this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Climate

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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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Nation’s Largest Reservoirs Are Drying Up, Threatening Life in the Southwest (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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Agriculture is the biggest user of the Colorado River, with alfalfa and other sources of livestock feed accounting for nearly half of the water consumed. Municipal water systems use about a quarter.

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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Alfalfa needs to be dried before you bale it; otherwise (ironically) it spontaneously combusts. It's cheapest to dry it out on the ground for a while between cutting and baling. If it rains during that time the crop is ruined.

It's too risky to rely on weather cooperation in a wetter region. Much safer to rely on irrigation in a desert.