this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
73 points (100.0% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5229 readers
556 users here now

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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] houseofleft@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I don't agree they're looking at all areas at once, solar, wind and the net zero per mw by 2030 goal only relate to energy, not things like gas heating reduction, or public transport etc. Energy is also one of the few areas where as a country we've already made quite a bit of progress. There are points where only 10% of the UK's energy comes from fossil fuels.

In fairness, I did share the wrong article, sorry! Here's the actual opinion piece it's referring to (which was written in the Sun, I agree it's a shit rag, but Kier Starmer chose to publish in it, so here we are): https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/30853358/keir-starmer-great-british-industry-net-zero/

Specifically, the bits I'm referring to are:

This ground-breaking technology, known as Carbon Capture Usage and Storage, is a game-changer in our efforts to fulfil our legal obligations to reach Net Zero by 2050 in a sensible way, while supporting jobs and industry.

Shifting focus onto onto bare minimum meeting of legal obligations and positioning carbon capture as a central part of that strategy.

To those drum-banging, finger-wagging extremists I say: I will never sacrifice Great British industry.

Said in opposition to people wanting regulation of carbon emissions over carbon capture investment.

But this is a third way that brings industry with us on our path to Net Zero

Again, in opposition to regulating emissions more strictly.

To be 100% clear, this is speculation from Labours messaging that implies they're gearing up for a massive backslide, we won't know for sure until their budget is announced over the next few weeks. I think this is where a lot of objection comes fron though. If we see large investment in public transport and heat pumps, and regulation of emissions, then I'll be extremely happy to be proved wrong.

[–] hellothere@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Thank you for the correct link, much appreciated.

Completely agree the 2030 target is electricity, not the entire economy.

For me the key paragraph is in the middle of this section, emphasis mine:

I know some like Extinction Rebellion will lecture me on carbon capture investment. They’ll say it isn’t the right choice.

But it’s working people who come first. Without this tech, heavy industries such as cement, glass-making and chemicals will risk having to down tools.

The Budget in a few weeks’ time will be about fixing the foundations and continuing to show a decisive break from the past

The jobs of brickies, sparkies and engineers — the backbone of Britain — will be risked.

That means fewer new homes, fewer new roads and a slow decline to the dark ages.

These are not impossible industries to decarbonise, but they are very difficult especially with stuff like cement.

Back to your original reply, I don't think it's a fair reading of the manifesto to say they promised more than 2030 for electricity and ~2050 for the economy.

Yes I want this to be faster, I'm still pissed off that the £34bn/year for retrofitting, etc, has been watered down multiple times, but - so far - nothing from the manifesto has been scraped.

Come the budget at the end of the month, I may very well be wrong, and very angry.

Edit on budget day: I wasn't.