this post was submitted on 07 Jan 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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Why China’s new climate targets matter for everyone | Semafor (www.semafor.com)
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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Why do you have a problem with multiple facts?

Comparing gross to per-capita is deliberately misleading, not factual.

China has had a slight growth in emissions this year and the population is falling

China’s CO2 falls 1% in Q2 2024 in first quarterly drop since Covid-19

As a result of the strong capacity growth – and despite poor wind conditions – solar and wind covered 52% of electricity demand growth in the first half of 2024 and 71% since March. (The fall in wind speeds can be seen from NASA MERRA-2 data averaged for all of China.)

Indeed, the increase in power generation from solar and wind reported by the National Energy Administration in the first half of the year, at 171 terawatt hours (TWh), exceeded the UK’s total electricity supply of 160TWh in the first half of 2023.

Rapid demand growth in January–February, at 11%, had outpaced even the clean energy additions. But combined with a rebound in hydropower generation, the increase in non-fossil electricity supply exceeded power demand growth in the March to June period.

The population is functionally flat. The rapid onboarding of green energy has displaced the need for new fossil fuel sources and depressed carbon emissions for the first time since the pandemic.

Also China had insane emissions growth for decades

China had normal, if not below average, emissions growth for decades. Their reliance on hydro power and mass transit has kept them well below the western industrial average.

The main reason production is leaving China is high cost

The costs are coming in the form of tariffs and other trade restrictions placed by an increasingly trade-hostile US federal government. Real cost of manufacturing in the Chinese economy continues to fall, as new advanced infrastructure reduce the material and energy costs of per-unit production.

What the other Pacific Rim countries have that China lacks is a scorched earth commitment to industrial expansion. They're destroying their local ecology and sacrificing the quality of life of their native residents to fuel a short term burst of foreign investment. But it can't last.