this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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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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Air-Conditioning Use Will Surge in a Warming World, U.N. Warns | By 2050, electricity use for cooling could double, driving up the greenhouse gas emissions that cause warming. (www.nytimes.com)
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[–] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

The refrigerant they are probably referring to is R134a or R410a which are much more potent greenhouse gases than CO2. But there are two things to consider:

If the system is maintained correctly, it shouldn't lose any refrigerant, and R410a started being phased out in 2022 for other gases with a lower Global Warming Potential. One of those refrigerants is R744, which has a GWP of 1. That's because R744 is just carbon dioxide.

The bigger issue for me is R134a. It has a lower GWP of 1430 vs ~2100 for R410a, but since R134a is used in cars, it's a lot more likely that it will be released. Some carmakers are transitioning to R1234yf in their air conditioners, which has a GWP of less than 1.

Tl;dr: Refrigerants can cause more global warming per unit volume of gas than CO2, but it's being worked on. Also, refrigerant typically stays inside the machine, while CO2 is emitted by lots of different processes, so it's not a huge environmental disaster when it's just running.