this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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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.

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Massive methane leaks detected in Antarctica, posing potential risks for global warming (english.elpais.com)
submitted 5 months ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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As usual, because methane breaks down within a few years, the main impact is about rate of release, rather than total volume released. So this isn't good, but it's also not currently at anything like the scale which would make a major difference.

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[–] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 11 points 5 months ago

Potentially (ok - not currently), "24 gigatons of carbon accumulated in methane hydrates" is a serious amount. Note that as methane increases in the atmosphere, it's lifetime increases as oxidising capacity is used up, a positive feedback. Methane may also help explain the rapid at the ends of ice ages (when sea-level rose ±100m). If there's any really bad runaway warming scenario, it has to do with methane.