this post was submitted on 30 May 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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[–] hotelbravo722@slrpnk.net 44 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Because he is not an actual progressive. Hes just a spoiled rich kid who like to pretend to be a progressive.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

Newsom was a Feinstein protege. He's a centrist who does some progressive things because he has to in order to get elected in a progressive state. In national office, I suspect he'd be politically positioned similarly to Obama and Biden, though probably with more showmanship.

[–] marine_mustang@sh.itjust.works 40 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Because he, and the CPUC, want to make absolutely sure that there is no escape from the investor-owned utilities.

[–] bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago

I think this is the reason why nuclear has become such a hot topic again

[–] Veraxus@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago

“This would mean fewer people paying our for-profit utility companies, and can’t allow that.” - implied corrupt, capitalist dirtbag Alice Reynolds, very unambiguously.

[–] Orbituary@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

WTF? Newsom is a flaming trash heap lit on fire by the PG&E fires he fucking supported.

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The only climate champion is Gretta. Everyone else is a fucking fraud.

[–] spidermanchild@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago

Quite a shit opinion piece honestly. It's a complex issue and the author's argument of "but it's 2024 come on" and then quoting the bible is lame.

The reality is solar is worth next to nothing in CA without storage, community solar is therefore worth next to nothing without storage, and the transmission level connections don't offer the same advantage that individuals homeowners can achieve with batteries (actual backup), so utility scale comes out ahead on cost. The CPUC made their decision on cost, so unless the author has some actual data to back that up (they don't, and they even sympathize with that argument), it's all really just a feels piece. The Ward legislation was flawed in that it set constraints that could not be navigated through the cost modelling structures.

Other states that haven't hit the belly of the duck will deal with this eventually and should thank early adopters like CA/TX for bringing down prices for battery storage for when they inevitably run into these issues. As a solar owner without battery in Colorado, I can guarantee you I'm taking more from the utility than I put in, which simply will fail at a certain scale and create inequities. You can argue that this is all fine and the carbon reduction is more important (and I generally agree), but there has to be a line somewhere where we need to agree on least cost solutions when all of the options get us to near net zero in the same timeframe.