General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWatching ABC news.......what the hell is going on with the weather???
Has it ever been this bad, wild fires, heat, floods, now may-be West Nile virus?? I am 73 and I swear I do not remember it being this bad. Im just sick for all those who lose their homes, towns and everything with this weather. I just dont remember it ever being this bad.
msongs
(73,758 posts)Evolve Dammit
(21,779 posts)Orrex
(67,116 posts)Almost exclusively on sights that believe in a flat earth, lizard people, and stolen elections.
Kind of surprising to find it here.
msongs
(73,758 posts)Iwasthere
(3,512 posts)Summer does come every year, however virtually every year it has become hotter, with many strange things happening globally. We've reach a critical stage. We are in trouble and burying your head doesn't help. Elect environment leaders. VOTE BLUE!
Orrex
(67,116 posts)Summer comes every year? What a keen insight! And if it were a flat statement devoid of subtext, then it wouldn't be a big deal. Nor, I suspect, would you have posted it.
The clear implication, whether or not you admit that it was intentional, is that the current, record-shattering heatwaves and weather events worldwide are simply par for the course. Only two types of people make such statements:
1. Climate change deniers
2. Well, actually there's just that one type.
I suppose that you could have meant something like "summer comes every year, and it's only going to get worse," but it really didn't come across that way.
Brenda
(2,054 posts)I've posted for years here about the existential threat all life on Earth faces now and tried to explain why young activists protest in such extreme ways. I've posted links to science articles, climate action websites and books about how bad things are yet:
I've been called a troll and people have tried to get me banned for doing that.
Huge amount of ignorance and obfuscation on this platform.
the earth getting warmer, with the help of us.
getagrip_already
(17,802 posts)Sure, there dramatic events of all kinds. But they weren't nightly events, they weren't even weekly.
And they weren't cat 5 hurricanes and level 5 tornadoes.
We didn't get 100 year floods every year.
We didn't have tens of thousands of acres burning in multiple states every year. We didn't have epic droughts, epic floods, epic dust storms, sea level rise, ice field retreats, extinctions, etc.
No, this isn't summer arriving.
DemocraticPatriot
(5,410 posts)Because reich-wing radio went on tirades about how cold it still got in the winter??
(On the other hand, we didn't have much of an excuse of a winter in lower Michigan this past year---
only one week that made a pretense of a 'good snow', and then I may as well have put the shovel away.
Snow-removal companies had a very, very, VERY bad season...)
RussBLib
(10,637 posts)....seems to be more accurate than "global warming" or "climate.chamge."
It's getting hotter everywhere, for sure. And drier. And wetter.
https://russblib.blogspot.com/?m=1
RobinA
(10,478 posts)local news is determined to turn every weather nonevent into the apocalypse. It's really gotten ridiculous. "The last time the temperature reached this level was in 1947!" And it's worse in the winter because where I live it doesn't snow a lot and when it does people panic So on the weather, every possible snowflake can turn your road into a skating rink. This winter they were describing 30 degrees as frigid. I call it weather porn.
Response to msongs (Reply #1)
Post removed
Torchlight
(6,831 posts)Charging Triceratops
(441 posts)It's been 96 degrees F in Pittsburgh for four straight days in JUNE!!
Never happened before.
Well, maybe in the Eocene or Triassic.
Walleye
(44,841 posts)Ocelot II
(130,560 posts)Meanwhile, in my neck of the woods it won't stop raining.
SWBTATTReg
(26,260 posts)short on rain, could use some.
Duncanpup
(15,651 posts)Confronted with the proof, the fuckheads say "back in my day we had summers like this all the time." Or you get even bigger fuckheads who say "you wouldn't last a second down here in Florida."
Evolve Dammit
(21,779 posts)Dulcinea
(10,102 posts)MAH FREEDUMB!!11!!
Otto_Harper
(822 posts)When one looks at many of those climatic metrics we monitor, things are now outside of anything anyone has ever seen. And, continuing to go in the wrong direction.
Here is a link to a graph which shows what is happening to sea surface temperature, which is a good indicator of what is happening:
Link to tweet
/photo/1
Kid Berwyn
(24,429 posts)No wonder the climate scientists are having nightmares.
marybourg
(13,642 posts)Kid Berwyn
(24,429 posts)As of 4:50 p.m. ET...we are officially in summer. It is early.
Interesting celestial mechanics behind it. And it shouldn't be this early for another 228 years.
https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/the-2024-summer-solstice-will-be-the-earliest-for-228-years-heres-why#:~:text=To%20account%20for%20this%20drift,than%20the%20previous%20leap%20year.
Based on the experience of a guy well into his seventh decade, it will feel like summer earlier and earlier if we as a planet don't do anything about it.
0rganism
(25,648 posts)Since as a species we pretty much opted out of doing what it would take to keep the old one, we get to try something new. Let's see how this works out for us instead, right?
GreenWave
(12,643 posts)0rganism
(25,648 posts)Progress! Right? Right? Everyone agrees this is fine, right? Happy Progress Day!
GreenWave
(12,643 posts)and then cry as the beach front moves more inland.
0rganism
(25,648 posts)
hadEnuf
(3,618 posts)I'm sure all the deniers are enjoying pretending it not really 107 degrees.
rubbersole
(11,225 posts)We knew. But damn if we were going to be inconvenienced. "The only species that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost effective."
Irish_Dem
(81,326 posts)Yep, unbelievable.
0rganism
(25,648 posts)It was always inevitable that a species of gifted, curious technologists would mess things up globally in unexpected ways. The evolutionarily-positive approach would be to find ways to coordinate a global-scale fix for whatever we broke. This in turn would help to propel us into a new era of geo-engineering which would make extra-terrestrial colonization possible, catapulting our species to its next growth phase.
However, we've run up against a problem we can't solve technologically: we don't care enough about each other or future generations to enable survival of the biosphere. For the whole thing to work out we needed a greater degree of empathy. Maybe, if life survives, the next technology-capable species will learn from our mistakes and adapt itself to give two shits about its overall well-being. Maybe our offspring can do it too, but they'll be starting from a disadvantage.
Irish_Dem
(81,326 posts)The planet will be fine as usual.
Maybe humans are not hard wired to survive past post industrial and nuclear age.
We just want to kill, control, punish each other for power and wealth.
Individuals only care about their own survival, not the human race.
The two most valuable assets we have are this planet and the people on it.
And most people couldn't care less about either one.
PufPuf23
(9,863 posts)Earth is going through a major extinction event, most we cannot see and is not that obvious. Think soil.
Most "solutions" to environmental problems dig a bigger hole for humanity.
Irish_Dem
(81,326 posts)Hell bent on killing each other for power and money.
PufPuf23
(9,863 posts)hatrack
(64,907 posts)If you say "problem", what's the instantaneous problem word-association response? "Solution", and we departed that realm long ago. What we have is a dilemma, not a problem. Human beings can produce solutions when confronted by problems. By contrast, dilemmas tend to produce only consequences. In this case, most of them will be bad, and some of them will be flat-out horrible.
The dilemma is that human society as currently constituted (for all 8 billion of us) depends on two physical impossibilities - one is endless growth as demanded by economic, political and religious ideologies, and the other is the carbon-intensive physical processes that make endless growth possible for now - or at least a short-term illusion of endless growth.
The best science we have appears to indicate that the Permian extinction, which took out 75% of land lifeforms and 90% of marine species, took place over a period of 300,000 - 500,000 years. It was driven largely by CO2 from enormous volcanic eruptions. We're now on track to add a roughly comparable amount of CO2 to our planet's atmosphere, but we'll do it in somewhere around 300 to 350 years.
So yes, conserve, teach, plant, grow, simplify, preserve, respect the natural world - because inculcating those kinds of skills and values may help provide a way forward for some. But that last 10% of a pound of carbon emitted today will not be removed from the atmosphere by natural processes for roughly 10,000 - 20,000 years, and atmospheric CO2 is the highest it's been in over a million years - and we know that from direct physical measurement of ice cores.
As Samuel L. Jackson said in Jurassic Park, "Hold onto your butts."
mahatmakanejeeves
(69,883 posts)April 14, 2019: 84 Years Ago Today; The Black Sunday Dust Storm
Kaleva
(40,365 posts)Today, there are deadly heat waves all across the planet
Archae
(47,245 posts)Some kind of religious festival, but 300-400 people have died from the 125 degrees and up temperatures.
Here in Sheboygan, it's in the 60's, will get to the low 70's and then the 60's again next week.
dickthegrouch
(4,532 posts)Its only the Hajj, the biggest Muslim festival on earth. It is the duty of all Muslims to go to Mecca at least once in their lives during the Hajj.
Archae
(47,245 posts)The point I was making is so many people dying in the record heat.
Kaleva
(40,365 posts)It hit 90 one day but the rest have been mild, temperature wise. We had one heck of a thunderstorm a couple of days ago that blew down trees and washed out roads .
Archae
(47,245 posts)In Sheboygan, we're supposed to have rain today, a thunderstorm tomorrow.
Ponietz
(4,337 posts)marybourg
(13,642 posts)hlthe2b
(113,989 posts)My sanity comes from spending time outside and to do that, I just can't live in A/C all day. So, I don't. But damn if it isn't hard to sleep with just fans and sometimes a portable evaporative cooler.
Thankfully, Colorado still has generally cool mornings (pre-dawn) so my pup and I can get some good walking/hiking time.
Give me my ice and snow back. Come, on, GOT. Tell me that "winter is coming."
Tree Lady
(13,284 posts)of course I sit in my living room by the wood stove but much easier to put on clothes than take them off!
I can't take heat anymore, just got home from going to winery with a friend. She wanted to sit in the shade outside, its in the 90's. I talked her into inside in the air conditioning by huge window looking out over the mountains.
Diamond_Dog
(40,597 posts)Why do so many older people flock to Florida? The older I get the more miserable I am from hot summer weather.
OAITW r.2.0
(32,164 posts)Growing up Nov/Dec/Jan where heavy snow months. Now snow starts Feb/March.
MOMFUDSKI
(7,080 posts)water temperature now off the east coast of Florida is what it used to be in August.
Conjuay
(3,067 posts)In mid May. I should bloom around Thanksgiving.
Think. Again.
(22,456 posts)We've known the weather would be drastically affected by CO2 emission-caused climate change since the 1800's.
Jul 29, 2021
Source: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/scientists-physics-climate-change-eunice-foote/
Long before the current political divide over climate change, and even before the U.S. Civil War (1861-
1865), an American scientist named Eunice Foote documented the underlying cause of todays climate change crisis.
The year was 1856. Footes brief scientific paper was the first to describe the extraordinary power of carbon dioxide gas to absorb heat the driving force of global warming.
-snip-
Foote conducted a simple experiment. She put a thermometer in each of two glass cylinders, pumped carbon dioxide gas into one and air into the other and set the cylinders in the Sun. The cylinder containing carbon dioxide got much hotter than the one with air, and Foote realized that carbon dioxide would strongly absorb heat in the atmosphere.
-snip-
A few years later, in 1861, the well-known Irish scientist John Tyndall also measured the heat absorption of carbon dioxide and was so surprised that something so transparent to light could so strongly absorb heat that he made several hundred experiments with this single substance.
Tyndall also recognized the possible effects on the climate, saying every variation of water vapor or carbon dioxide must produce a change of climate. He also noted the contribution other hydrocarbon gases, such as methane, could make to climate change, writing that an almost inappreciable addition of gases like methane would have great effects on climate.
Brenda
(2,054 posts)What planet do these people really live on? Cuz it ain't the one I'm on.
HAB911
(10,444 posts)nothing to be alarmed about
JanMichael
(25,725 posts)Not that I was so smart that I knew that they'd be living in a Mad Max world but at least we got lucky.
Kaleva
(40,365 posts)JanMichael
(25,725 posts)Kaleva
(40,365 posts)Are they part of your extended family?
birdographer
(2,937 posts)And, no nieces or nephews. No family. It would break my heart to have loved ones under 20, under 30, even under 40. Who knows about 50? And I am totally bamboozled by young people who HAVE KIDS NOW. They bring kids into this. They will love them and then see them...well, anyway, bringing a child into this environment is the definition of narcissism. It's a cruel desire to reproduce yourself, no matter if their life is a living hell.
Calculating
(3,000 posts)Overdramatic much? Without kids, there's no point to life. Everything is just for one's own pleasure and then when they die they'll leave no legacy and not carry on their family line. It basically represents a Darwin award or evolutionary failure to not reproduce. Life has been way worse in the past and people still managed to keep on keeping on.
BannonsLiver
(20,603 posts)Easily one of the most absurd, dumb comments Ive ever seen in this forum. Maybe for YOU life would have no meaning without spawn but that doesnt go for everyone. This is a sort of toxic FOMO trope people with kids attempt to push on those who dont and its so silly.
NJCher
(43,176 posts)and I say that several times a day.
I never did want children. I have so many interests that I knew taking care of a kid would limit the time spent on my interests, but a second factor was the environment. I thought of the stress even a single person puts on the environment, considering the way we live in the U.S.
Taking both factors into consideration, it was an easy decision.
-misanthroptimist
(1,616 posts)Is this the JanMichael from Wasteland of Wonders? If so, it is you who introduced me to this site back in 2002 or 3.
Anyway, on topic: We did have kids. I'm old now and trying as best I can to prepare them a safe-ish place to survive. Things are going to get very, very dicey from here on out. It is a near certainty that civilization as we know it is coming to an end.
JanMichael
(25,725 posts)That was a fun site with fairly well articulated positions.
Tried looking it up a while back but it is dead now.
-misanthroptimist
(1,616 posts)I ran into OmniRevDoohickeyJones a year or two ago, over on reddit. I guess we're still around.
Oh, btw, I was known as birthmark back in those days. It was a simpler time. I remember when evidence actually counted for something.
JanMichael
(25,725 posts)You are right though it was a much simpler time and it was only 20 years ago.
Evidence or lack thereof did mostly matter...now it doesn't seem to hold much weight.
-misanthroptimist
(1,616 posts)It was Hume that got me to look into AGW after I said something stupid. I spent the next two years reading actual science papers, using Google Scholar (which still exists, thankfully). It was a lot to learn.
Lovie777
(23,002 posts)because of climate change while mankind is fucking up the earth.
mn9driver
(4,848 posts)Things are going to accelerate. That 1.5 degree Celsius target? Forget about it, its already gone.
LiberalFighter
(53,544 posts)130 million fewer than now.
Fewer people would be impacted.
OrangeJoe
(559 posts)A much better number on population growth is the world population which was 3.6 Billion in 1970. It has since ballooned to over 8 Billion.
Think. Again.
(22,456 posts)tornado34jh
(1,527 posts)Several people have been killed in heat in Greece, much of the Middle East is surpassing 120 F temperatures (not counting heat index), China, India, even parts of the far southern parts of South America has seen temperatures above normal.
Quixote1818
(31,156 posts)Report: Every Place On Earth Has Wrong Amount Of Water
RESTON, VAA new global report released Monday by the U.S. Geological Survey revealed that every place on earth currently has the wrong amount of water. New satellite data confirms that every corner of the earth has the incorrect quantity of water, the report read in part, noting that even though the total amount of water on the planet seemed to be about right, give or take a few hundred milliliters, the distribution of that water across the globe was way off. In every case, there is either too much or too little water, with zero exceptions. Even when we try to move it around ourselves to make it even, someone keeps moving it back. Its very frustrating. The USGS did, however, note that the amount of fire on earth had been properly disbursed.
https://www.theonion.com/report-every-place-on-earth-has-wrong-amount-of-water-1851544516?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2IoQZNYXX0y9zQZ95-gV9XkzycpwF5mtzP-dSh0nKInoDZUIOmggM3cns_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw
chouchou
(3,147 posts)Ok. Most of them. Their thoughts are "Why should I care...I'll be long time dead. Think of Rush, Jones, Fox news.
They-don't-care.
The anti-climate crowd is powered by the industrial rich. We might be screwed. I hope not.
SleeplessinSoCal
(10,412 posts)Was gardening In his Los Angeles area home when he was bit. He was 86. I suspect like Covid it's more lethal in the elderly
Lovie777
(23,002 posts)1. The number will keep humans contained........
2. Technology will keep humans confused..............
3. Water will be worth more than riches...............
paleotn
(22,224 posts)Life on earth has always been dicey with change inevitable, but usually over extreme stretches of time by human scale. Think hundreds to thousands of human generations. Now we've sped up those processes drastically. It's like we've grabbed the planet's controls and are pushing buttons and turning dials willy nilly. All for short term profit. What could possibly go wrong?
OrangeJoe
(559 posts)Im sitting outside at 7 pm in Nunavut where its a balmy 75 degrees. Now that in itself is not really that unusual for a summer time temp up here. What is unprecedented is the low level of the MacKenzie River. The drought in Alberta means that many areas of the river where the indigenous people have harvested fish and game for 10,000 years are failing to produce. Congratulations world on fucking up a huge ecosystem!
OrangeJoe
(559 posts)Im sitting outside at 7 pm in Nunavut where its a balmy 75 degrees. Now that in itself is not really that unusual for a summer time temp up here. What is unprecedented is the low level of the MacKenzie River. The drought in Alberta means that many areas of the river where the indigenous people have harvested fish and game for 10,000 years are failing to produce. Congratulations world on fucking up a huge ecosystem!
Richard D
(10,018 posts)... What will likely be the mildest summer of the rest of our lives.
FirstLight
(15,771 posts)This is what the model said would happen isn't it? Everything would be fine, get a little worse,
and then all of a sudden off a cliff..
The models were all supposed to be by 2050 or 2100...
I personally thought things were happening faster a few times over the years. There would be a big event or story about things "surprising scientists" and that would send up a little red flag in my mind.
Feels like the tide turned right before the pandemic ironically. Maybe 2018 or 19...but by 2022 we were heading over the edge IMO
Martin68
(27,751 posts)in the system means greater extremes. More rain, less rain. Everything is in flux and very unpredictable. What is predictable is that the average temperature will go up, sea levels will rise, and many weather events will be more extreme. More flooding, more wildfires, more landslides, more droughts, more tornadoes, more hurricanes - and many will set records.
Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2024, 08:03 AM - Edit history (1)
But isn't it strange that people on a liberal board would go to such lengths to say things like "it's summer," "it's always been hot in Phoenix," "but millions of Americans live on the coast" - meaning what? Nothing is going to happen? They're going to move voluntarily or move involuntarily or well, die there.
I saw a weather report say people in Galveston didn't want to evacuate the other day from approaching Alberto (tropical storm, not hurricane) because they laughed that they could get a foot or two of storm surge.
Amazingly enough, someone in Texas made that evacuation order and they got four feet of storm surge, area looked like it was in the middle of the ocean. All those cars that would have been ruined.
Think. Again.
(22,456 posts)....but I'm happy to see so much firm pushback!
Brenda
(2,054 posts)But I don't believe it's random, seems a bit more organized to me.
Always good to see you TA!
OverBurn
(1,292 posts)rubbersole
(11,225 posts)Tree Lady
(13,284 posts)probably don't want to scare the kids. We tried, hard to believe all of the people stopping us from fixing the problem don't care about their families.
Calculating
(3,000 posts)We'll just need to adapt to our new climate as well as we can.
-misanthroptimist
(1,616 posts)Even if we magically stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow, we'd still see the temperature continue to rise for another 20 years or so. We aren't going to stop. We will smash through the 1.5C goal and almost certainly plow through 2C before 2100. We will be the most hated civilization of all time...if there's anyone left to hate us in a thousand years.
doc03
(39,087 posts)was over 100 for a few days. I was working in a steel mill at the time, that is HOT. It is summer.
LeftInTX
(34,315 posts)
During the years between 1999 and 2010, an estimate of 3 million people have been infected in the United States. Highest incidence rates are observed in states of the central great plains, with South Dakota, Wyoming and North Dakota leading in incidence.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nile_virus_in_the_United_States

West Nile is sneaky because only 20% incidents are symptomatic. However, of those cases most are not even diagnosed. Only 1% develop encephalitis or meningitis. Horses are apparently vaccinated, but there isn't a vaccine for humans. Birds are a reservoir for the virus, which likely explains how it has spread all over the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Nile_fever
The Wandering Harper
(915 posts)I had the opportunity to wonder how dry my overalls got before it rained.
Everything looks sunny and clear
then as if summoned by magic
the darkest raging thunderstorm is right on top of you.
Jrsygrl96
(270 posts)I almost fell off my chair when my right wing handyman said, Maybe Al Gore was right!
He warned us way back in the 90s!
I live in the swamps of Jersey. Bruce Springsteen line. From 1959 - 1984 we had one flood in my town. From 2009 until now, we get flooded on a regular basis. We had TS Irene then Superstorm Sandy in 2 consecutive years. Irene caused devastating damage to half of my town.
In the winter of 1995-1996 the northeast was blanketed in feet is snow. My skiing dream. Last year we got one significant snowstorm.
Right now it is hotter here than in south Florida. This isnt summer on earth - its hell on earth!
JanMichael
(25,725 posts)That was a huge loss politically and environmentaly.
thucythucy
(9,103 posts)And I ran into SO many self-identified progressives back then who told me there was no difference between Gore and Dubya.
Then too, many of these same folks kept telling me that abortion was a "non-issue" and that Roe would never be overturned. So voting for Hillary was a moral outrage, a sell-out of my principles, an exercise in voting for the "lesser of two evils.'
One of them even said he was "tired of the progressive agenda being held hostage by 'women's issues.'"
Surely all those folks couldn't have been wrong?
Sorry for the rant, but I had to get that off my chest.
Dated I know. It's not like any "progressives" these days are threatening to withhold support for President Biden because.... because...
-misanthroptimist
(1,616 posts)By the mid-to-late 2030s, industrial scale farming will become...challenging to put it mildly. Famines will be frequent and widespread. For richer nations, food prices will skyrocket. I shudder to think what will happen to poorer nations. This will put great pressure on governments around the world. Many will fall fairly quickly, resulting in anarchy.
In addition to starvation, there will be severe droughts and severe floods around the world. The melting of the Himalayan glaciers is highly likely to produce war among China, India, and Pakistan -all of whom have depended upon those glaciers for fresh water, and all of whom are armed with nuclear weapons.
We will see more severe weather, with some being unprecedented. Think of the 2010 Northern Hemisphere heatwave. Now imagine that happening every year somewhere in the world...or even several times every year.
The Atlantic hurricane season this year will be interesting and may provide clues as to what will happen with hurricanes in the future. Will the warming sea surface temperatures (which are at an all time high by a large margin) produce dozens of storms or will it produce storms of unprecedented strength or both? We may have a better handle on those questions after the next couple of years.
Summing up: Prepare yourselves. The crash is coming. It is unavoidable.
Good luck to all the young people who will have to pay for the excesses and irresponsibility of older people. I'm sorry.
Calculating
(3,000 posts)Mostly from poorer nations.
Swede
(39,515 posts)The list of towns in Canada destroyed by fires over the last few years grows every summer. This is all new. Look at this list. It starts in 1825, so you say, it's always happened. But look how the numbers jump around 2014. It's scary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires_in_Canada
Ponietz
(4,337 posts)Im not the only one thinking about it.
Initech
(108,785 posts)onethatcares
(16,992 posts)Mother Nature bats last.
although my take is: you cannot turn forests into parking lots and expect there to be no fallout or rise in temperatures.
JCMach1
(29,202 posts)Providers...
Even worse, I think it does a disservice to break the weather/climate down into narrative parts. Storm here, flood there. It makes it hard to see the bigger picture which if you follow the science is way scarier than whatever Gore told you 20 years ago.
The media doesn't/or won't tell that story.
betsuni
(29,080 posts)Deadly floods, deadly forest fires, deadly tornados, deadly storms, deadly heat. The news is the deadly weather.