this post was submitted on 07 Aug 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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Spying from space: How satellites can help identify and rein in a potent climate pollutant | Methane levels in the atmosphere are rising. An armada of satellites could help identify leaks (grist.org)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Mind you, identifying leaks isn't enough; it takes actively fixing them and decommissioning the infrastructure which resulted in methane release in the first place.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Are the leaks perchance closely correlated to locations where oil and gas are being mined?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Generally yes. At least with respect to the methane leaks in the Four Corners area, where UT, AZ, NM & CO meet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Corners_Methane_Hot_Spot

However the Siberian one seems to be from methane clathrates as the permafrost melts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

The larger picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_emissions

Fossil Fuel Use (33%) Animal Agriculture (30%) Plant Agriculture (18%) Waste (15%) All Other (4%)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

The fossil fuels numbers are probably an underestimate; up until a few years ago, they were based on self-reported numbers from the industry. There have been a string of papers suggesting they only report about 1/4 of what actually leaks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Doubtless. Would you post links to some, any of those?

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