this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024
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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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Electric cars are not THE solution.

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[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

There is no alternative suggested. The purpose of this movement is to tax heavy EVs. I think that makes it distraction.

The smaller the EV the more range per kwh, and so smaller batteries are needed which makes them more affordable. It is not unreasonable to tax heavy vehicles, but the punch line that motivates this piece is "EV's bad". They could have recommended micromobility for example.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

imho we should tax any vehicle that puts an inordinate strain on the roads. ultra-heavy EV's like cybertrucks and hummers are ridiculous and inefficient, and the purchases knew it when they bought them.

but also the cummins diesel powered pavement princess my colleague drives BY THEMSELVES TO THEIR OFFICE JOB day after day, I think that should have to pay an excise tax.

work vehicles certainly deserve cutouts, but they need to be work appropriate vehicles, not just jacked up asshole haulers.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 weeks ago

work vehicles certainly deserve cutouts

That thinking is what got us SUVs. Work vehicles earn income, and so probably don't need cutouts.

[–] sonori@beehaw.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

It would be funny though if some environmentalist managed to make the tax properly technology agnostic though. Mostly if you can keep them from being exempted anything that hurts EVs goes double for pickups.

Of course we both know gas cars get exempted whenever this sort of thing passes because it’s never actually about vehicle weight and road wear so much as how can we slow the decline in gasoline demand for a few years, but it’s nice to imagine that silver lining.