like, really bad for climate? And it would be really easy to divert some routes to shave off a significant part of contrail-caused warming?
You've got it backwards. Contrails have a very minor cooling effect caused by reflecting incoming sunlight. It's just small in relation to the warming caused by planes burning fuel.
For those that are curious:
Page 8: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/726b8a2559ad48fe9decb6f2534549a6/aviation-contrails-climate-impact-report.pdf
Simon Clark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoOVqQ5sa08
Yes. Kinda, just a little regulation could reduce them a lot.
But here's the thing. Congress does not give a shit about the climate. They will never pass anything like you're suggesting because they're for sale. Only a major structural change that eliminates coercion/bribery from regulatory votes will work.
Congress as we know it fighting climate change is about as realistic as unicorns and Bigfoot.