this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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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.

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[–] Art3sian@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

If the world warms enough and the Greenland glaciers melt into the ocean, a mini Ice Age can occur in as little as 50 years.

People don’t understand that we will freeze before we bake, and of the two, freezing will end our civilisation more assuredly.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I don’t think this is really in line with current predictions. If you are referring to the weakening or collapse of the North Atlantic ocean currents, this will lead to substantially colder temperatures only for Northern Europe, though it will have other large effects on other regions as well. But it will not be comparable to an ice age from a global perspective—the rest of the world will remain extremely hot.

[–] Art3sian@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yes, I’m referring to ocean currents and how I’ve understood it, is that they carry warm currents from the equator to the poles which is a main driver of warm weather cycling the planet.

Once the ocean currents stall we lose that warmth transference and everything subsequently freezes, and quickly. Not globally, but around the 30th latitude, north and south which is enough to make Europe, Asia, North America and half of Argentina near uninhabitable.

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t high C02 levels and global warming the reasoning behind the last Ice Age, circa. 11,000bc?

[–] nexusband@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)
[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

Sorry I was speaking colloquially. I should have said glacial period.

[–] XTornado@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And how long would last this Ice Age. Because you call it "mini" but not sure if you mean it duration, in temperatures or what....

[–] Art3sian@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I’m not sure to be honest. I think both? I think ‘mini’ is the planet partially frozen except for the equatorial region, and the duration is a few thousand years opposed to perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands.

But I’m guessing based off the last one. It’s a good question. Either way, it’s a bad time for bald apes who’ve forgotten how to hunt.