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This is pretty alarming. To me, climate change has always been real but I always assumed the effects were going to be much further in my future. Clearly I was w

This is pretty alarming. To me, climate change has always been real but I always assumed the effects were going to be much further in my future. Clearly I was wrong. In just the last few years there seems to have been a massive acceleration in the number of climate change-related events. How long will it take our political machines to finally be OK with addressing these problems? It has already taken too long, so I don't have high hopes. I would think an article like this would scare the hell out of coastal states like Florida. This time the ice melt remained largely inland, but one of these days we'll run out of luck.

dboreham 5y ago
Hmm...I first noticed the effects in 1976. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_1976_(Europe) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_1976_(Europe)
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Hm. Now that you mention it I remember molten asphalt between the Rhine and Cologne Cathedral while being there on a trip with my mother while I was very young. That even melted the soles of shoes, not only mine, but most people there. It all stank like a construction site where they paved the streets. But it wasn't. Luckily one could flee into the many shops and restaurants near there, and buy new shoes! :-)
bamboozled 5y ago
“Please somebody do something”
_spduchamp 5y ago
Here in Canada, the climate crisis gets used as a political tool to tell stories that makes the other political parties look bad. This leads to endless policy lurch, and climate stalling. Elections can't fix the problem because we are stuck with first-past-the-post elections and all the networks of patronage like it that way. This is why I advocate for electoral reform, specifically a Citizens'Assembly on Electoral Reform. It's how we debug the system.
missedthecue 5y ago
A massive increase in events? Or a massive increase in the reporting of events? Wildfires for instance have dominated headlines for the past few years, but over the last 50-100 years, wildfire numbers are down massively in the US and Australia.
- Nejoti 5y ago
  You should not take the numbers which fit your view but look at all numbers. The type of crazy events are getting more, the extremes also. There are plenty of statistics telling us that co2 is going up, glacier ice down, temperatures up etc. What's happening right now in Italy, Greece and turkey is extreme. The flood in Germany was extreme. 'i have never seen something like this in my whole life' was what you heard from plenty of people. Canada's wildfire this year is already at 3 million, the drought in California is still ongoing and in new Zealand they have also issues with power generation through water. You really should follow the science of it more closely if you still argue with numbers which fit your view. Not sure though what your goal is. Are you worried that we spend too much resources on renewable and sustainable solutions globally?
- mint2 5y ago
  >“Wild fire numbers are down massively in the US”?!?!?! Nine of the top ten largest California fires in the last 100 years, are within the past ten years. What sort of wild fire numbers do you mean?
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    Total area burned annually in the US. Down by a huge amount over the past century. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=...
    - mint2 5y ago
      The graph you linked to is at best extremely flawed. It’s either by a climate denier intentionally trying to trick readers like you or at best it’s by someone who has no idea about fires and fire policy. While sometimes it can be hard to spot lying by statistics, this instance there was a huge red flag present suggesting that the chart was questionable. The strange long and poorly annoyed extrapolation trend line along with the odd very colloquial phrasing of the label is a big warning sign. If it didn’t raise some doubts for you, pay attention to details like that in the future. So what is the elephant in the room they are hiding in the hopes of lying with stats to deceive people like you about fires and climate? Well wonder why there was a drastic reduction in fire size in the early decades? It’s called the 10 am rule and should be known by anyone researching fire behavior over the time span they plot, so they intentionally are ignoring it. Had they marked on the policy changes on the graph then the cause of the reduction would be obvious. And when fire policy is clearly a major impact on fire size, trying to extrapolate another driver of fire behavior change while intentionally ignoring the dominant factor is not a good look. The actual part where the decayed are more comparable are 1980 onward. And this acres burned graph is also a misdirection in itself. The main issue with recent fires is the intensity and speed that they explode in size along with the increasingly build out wild land urban interface. And the fire intensity is a product of many factors, hotter weather and droughts leave the forest primed to burn, but also the past fire suppression led to a lot of fuel build up. The lying with stats graph: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=...

dboreham 5y ago

Hmm...I first noticed the effects in 1976. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_1976_(Europe) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_1976_(Europe)

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Hm. Now that you mention it I remember molten asphalt between the Rhine and Cologne Cathedral while being there on a trip with my mother while I was very young. That even melted the soles of shoes, not only mine, but most people there. It all stank like a construction site where they paved the streets. But it wasn't. Luckily one could flee into the many shops and restaurants near there, and buy new shoes! :-)

bamboozled 5y ago

“Please somebody do something”

_spduchamp 5y ago

Here in Canada, the climate crisis gets used as a political tool to tell stories that makes the other political parties look bad. This leads to endless policy lurch, and climate stalling. Elections can't fix the problem because we are stuck with first-past-the-post elections and all the networks of patronage like it that way. This is why I advocate for electoral reform, specifically a Citizens'Assembly on Electoral Reform. It's how we debug the system.

missedthecue 5y ago

A massive increase in events? Or a massive increase in the reporting of events? Wildfires for instance have dominated headlines for the past few years, but over the last 50-100 years, wildfire numbers are down massively in the US and Australia.

Nejoti 5y ago
You should not take the numbers which fit your view but look at all numbers. The type of crazy events are getting more, the extremes also. There are plenty of statistics telling us that co2 is going up, glacier ice down, temperatures up etc. What's happening right now in Italy, Greece and turkey is extreme. The flood in Germany was extreme. 'i have never seen something like this in my whole life' was what you heard from plenty of people. Canada's wildfire this year is already at 3 million, the drought in California is still ongoing and in new Zealand they have also issues with power generation through water. You really should follow the science of it more closely if you still argue with numbers which fit your view. Not sure though what your goal is. Are you worried that we spend too much resources on renewable and sustainable solutions globally?
mint2 5y ago
>“Wild fire numbers are down massively in the US”?!?!?! Nine of the top ten largest California fires in the last 100 years, are within the past ten years. What sort of wild fire numbers do you mean?
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Total area burned annually in the US. Down by a huge amount over the past century. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=...
  - mint2 5y ago
    The graph you linked to is at best extremely flawed. It’s either by a climate denier intentionally trying to trick readers like you or at best it’s by someone who has no idea about fires and fire policy. While sometimes it can be hard to spot lying by statistics, this instance there was a huge red flag present suggesting that the chart was questionable. The strange long and poorly annoyed extrapolation trend line along with the odd very colloquial phrasing of the label is a big warning sign. If it didn’t raise some doubts for you, pay attention to details like that in the future. So what is the elephant in the room they are hiding in the hopes of lying with stats to deceive people like you about fires and climate? Well wonder why there was a drastic reduction in fire size in the early decades? It’s called the 10 am rule and should be known by anyone researching fire behavior over the time span they plot, so they intentionally are ignoring it. Had they marked on the policy changes on the graph then the cause of the reduction would be obvious. And when fire policy is clearly a major impact on fire size, trying to extrapolate another driver of fire behavior change while intentionally ignoring the dominant factor is not a good look. The actual part where the decayed are more comparable are 1980 onward. And this acres burned graph is also a misdirection in itself. The main issue with recent fires is the intensity and speed that they explode in size along with the increasingly build out wild land urban interface. And the fire intensity is a product of many factors, hotter weather and droughts leave the forest primed to burn, but also the past fire suppression led to a lot of fuel build up. The lying with stats graph: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E7nujQWXsAISEKs?format=jpg&name=...