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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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A girl’s grades drop every summer. There’s an alarming explanation. | One family’s concern is a warning sign for kids around the world. (yaleclimateconnections.org)
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[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is that not why schools in many places take a break over the summer?

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

No, it's so the children could help at the farm during the busiest time.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Wouldn't the busiest time be harvest time. Which would be Sept or October usually.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

That’s a bit of a myth:

The history of summer holidays is clouded with myths. One popular idea is that school children have a long summer holiday (six weeks for most pupils in the UK) so that they could help work in the fields over the summer. But the current school system was developed over the course of the 19th century, when English farms were increasingly mechanised and having children helping with the harvest would only have been necessary for a small percentage of the population. Besides which, a brief glance at the farming calendar tells you that a holiday that ends at the start of September is not going to be much use for bringing in the harvest in the early autumn. So whatever the origin of six weeks off at the height of summer is, it’s not for the sake of farmers.

We should also distinguish between two types of historical explanation: people do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, but they tend to keep doing the things that create good results. However, they may not know what’s causing those results, and it may have nothing to do with why they initially decided to engage in that behavior. So you can have people all over converge on a certain behavior without a consistent explanation for why they’re doing it—and popular explanations (even if historically informed) may have nothing to do with why the behavior actually persists.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I was thinking of the US system.

Also, people tend to keep doing things because that's how they do things, not because it's inherently the best thing to do. Consider natural selection: organisms have all sorts of weird and useless features that are there because they don't critically hinder their ability to reproduce; it's all just good enough to not get outcompeted. To draw a parallel, some societies have summer breaks because they had summer breaks, and there's no external force requiring a change.

[–] AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sure—but notice that the US, UK, and many other places converged on the same behavior—which in most cases arose as a consensus among local schools that hit on similar practices without any central coordination. Which suggests that the behavior is more than a historical accident.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's easier to copy someone else's system than to optimize a new one yourself.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 day ago

And since America is the greatest country on earth they came up with it right?