Science Memes
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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Yuuup. A few years ago, when the entire United States was experiencing record lows, the Earth had an above average overall temperature. Imagine how hot everywhere other than the United States must have been, if the average was still higher despite our record lows.
Fun fact, when the jet stream gets perturbed like that and develops the sinusoidal deviations that we are experiencing, it's called a Rossby wave.
These waves are actually super normal as the jetstream shifts with the seasons and moves north/south, especially when in a La Niña phase of the ENSO, which we are in right now.
The Hadley circulation cells whose boundaries define the jet stream are driven by convection. The US lies right along a jetstream boundary between two cells, and just downwind from the pacific ocean, so our weather is particularly sensitive to the temperature differences across the pacific ocean.
El Niño patterns have a hot equatorial pacific ocean which drives significant convection on the southern cell of the jet stream crossing the US, stabilizing it. La Niña patterns have a smaller gradient between the temperatures in the cells to the north and south of the relevant jet stream, especially as climate change relatively warms the arctic faster, leading to higher amplitude destabilizations during La Niña patterns like we are experiencing now.
More fun facts about these Rossby waves: they have been proposed as the mechanism to drive the eddies that end up forming planets in protoplanetary disks around baby stars (see the wikipedia page for Rossby waves above), and as the mechanism behind the hexagonal shape of Saturn's polar cell. Worth noting that the exact mechanism for that hexagon is still highly debated, but Peter Gierasch used to have a fun model using a modified record turn table to create a rossby wave that formed a hexagon as a proof-of-concept that has stuck with me.
I liked the image of the Titanic nosing down into the water, and deniers up on the stern end saying, "If we're "sinking" how come we/re up so high?"
Because science, bitch!
That's science though, the people that don't believe it will not be convinced by smart people sharing their discoveries.
my issue with posts like these is the ppl frequenting these sites already know this, its directed at the wrong audience
I feel like you hit the nail on the head. It's not that they don't understand it. I don't understand most of this, but I can try
There are people out there who just don't believe and therefore will never try to understand
Honestly we are way past the point of any scientific reasoning. The public has voted that they are uninterested, and the US government and large corporations are about to be uninterested too.
To be blunt… No one ever really cared, but the world kinda squeaked by putting scientists in front of statesmen and public broadcasts. Everyone kinda nodded along, and not just for global warming.
That period is over.
No one ever really cared
That's just not true. The problem is that the people who care were never the kind of people who'd come into power in our society.
A few people cared, fewer did anything about it. Most were more concerned with mass production of cheap shit.
Got a heat pump to replace the gas boiler, bike instead of car and replaced the concrete paved garden with what will hopefully become a wildflower meadow with shrubs on the edges. You can actually just stop buying a lot of the stuff that is causing these problems.
No actually the people are interested and the megacorps still destroys the planet because they have no soul they worship only profit
Dayum. Well said. Though some people cared. We, the few, and Al Gore, for example. The great majority, no. It does appear that period is over, I agree. Perhaps this is how it has been for the last 4-5 decades. Maybe this hope's death will be the last in our history.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
It's not the rich call it what it is. Capital. When profits are impacted we will see change. This is why I continue to say no one is going to bat an eye when Florida gets swallowed by the ocean but when New York does? That's when we will have a collective eye opening.
Capital
Poor word choice. It is more profitable to build renewables today. Oligarchist power to protect their existing assets, is not "rational capital allocation", but is what we get from power to corrupt capital allocation.
You need to convince them the Earth is a sphere first.
Then we need to convince them to build more big red arrows to keep the blue stuff up the top
I'll distribute the leopards. If you're Republican or voted for the pile of shit, just see one of the leopards. Tell them to go back where they came from, they'll know what to do. They're trained, it only takes a second. Pretty painless during... I assume. Oh it's figurative speech? Never mind! I'll get the pumas back. It was pumas right? Ew, I think this one already ate a face. Sorry sorry...
I guess the intent matters but that was kinda painful to read. I give 3 points for the intentions and effort but the execution gets 0.7 scores all across the board
From that picture it looks like the weak jet stream is the problem. We just need to build a ton of wind farms across Canada to blow it harder so that it becomes more powerful. Easy.
If we want the wind farms to blow we'll have to power them using fossil fuels of course. It's the only solution.
And the pollution isn't a problem, because the strong winds generated will dissipate it away.
Oh, and the entire system must be ai-based
Good luck convincing the rubes that. Literally heard jokes about "global warming" today in the office. Had to say, well its climate change actually and wild shit means its not doing good.
Should have called it "climate instability" or "climate chaos" from the start.
It shouldn't have been "save the planet", it should have been "save the humans" because the planet will be here long after we're gone
There once was an explosion the size of Russia because the coal and oil underneath it got in contact with magma, killing 99.8% of all life on earth (before the dinosaurs) 🦕🦖- this process released more CO2 in the atmosphere than if we would burn all the fossil fuel today (I’ve forgotten by how much more)
Earth took its time, couple million years, but the carbon-silicate balance was restored. Edit: Fun fact 2 - during this time there are records of winds >800 mph, acid rain and temperatures >180°F
Fun fact: There was not a single mass extinction because of the shift of the magnetic poles, all mass extinctions can be linked to the carbon-silicate balance.
Woah, never heard of this. Got a link or a technical term?
The naturally occuring nuclear reactor in Africa is really interesting as well. So is the coal fire in Australia that's been going on for like a thousand years.
Climate Crisis is my preferred term. Gets the point across quite nicely.
Easy money.
"It's cold as fuck because a monster bolus of hot air hit the arctic from the other side of the planet, sent a chunk of the polar vortex down here. Heat directly caused this. Did you have a problem with the word 'bolus', or perhaps understanding the Earth is spherical? Was 'spherical' too big a word? I can dumb this down if need be."
Yeah except I myself didnt know that directly either. I just knew that, no, this is because of climate change not in spite of it.
Sounds too complicated to be true. Obvious explanation is Jewish Space Laser!
Ha, you believe in space
The graphic isn't all that accurate. The text says a colder period is because of a warmer planet but then the cold area from a meandering jet stream looks larger. The missing part is the warmer air that leaks into the polar areas, causing a feedback loop by further deteriorating the balance of cold and warm that drives the jet stream.
You try drawing spherical stuff on a flat surface. Shits hard 🤣🤣
Last time that much fresh water got dumped in the Atlantic ocean (when the glacier over north america melted) it resulted in an ice age over Europe... So... Good luck guys 👍
Phew. Glad I'm not in Europe
Western Europe in particular benefits from being warmer than its latitude would suggest due to Atlantic Ocean currents.
These currents are literally a coin toss away from breaking down, and it’s getting worse every year. Climate scientists are in unanimous agreement that the collapse is coming, and faster than a geologic timescale.
If (when) this happens, European countries will look more like Siberia than the Mediterranean.
Humanity is already dead. The time for drastic action was 30 years ago. We’re just talking corpses.
It's just nature's hernia