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Where Did the Snow Go? “A visceral feeling of what climate change looks and feels like.”
(www.nytimes.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
210 points (98.2% liked)
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I don't like using snow as a measurement of climate change. Snow is weather. Global warming is not weather.
If the gulf stream closes, we're going to have ice ages in Europe and scorched earth and soup like oceans in the Americas.
It's bad, m'kay.
The consequences aren't if we're going to have white Christmas or how well the financial reports are for skiing resorts. It's literally the doom of most life on earth. Don't give me the "The uh planet will be fine". I don't give a shit about a planet in space. I care for the living beings on the planet. Fuck.
There are in fact meaningful trends in snow cover
Thanks, more data is always appreciated, but of course there is trends in snow coverage. Global warming is going to affect everything. Including snow coverage. I'm not worried about snow coverage.
And I'm sure none of the ecosystems or communities that rely on snowmelt for drinking water are worried about it either, so it's fine.
Ok but people that we should be recruiting do care about it, so get caring
Snow is very noticeable. It's weather that is very pretty and visual, but also impacts your daily life.
I remember how many snow days I had back in school, and how kids now often don't have any
It's very visceral and memorable weather - most other things are vague and easy to write off, or they're a life changing catastrophe that is basically up to luck.
If snow is what makes people understand, viscerally, "things are changing very, very fast", then that's fine
That's where we are right now. People generally believe it's happening, but only intellectually - they have no sense of scale or urgency. Most still think they'll be gone by the time it gets bad, and that it's a long term problem.
Any and every way you can make people understand this is a "right now" problem helps
Up to this point, the winters where I live have definitely been getting warmer.
When I was a kid, it wasn't uncommon to have stretches of -30°c, and we used to hit or almost hit -40°c once or twice per winter. It seems like that dropped. Now, the stretches are around -20°c and we hit the -30°c once or twice per year. Instead of snow, we've been getting lots of freezing rain.
It used be be rare to hit 30°c in the summer, but we've been getting many more days that hit around 40°c. Last summer was brutal, and I hadn't seen smog from wildfires up until then. It was practically unheard of where I live.
Just wait for another handful of years. The weather is already becoming increasingly more difficult to predict.
I saw a forecast earlier where the weather person was saying that either the models are broken, or that certain parts of North America will hit historically cold temperatures. If it was accurate, parts of California might drop down to almost -40°c.
People need to learn that climate change isn't only extra heat in the summertime. It's a very complex system with lots of variables. I wish more people actually took the time to learn a bit about it. Freaky shit.
I'd appreciate a link to the report about California if you can find it
Yeah I'm living through it right now. We've never had this much snow since I was a kid. I encourage my kids to go out and dig into it like I dug in to it forty years ago and I'm trying to explain and hope that they understand the oddity of it and not just taking it for granted whether or not it comes again every year or never again from here on.
The difference is, educated and rational people understand the gulf stream closing and it's implications. Those people are already on board and get it.
There are many people holding us back that don't get it and will hand wave this type of stuff away and continue holding their position. They'll come up with any excuse and reason they can, and it's easier to do so when it's something more abstract.
That's not as possible when it's "I can show you pictures of this or you can go there yourself and movies are already covering the effects." Things like New England not having snow for months is something literally every New Englander can look outside and see for themselves. It's way harder to argue against and will convince more people.
While you are right, that has been the case for a long time and we need to get more people on board. It's not one or the other, and we need to broaden the approach or this is going to continue being the educated minority vs the uneducated majority and it will continue to not change.
Yeah, in Southern Germany, we've had some of the heaviest snowfall in a long time this year, because of a local dip in temperatures below freezing (likely caused by gulf stream shenanigans), in combination with the rest of the planet boiling.
All the hot oceans were evaporating lots of water and when that wet air reached our cold pocket, it all just precipitated on top of us.
Climate change is scary only because it affects our way of life. Get over it, humans are like that. And the rich fucks who could change things (or at least not make it worse) were raised to have no empathy; they don't care for nature or if the world is liveable after their death.
Our way of life ? Like breathing life?
Yes life will continue. For the methane breathing bacteria. Humans not so much.
The rich won't survive either. Money and all the bunkers in the world are worthless in what is to come by continuing the pursuit for money.
There's no existential threat to the living beings on earth from climate change according to the IPCC reports. We/they'll have to move according to changes in local climate, sure, but that's not the same as general extinction.
Doomerism doesn't help climate action.
Hot take, easily debunked:
https://www.ipcc.ch/2022/02/28/pr-wgii-ar6/
The problems with "move according to changes in local climate" are, to name a few: