There's barely been any snow the past 3 or 4 years. I don't mind it. But the climate does feel very different than it did in the 80's and 90's growing up.
My spot in AB was down to -46C for a minute in December, and then like +5C last week. Turns everything into a hellish ice-scape when the pendulum swings back, too.
Thankfully that -40C weather lasted long enough to kill off the pine beetles and ticks, but it's definitely spooky.
I remember trick or treating as a kid in snow. Haven't seen that in ages.
A warmer winter is generally more pleasant. There are both costs and benefits to global warming, and the benefits are underplayed in the media because it is feared that doing so will undermine support for efforts to reduce global warming. Many more people die from very cold than very hot weather, so warming should reduce the number of weather-related deaths.
My sense is that the benefits will mostly flow to the rich countries in the temperature north, and the costs will mostly flow to the much poorer tropical countries.
For everyone claiming this is great cause it’s less cold in the winter, it’s not just less cold on average it’s more chaotic. Just a week or two ago we went from 40s in New England to down to -30s with windchill and even -100 on one New Hampshire mountain. Then it was the 40s again a few days later.
Humans might be able to weather that chaos with our shelters but the plants and animals are having havoc wreaked on them with wild temperature swings like that. Especially when you have swings going from 60s to below freezing and back. I already saw certain trees by me start budding twice as they reacted to the warm weather with thinking it’s spring. They’re not dead yet but they wasted a large amount of energy on failed leaf growth that’s made them unhealthy. Then theirs the insects whose life cycles typically require storing honey and going into a low energy state or storing eggs that hatch come the warm weather. If those get totally wiped out by wild weather swings we’ll see several tropic layers of species die off as they are supported by the energy from feeding off those insects.
Is there a good metric that we can use to quantify changes in weather volatility over time? I'm thinking of something like the VIX stock market index, but for regional weather.
It was cold enough in downtown Boston that a woman froze to death walking a few blocks home, to say nothing of all the homeless people whose deaths probably went unremarked in the media.
>For everyone claiming this is great cause it’s less cold in the winter, it’s not just less cold on average it’s more chaotic. Just a week or two ago we went from 40s in New England to down to -30s with windchill and even -100 on one New Hampshire mountain. Then it was the 40s again a few days later.
So basically the headline is wrong. It should say "climate change is making New England winters a chaotic nightmare", not "stealing" them. We really should get away from this "global warming" phrase: people in overly-cold places like New England or Minnesota or Edmonton would be happy to have warmer winters, but not the extremes you describe.
It is just beyond me how people still til recently and even now denied any human impact as we dumped large amounts of what has been stored away over millions of years into the ground by processes that don't exist anymore.. just by the most simple reasoning ... how (:
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 64.0 ms ] thread‘78 was also bad because it was not properly forecast
Going from highs of 12s one week ago, to possibly some snow and highs of 0 degrees celsius next week at end of February and early March.
We use to get big dumps of snow, only a few times, maybe none/once in nov-jan.
Last year it snowed like twice, this year 8 or 9 times as already(I am at a higher hillside elevation).
And last summer we had record highs.
Thankfully that -40C weather lasted long enough to kill off the pine beetles and ticks, but it's definitely spooky.
I remember trick or treating as a kid in snow. Haven't seen that in ages.
Humans might be able to weather that chaos with our shelters but the plants and animals are having havoc wreaked on them with wild temperature swings like that. Especially when you have swings going from 60s to below freezing and back. I already saw certain trees by me start budding twice as they reacted to the warm weather with thinking it’s spring. They’re not dead yet but they wasted a large amount of energy on failed leaf growth that’s made them unhealthy. Then theirs the insects whose life cycles typically require storing honey and going into a low energy state or storing eggs that hatch come the warm weather. If those get totally wiped out by wild weather swings we’ll see several tropic layers of species die off as they are supported by the energy from feeding off those insects.
So basically the headline is wrong. It should say "climate change is making New England winters a chaotic nightmare", not "stealing" them. We really should get away from this "global warming" phrase: people in overly-cold places like New England or Minnesota or Edmonton would be happy to have warmer winters, but not the extremes you describe.
How much has it changed since Carl Sagan addressed Congress in 1985?
https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI
He told us that coal would be a big problem, and he nailed it.