this post was submitted on 02 Jan 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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

“Yeah but last year was cold, so obviously global warming isn’t real”

This is why it’s called climate change now. Stop saying global warming. Or useful idiots and malicious actors will jump at the chance to use the “but it was cold recently” argument.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

"It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation…“Climate change” is less frightening than “global warming”…While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge".

Source: Republican Political Consultant Frank Luntz, 2003

Just in case you think the current colloquial usage is just driven by fact-forward Scientists

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

People are always going to twist language to their selfish purposes.

I prefer "global warming" over "climate change" because it is more specific and more likely to be seen as a potential problem by anyone who bothers to think about it. It also gives us a specific goal, whereas climate change is, if not neutral, then non-specific in the goal.

And when it really comes down to it, I prefer something like "greenhouse effect" and "Greenhouse Earth" because they strike much closer to the root causes. "Greenhouse Earth" is particularly good at getting at the root of the issue: that humanity has always and continues to treat the Earth like a literal greenhouse, trying to manage what lives and dies under what conditions strictly to our own benefit. If we're going to do that anyway, then let's do it right and manage the temperature along with everything else.