this post was submitted on 21 Jun 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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Offsetting global fossil fuel stores by planting trees is impossible (www.newscientist.com)
submitted 2 days ago by solo@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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It would be nearly impossible to plant enough trees to compensate for the climate impact of burning through the world’s fossil fuel reserves. Offsetting the estimated 182 billion tonnes of carbon held in the reserves of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies would require covering more land with trees than the entirety of North and Central America.

“There simply isn’t enough land available for the level of afforestation that would be needed to offset fossil fuel-related emissions,”

The study: Carbon offsetting of fossil fuel emissions through afforestation is limited by financial viability and spatial requirements

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[–] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've been saying this for years. Honestly, the whole carbon offsetting thing is very similar to the men will do anything but go to therapy meme. We are willing to just about anything other than CUT EMISSIONS.

Further what's planted is often a monoculture, and does not restore the ecosystem lost.

[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think it's brought up a lot in terms of undoing the damage. Even if we cut emissions to zero today, that doesn't fix all the carbon that's already been put out over the last 100-150 years. We need both reduced emissions to prevent damage and carbon capture to undo preexisting damage.

[–] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

I agree, but a lot of the sequestration options out there suck. By all means replant, but do it wisely. Geological storage has been shown to be way less efficient than desired.

There is some promise in C sequestration in tailings, because it's permanently bound, but it's situational.