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:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
Xi is pushing climate, study shows
Enabling climate acceleration are economic sectors such as land use, China coal, Saudi Aramco, Coal India, Gazprom (Russia), National Iranian Oil — in that order.
Since 2021, China coal sends more carbon in the air than NATO equities and Arab states combined. The China coal sector is increasing capacity and is delivering 12.7 GtCOe in 2024.
The #GreenhouseForcing results are published at: http://data.yt/projections/2024-results.html @climate
"G/year" "GtCOe" Be careful of feeding the "science is wrong" trolls by misrepresenting units of measure.
@oo1
Thank you for your feedback. Let's suppose that we do not wish to indicate tonnage (of CO2-equivalent over 100 years) but flux (tonnage of CO2-equivalent over 100 years per year).
I wonder if we would use the unit often found in the literature: "GtCOe.y-1".
I do not contest that it is scientific but i propose that it cannot be understood without a degree in math.
I do not worry about trolls: my purpose is to be understood by non-trolls. What do you think?
#units #carbon #GHG #CO2
Honestly, that unit reads like bullshit to me, when stated out of context- I did used to work in energy and emission forecasting, but never that deeply into the academics so feel free to disregard my comments on that basis - we relied on scientific advisors for that stuff.
Personally I'd hope that all the papers quoting such a thing should have a simpler literal maybe step by step explaination of what the fuck they're trying to measure . But i really did hate academia generally for its introverted tendencies, I don't think they write those papers to inform oiks like me.
If the unit is supposed to be a scale for the long term average net flow of greenhouse gases from the planet's surface into the atmosphere, then that is a complex thing; I think it deserves a load of words to explain the what is being described - more than a few of letters and numbers.
Here's my attempt at what I think the abbreviation is trying to say: "Average mass of greenhouse gas emissions with equivalent potential to warm the planet as a gigatonne of carbon dioxide, less any amounts absorbed back into the earth, per year over the last 100 years (GtCO2e)"
I dont feel the "y-1" adds anything since the unit is dimensionally a number of tonnes - unless I've misinterpreted -which seems likely.
One shouldn't just use an abbreviation if one want's to communicate to non-specialists. I'd always advise to spell it out in real words and sentences. If complex, try to break it down into simple parts. Then after a full explanation, you can later reply on the abbreviation - for example in a graph label.
If the measurement or estimate is important, then the audience deserves enough words to explain it. If the measurement or estimate does not come with enough words to explain it then in my opinion the author doesn't care enough to try to explain it so it can't be that important. It may be just a rhetorical grph or it just looks good - no real meaning.
The only exception for me is the "standard units", metre, kilogramme etc. as we can rely on S.I. for those standard measures overing the main material dimensions.
Look it proably really is all just me being an asshole, but I get very sick of hearing vague, imprecise bullshit like "Carbon" being used as a term for "greenhouse gas emissions". I did have a job where the difference between C and CO2 caused a factor of 0.278 discrepancy in some arguably important figures. High school fucking chemistry. Those people should have known better and resolved their unit of measure ahead of time.
I get that some people had a hard time in school, but I think it should be about trying to help them understand more and learn , not dumbing stuff down to imprecise terms because we're so scared of confusing someone . If a person doesn't know the basics, say the difference between an element, an atom and a molecule; we should help them learn that before going on at them about complex atmospheric concentrations and global warming equivalent potentials.
@oo1
I think that you have been working to make the paper clearer. So i am using your definition draft and adding a section after the "Abstract". It goes like so:
Unit of measure
---
Exposed data are annual throughput of carbon-dioxide equivalent emissions. The unit is giga-tonnes of CO2-equivalent/year, or Gt/year for short. For any greenhouse gas, the number represents the mass of carbon dioxide that would warm the earth over a hundred years as much as the mass of the gas newly-sent.
#GHG
Cool, that looks great to me.