this post was submitted on 16 May 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.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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

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And I saw this on the same day I saw this article about conspiracy theories around the increasing number and range of ticks - because ticks are getting more common and more widespread because of climate change, but if you're a loyal conservative, and you believe climate change is a hoax because all the people you trust are telling you it's a hoax, there must be some evil conspiracy spreading those ticks, right?

And I'm thinking about how the fucking capitalists (because the TVA is a federally owned utility company) are telling people that coal and oil are safe and healthy and aren't hurting anybody or anything. And how, when we go back to '60s level of smog and yellow domes over our cities, and cancer rates skyrocket from the coal ash blanketing towns, people aren't going to believe the TVA lied to them - they're going to believe some evil left wing conspiracy is poisoning them. Probably fluoride and vaccines. Not clean coal and renewable natural gas, no sir, I'm a loyal American, and I love my coal burning power plant!

Create a crisis, blame your enemies for the crisis, convince the people to support your policies to fix the crisis, your policies cause more crises, repeat.

I cannot believe how long that strategy has been working.

The American people are not fit to govern themselves.

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people aren’t going to believe the TVA lied to them - they’re going to believe some evil left wing conspiracy is poisoning them.

They don't believe the truth because they are the targets of a sophisticated, orchestrated information attack, designed to saturate the information environment with enough disinformation and misinformation that diverts attention away from the truth and toward an endless cycle of meaningless culture war bullshit. My parents were immersed in it their whole lives, and it hurt them their whole lives, and they went to their early graves not understanding why the system wouldn't reward them for their loyalty. They just thought they hadn't worked hard enough or been smart enough, or just weren't lucky enough. Or that the Muslims, or the queers, or the blacks, or the socialists had by some poorly-defined contrivance, damaged society enough that the honest hard-working folks like themselves couldn't live without constant acute anxiety about food and housing safety. They were so confused, and sad, and angry their whole lives. I wish I could have saved them from that. Still trying to save the living.

[–] PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

That's a terrible argument, breathing garden soil would be incredibly unhealthy.