Recent extreme weather events and climate change/global warming

Funnily enough here, the bushfire threat has eased, but parts of the state are now in flood - yes, the weather is weird.

 

Something strange is going on for sure. Although I wonder how bad it has to get to be obvious to the anti-environmental wing of the Republican party here. And that is the worry, if we do get a cold winter, they will just say, "ha ha, we were right". They haven't been right in 20 years though.

If you look at the fires and the burned acres that haven't come back yet around the world, the floods, the different storm tracks because the jet stream has been shifting, the bad air quality in China and big cities, the drought, the crop damage, etc... it doesn't look good.

 

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Yeah, we broke this planet.

I'm living in Chicago, and it's barely snowed twice this winter. It was warm until almost Thanksgiving, and now it's raining and sixty degrees. In Chicago. In January.

This is seriously fucked up. When I was a little kid in Minnesota, we used to come visit my grandparents in Chicago, and it was cold as all fuck. Icy winds used to blow all through the area, and it was snowy and icy and the whole damn megillah. It was like Minnesota, only windier. But now...this winter is just pathetic. It's depressing.

I am seriously wondering if my son will ever have a snow day from school, ever be able to go sledding and skiing and skating, or get build a decent snow man or snow fort. I really think that those are going to be things he hears me tell stories about, but never actually experiences.

Fucking climate change. We fucked the environment in the ass, all right. This sucks.

 

Dubai's been having some extreme fog weather on most nights for the past 2 weeks.

A couple days ago that night-time fog extended into the wee afternoon hours, causing some major traffic.

Yeah, I still remember the awesome winters I experienced during my childhood in Germany. Massive amounts of snow in the winters of '97. '98 and '99.

Blissful time for kids back then.

Haven't had anything close to that ever since.

 

if people actually paid attention to this, it really would hit home. As i interpret it, the ideal scenario is having the whole map coloured in white.

wow, just fucking wow

Thats for the pic ASU2003. thats floored me.

 

It's really foggy here today, thunder storms coming in the afternoon, then snow to finish the day.

Additional the grass is still green and should be brown.

 

There is little doubt that extreme weather events (heat, drought, floods, blizzards, fires, etc), while perhaps not more frequent, have certainly become more severe.

And the connections to human activity and global warming are stronger than ever. But because the well-funded deniers represent the primary cause -- fossil fuels-- their influence on public policy will continue until the outcry goes beyond the environmentalists and becomes a national or international movement much like the environmental movement of the 70s. More homes destroyed by severe floods, hurricanes, out of season tornadoes. Significantly higher food prices as a result of severe droughts....

On the personal level, the only thing to do is lower your carbon footprint. On the policy level,the appointment of John Kerry, "Mr. Climate", as Sec of State is a positive development in the US. Beyond traditional diplomacy, H. Clinton's focus was womens rights; Kerry's will be climate change. Where Gore only found his voice after leaving office, Kerry has been outspoken for years.

But I'm still not optimistic that we'll see any significant public policy development. The monied opposition still controls the agenda.

 

Meaning of course, big oil. Unfortunately, there is no sure-fire cure for greed....

 

Its forecasted to be 75 here today with tornado warnings. And high of 48 tomorrow. Wtf???

 

What has the weather been like around your parts? Is it off-kilter? Are you concerned about anything?
Wacky as fuck. Twice in the past month I've been walking around without sleeves the day after a snowstorm. The fog after the snow has made for great photography weather, though.

Do you think it's global warming?
I have no formal education or qualification to speak authoritatively on the issue. Among people who do, let's take a look at the consensus

The overwhelming majority of scientific research concludes that global warming is a real phenomenon and that we are causing it. I can discuss and explain it, but the core of any argument I would make is based on the previous sentence.

Do you think it's merely natural cycles and that we have nothing to do with it?
This is a more complicated question than it seems. Yes, there are natural cycles that affect weather and global weather is a chaotic system, but natural cycles things like El Niño and La Niña are driven in part by global warming and long-term trends reflect the effects predicted by climate change models.

Do you think there is anything we can do about it?
Yes. Whether we have the will to do it is another problem. I'm optimistic because I remember being told in elementary school that at the rate the ozone layer was being depleted, by the time I was old enough to have kids it would be unsafe for them to play outside and that you would have to wear sunscreen year-round even if you were outside for short periods of time. We confronted it head-on, heavily regulated CFCs, and ozone depletion slowed to the point that the damage may be repaired within my lifetime (assuming I make it to 90 years old.)

 

I am not nearly as optimistic.

The CFC/ozone depletion problem was not nearly as controversial or as politically charged.

Nor were CFCs and the related products as pervasive as fossil fuels that cut across so many sectors of the economy and has so much industry money behind it to protect its interest.

Hell, Reagan took the lead among industrialized nations on the international Montreal Protocol to regulate CFCs. Can you imagine any of today's Republicans taking such action? Or giving their disdain for international treaties, even allowing such action to proceed in a meaningful manner?