this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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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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[–] Psythik@lemm.ee -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You can build all the infrastructure you want but none of that matters if people won't take public transport. I don't do it because only the sketchiest, creepiest people take public transport in the US. You can't get on a train/bus/subway/whatever in this country without fear of getting stabbed.

Until that problem is addressed, cars aren't going away.

I know what you mean, but that turns out to be empirically untrue. Good transportation infrastructure encourages use in measurable ways (economists and urban planners call this "induced demand"). When you build out a train of bus network so that it's actually useful, people start using it.

When it comes to safety and public transportation, I think the causality works the other way. In places with excellent public transportation, like New York and Toronto, everyone, including the middle class, uses public transportation. Not coincidentally, these places also have very low crime: New York is in the bottom 20% of US cities for crime severity, and Toronto is the safest city in North America. Under investing in the well-being of poor people, including public infrastructure, causes crime.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I've used the public transportation in several large US cities, and have never felt threatened by or fearful of the other passengers.