this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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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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Why Heat Pumps Are the Future, and How Your Home Could Use One (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Obligatory reminder to watch Technology Connections on the correct sizing and backups - the initial quote might be 2x or 3x what you need.

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

Do you have a link? I can’t seem to find it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Someone else linked the main video, here is the playlist.

Basics:

  • It's just an air conditioner with an extra valve to reverse the flow.
  • They work in much colder weather than you are imagining.
  • They are more efficient than you are imagining.
  • They are even better if you look for the latest models coming out of the far east.
  • Actually do the calculations for how much power you need - don't just let the installers say "This house currently has x kW of heating, therefore it will need an x kW heat pump" (same for the air conditioning mode)
  • It's probably better to have a resistive heat backup for occasional extreme-cold days than to have an oversized heat pump.