this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
250 points (98.4% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5205 readers
751 users here now

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:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Ireland has a long coastline but most of it near mountains, so there is fortunately scope to gradually retreat uphill. The large flat part is in the middle - the central Shannon basin is only 35m above sea-level, but unless East Antarctica goes too, that's safe for the moment. As for temperature rise, it's a cool country that may expect relatively little warming, due to the cold blob south of greenland, at least while ice continues melting. So, Ireland may need to prepare for large influx of people escaping heat elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Until the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation stops, plunging Ireland's temperatures by an average of 15°

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

It slows down, an effect of cold water from melting ice passing south of greenland, which has a local cooling effect, while the atlantic as a whole gets warmer. Consequence is a greater heat contrast along that front, which may intensify the sequence of low pressures bringing wind and rain, which is what Ireland has just experienced this summer. But the high-resolution models do not show that AMOC stops abruptly, that was a feature of simpler models designed to replicate palaeoclimatic changes at the end of the ice ages, when the amount of ice available to melt was much higher.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

As a Canadian with Irish grandparents I look forward to claiming my Irish citizenship.

15° cooler (C or F) would be lovely.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I should have clarified 15°C, which would be a shift of 27°F. It's hard to overstate how devastating that would be to the ecology of Northern Europe, potentially sending Ireland near permafrost territory and ending agriculture and pastoralism as they know it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah there's a bit to go before the sea goes over the cliffs of Moher for sure.