The cold needs to stay in the Arctic. Instead it is being mixed with warmer air in the mid latitudes. That makes the Arctic warmer and my arse cold AF.
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
92 points (98.9% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5380 readers
192 users here now
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:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
People think it is cold, not realizing that someone is leaving the freezer door wide open.
It feels cold now, but once the arctic loses all that ice, things will heat up quickly.
But no one is going to care unless it effects them. People thinking global warming is coming for them 15 years from now are going to be surprised when the effects are felt 1-2 years from now.
Thing is, it's really not that cold. We've just forgotten how to deal with it.
Granted the cold seems to be making it a lot farther south, but for most people this used to be normal.
I've been telling my kids that this is what December used to feel like
There is a pattern: more persistent heat waves, more persistent cold waves, more persistent wet and dry periods. On a planet that is a bit hotter on average, we get "more weather".
It's true that I haven't yet seen temperatures as low as some of the worst winters I've experienced in the Southeast. I remember as a kid a few bad ones that shut things down for a week or more, destroyed lots of trees and property with ice buildup, etc. What makes it far worse than just cold is the wind caused from the Arctic blasts (driving storm fronts), as well as the higher humidity from more moisture in the air in general. Add to that the regularity of these Arctic temperature shifts every year now since the jet stream is toast from the reduction of the difference between the latitude temperatures as the Arctic warms.
I am getting tired of some of these Youtube weather channels with their "this is a bad one" videos every week. They are bad, but don't act like it's not "normal" now. I guess "yet another wave of cold/hot" doesn't get clicks.