this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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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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Chemtrails Aren’t Real. So Why Are Politicians Passing Laws About Them? Banning chemtrails is “like banning unicorns or banning Bigfoot,” says one weather expert (www.rollingstone.com)
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[–] despite_velasquez@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Aren't contrails like, really bad for climate? And it would be really easy to divert some routes to shave off a significant part of contrail-caused warming?

[–] grinde@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You've got it backwards. Contrails have a very minor cooling effect caused by reflecting incoming sunlight. It's just small in relation to the warming caused by planes burning fuel.

[–] benjhm@sopuli.xyz 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yes. Persistent contrails - i.e. aviation-induced cirrus clouds which spread in supersaturated air layers - are indeed bad for the climate, but often their effect is ignored as hard to quantify, while the simpler small effect of short-lived contrails is conveniently cited instead.
Also, while all high clouds have a warming effect by reflecting infra-red radiation back to earth, there can also be a cooling effect due to reflecting solar radiation, which is greater when the angle of the sun is low. So the net effect is warming in the middle of the day and at night, but cooling in morning and evening.

[–] despite_velasquez@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Thanks for the insightful response, as with most things, there's nuance missing from the conversation

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago

Yes. Kinda, just a little regulation could reduce them a lot.

But here's the thing. Congress does not give a shit about the climate. They will never pass anything like you're suggesting because they're for sale. Only a major structural change that eliminates coercion/bribery from regulatory votes will work.

Congress as we know it fighting climate change is about as realistic as unicorns and Bigfoot.