this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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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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What no one at COP28 wanted to say out loud: Prepare for 1.5 degrees (messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com)
submitted 2 years ago by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Headline is from the article version of this; I've linked the non-paywalled newsletter version.

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[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

One could make the argument that we're at 1.5 degrees

[–] astropenguin5@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think you could, we are currently around 1° C in increase since the pre-industrial period. Unless you mean that were already on an almost unavoidable path to 1.5c, which could be true.

[–] spaduf@slrpnk.net 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

A significant portion of this year was spent above the 1.5 degree mark. Any argument that we are not already there hinges on one of a couple of ideas:

  • This year was an anomaly and next year will be cooler
  • In order for it to count we need to see a sustained global temperature for something like 3-5 years

It may be that the first point is true but it's looking more and more unlikely. The second point is useful as far as building a scientific consensus goes, but does not reflect the reality. Put another way, when looking backwards you wouldn't say that the era of 1.5 degree warming began at the end of that 3-5 years, you would say it began at the beginning.