this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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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.

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

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The thing about eBikes is that their slightly higher speed sharply increases the number of people for whom they are an option as compared with pedal-it-yourself. That's why people are recommending them.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'd be willing to bet that for most Americans the main barrier to commuting by bike is the threat of cars and lack of bicycle infrastructure as a whole.

I ride my bike to class often, and when I do it's great. Well-maintained trails and frequent bike racks make it very convenient. My college is good with bicycle infrastructure, and I happen to be lucky that there are good trails between my apartment and campus. A faster ride would be nice, but I don't see it making me bike more often. It wouldn't affect the things that prevent me from biking on the days that I don't: weather, time of day, or how I feel physically.

Despite how much I bike to class, I've never biked to the grocery store, restaurants, or any other place that's not on campus. This is because I'd have to ride on busy roads without bike lanes. Once you get closer to the center of the city, there are bike lanes, but they're just painted. Actual separated bike lanes basically don't exist in the US, which means that cyclists are still at risk of getting hit by cars even when bike lanes are present. A faster bike wouldn't fix this. Investment in infrastructure would.

I do understand the appeal of eBikes and I recognize them as a viable alternative to cars. But I only think people will make the switch if they live somewhere that's already got the necessary infrastructure to make their commute safe and efficient. This is not even close to the majority of Americans. If we want people to move away from cars and toward bikes, we need to think of infrastructure first and the bikes themselves second.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

The perception of threat is a big deal. Actual risk while riding is shockingly low, even in places with limited dedicated infrastructure. I've lived in several of them.