this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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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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[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

As far as I know, mandatory use of biofuels is primarily a subsidy for farmers rather than a means of reducing emissions. I'm surprised to see an urban area focus on it.

In his decision, Engstrom said the feedstock restrictions are “core to the original policy intent” and must be preserved because they ensure the policy delivers on promised carbon reductions. Feedstocks made from virgin agricultural products and food crops – such as soybean, canola and palm oils – have been linked to much higher carbon emissions, displacing food production and causing deforestation and are not allowed under Portland’s policy.

It sounds like Portland is making an effort to avoid the farm-subsidy sort of biofuels, but then what is it actually demanding that biofuels be made from?

[–] iloveDigit@piefed.social 1 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Should be the entire country, not just Portland. We grow plenty of corn

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Not nearly enough for 100% biofuels. Solar electric uses something like 1/100 of the land for a given amount of transportation.

A biofuels requirement like this is effectively a soft inducement to electrify transport, albeit with huge deforestation risk.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Maybe they can use all those soybeans that China won’t buy from us anymore. /s

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

You can, but that will only substitute for a fairly small fraction of US transport needs

To put this in context, california has a similar biofuels content requirement, which uses about 40% of soybean oil in the US, while displacing a few percent of the state’s diesel use

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Added a /s.

Honestly it’s wasteful to grow crops for fuel because of all the water needed to grow it.

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 2 points 5 days ago

eat it

can't fuel be made from the bioresidues of agriculture through pyrolisis or sth?

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 days ago

Biofuel is not an answer to fixing the climate. And corn is an inefficient crop to use for it anyway