this post was submitted on 15 Apr 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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[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Trees end up releasing a lot of carbon down the road

[–] Blackmist 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

We're releasing a lot of carbon right now.

The neat thing is when a tree dies and starts releasing it again, the trees around it absorb it, and here's the best part: They plant new trees all on their own.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Doesn’t help through forest fires

But the tree angle is mostly used by polluters to say they are carbon neutral because they planted some trees somewhere so they can continue polluting

Not saying you are one of them, just to not put so much stock in it when we should be aiming for elimination

[–] Blackmist 3 points 7 months ago

I mean I'll agree 100% that carbon credits or whatever they're called now is bollocks.

But more trees can't hurt. And they're nicer than endless fields of corn.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Redwoods live thousands of years. I'm cool with punting this problem 3000 years into the future.

[–] mojo_raisin@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

While trees are great and you have a point, we can't just put trees everywhere without consideration of native species. Much of the U.S. for example is prairie/grasslands that doesn't have a high tree density and the carbon is cycled much faster. Also of concern (not my concern but somebody's) is the property value of land used for trees instead of profit.

A acre of hemp regrown every year and a biochar retort could sequester far more carbon than an acre of forest over a given period and can be done on "wastelands". Biochar IMHO is the only carbon sequestration method that actually makes sense.