this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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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: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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Extreme cold still happens in a warming world – in fact climate instability may be disrupting the polar vortex (theconversation.com)
submitted 9 months ago by silence7 to c/climate
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[–] spaduf 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago

I've been telling my kids that this is what December used to feel like

[–] perestroika 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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".

[–] Rhaedas@kbin.social 2 points 9 months ago

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.