duoplicity
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Earth's Shifting Baseline
I did a big post about "Shifting Baseline" last year but I don't have the energy to do something like that this time so I'll just link to it: https://imgur.com/gallery/y0fqTgT
Basically, the TL;DR is that the baseline is shifting so fast that what we remember is not what was the norm only a few years ago (the frog in boiling water thing) so we don't think it's as bad as it really is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline
The latest news on this is the silencing of nature:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/16/world-faces-deathly-silence-of-nature-as-wildlife-disappears-warn-experts-aoe
==
comic source xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1321/
hfctom
Moved to Ohio. Was told I would freeze to death, that I needed snow tires and a snow blower. There was -one- stretch of about four days when I needed those things. And now my car needs normal tires.
P51mus
Chicago barely gets snow in the winter anymore and it still feels super weird to me.
starheart8
bound4doom
Michigan, we never had ticks, they are all over now. We always had white Christmas. I remember one year it seriously snowed every single day in December. I have a snow blower, because it was needed at least once a week. This last year I used my snowblower once.
streptovsky
I grew up in Central Florida in the 90s/00s - I remember it routinely dipped below freezing at night *every single winter* and my dad would put sprinklers out and run them all night so the trees in the back yard would be coated in ice. That never fucking happens anymore.
quade
XKCD is always relevant
EmptyHouseBurglar
Feels like there's always an xkcd. And an oglaf.
sadurdaynight
Imagine your apartment is hot. So, you open the freezer. That quick blast of cold air hits. OMG, it's so cold! But, you leave the freezer door open. No big deal. It'll always be cold. It's the freezer. You check it the next day and all your stuff in the freezer is thawed out and water all over the floor. The poles are the freezers, and global warming is us leaving the freezer door open.
DJOldguy
Why do countries get huge floods in summer, or bigger forest fires in winter?
georgedragonslayer
We should not have called it "global warming" in the first place. It is global change. Some places get hotter. Some places get cooler. Over all, it might be getting hotter. People, for the most part, don't, or can't, comprehend decades. The planet doesn't change immediately. The planet also doesn't give a shit about you. Be happy that we are living in a brief period of time where humans can actually exist. And try to make that time as long as possible.
Shaodyn
The worse climate change gets, the sadder that White Christmas song gets. Used to be, snow in December was fairly common in most temperate areas of the US. Now you're lucky to see snow before mid-January at the earliest.
TheJuiceLoosener
Zahnradfee
The seagul is trying to blow your pier up?
TheFastpaws
I remember the state I grew up in used to have long icy winters. Now you are lucky if it gets really cold at all. Let alone if you see any snow.
MutteringMisanthrope
Shifting BASSline, you say...........?
AutoFox
It used to routinely get down below 10 degrees in December, January and February where I grew up. These days we're amazed when it dips below the mid 20s.
drduffer
One of the realities of my life at 72 is remembering winter in SW Lower Michigan as being filled with snow and wintertime activities like sledding as a child in the 60s, to playing golf on Christmas or New Year’s in the late 90s.
Granted, it wasn’t short sleeves weather, but there just wasn’t any snow.
Beardedobject
Similar here in NH. We used to get snow all winter with weeks in single digits and below zero and every few years a big storm in March or April. Now? I haven't used my snow blower in 4 years, it's in the 40s and 50s into January with only a few snow storms during actual winter and a major snow event every spring.
GriffinMann41
I mean shit, even growing up in the 2000s and 2010s I remember MD getting winter snows. We haven't gotten snow for 90% of winters since like 2016. We got like three and a half feet in 2011 or something and it was a blast. I got fucking excited over getting 6 inches throughout the entirety of last year.
kiwitreelady
That cold snap in 2014 in STL was brutal for my family. It's much to warm in the winter now. My kids miss the snow.
HoochIsCrazzy
link to the original comic https://xkcd.com/1321/
Illithidbane
Same here in Michigan. We used to have some days that dipped into the negatives, and we would have a bunch of snow for months straight. Now? We get a little snow, then it melts. Then a little snow, then it melts. Then just a gray dull period. "Winter" is already mostly a thing of the past.
spookyactionatadistance
Montreal is becoming like that. We had a FU winter and now a weird spring. It was sunny 18°c today and tomorrow will ne a cold rainy 2°c. There was a week in february where in the span of 4 days we got 18°c then a snowstorm followed by rain and another 15°c
crypticorb
Not to worry, this planet will be just fine in a few centuries.
crypticorb
Do those who missed the point, humanity won’t be around to appreciate nature rebalancing itself, because we’ll be gone along with a large part of the current ecosystem.
I hope whoever emerges as our successor in a few eons is wiser.
TheNamiKage
It's not "a" polar vortex, its THE polar vortex. A global air current in decaying and another is widening to fill it. It is a global climate shifting and we just pass it off as weather.
Infinias
The irony of global warming is that the temperature difference will become worse in both directions while the base temperature rises. So we not only get more heat we get harsher cold.
ArkoneAxon
This. And I already live in a place where the weather tends towards extremes. I am NOT looking forward to August...
BoboTheIceMan
Right? Like I live in the PNW. We have fire season, almost every year now. Couple years ago we had fires that wouldn't go out over winter.
heroesblood
I remember when it would snow around the holidays. Now it just shits powder in February and fucks up traffic. No White Christmases here.
aardvarckj
Ohh! Pacific Northwest, it took me awhile. I'm drunk.
aardvarckj
Prince edward island north wales is what popped up in my head.
Rhythmaster
Wildfires release a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, which warms it, and leads to more fires in the future.
XavierElrose
They issued a 'go now' evacuation order for a place a few blocks south of where I used to live. On the Oregon Coast. You're not *literally* trying to light the rain on fire, there, but that might actually be easier. Because I got used to the weather there, now I complain about the heat whenever it's above 70.
Zyrixion
I grew up in the Bay Area in California through the 90s. People forget that the kind of weather people attribute to Oregon and Washington, used to also be true of California, too. We used to get lots of showers, and thunderstorms, and our summers were more mild. Getting above 100 was a rarity in the Bay, maybe a couple days a year. In 2020 I had an entire week above 105, with plenty more like it. We don't get thunderstorms anymore.
ShadusMacAoidh
I grew up in the Bay Area when it was still green. I left in the late 90s, and everything was brown... tan... washed out.
BoboTheIceMan
But I remember growing up, in the late 80s early 90s where it was an outlier to have fire like that. We had the firestorm in 93.
KingXizor
A simple one for me in upstate NY is when I was a kid snow was on the ground by Halloween and pretty much stayed their as a few inches to a couple feet until February. Now we go months without a lasting snowfall in the winter. Living through this shit is so fucking depressing.
serpx
Same we used to have snow for all of winter in the midwest. This past year we pretty much had a week in january
BoboTheIceMan
Now that is almost every year and people are like, Meh that's normal. Even more so the transplants because that's all they've known here.
Hammertulski
A lot of the discourse around our newly-minted fire season is definitely tinged by folks moving up here from fire-prone areas who just consider it normal all over except in Alaska or upstate NY. Trying to describe the Eagle Creek fire to Californians is like trying to explain freak ice storms to Wisconsinites - they’re like “yeah, doesn’t that just happen?”
Hammertulski
Oh yeah, we also have freak ice storms at 500ft now. I remember one big one in 96, another around 2000ish, and then it’s been every other year on average that something has just decimated trees and infrastructure.