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.
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.
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.
In Australia we now regularly deal with considerably increased risk and incidence of bushfires compared to even 50 years ago, all of it due to human activities relating to climate change.
A fantastic example of my point is in the animal deaths that occured on account of the fires in Australia. It received a stunning amount of media coverage. Yet the total number of animals killed by the fires was much lower than in previous years. To the casual uninformed reader (99% of them) this would seem like some extraordinary and unprecedented event.
The total burn area is affected by how effective we have gotten at fighting and managing the fire risks. The number of actual fires that start is the relevant metric here.
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.
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?
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! :-)
That’s common, you gain ice from storms which are fairly random. This is why the most days are below the average accumulation from historic data but the line is full of spikes.
Melting on the other hand tends to be much more steady.
That is the case every year, as indicated by the grey mean in the background of the chart. Point is, we gained ice at a lower-than-average rate during “gains season” and now we’re losing ice at a greater-than-average rate during “melt season”.
> Point is, we gained ice at a lower-than-average rate during “gains season” and now we’re losing ice at a greater-than-average rate during “melt season”.
AccuWeather runs the most hysterical headlines constantly and this article is no different. The headline makes it sound like the end is nigh, the article language is dramatic, but a similar event happened two years ago
These kinds of articles are what make me question the climate change narrative the most. There's so much fear to sell, and the merchants are hungry.
This is a bad take. All headlines are sensationalized for clicks, subject doesn't really matter.
If you ignore the headlines and do your own research on climate change, it's pretty nearly impossible in my opinion to come to the conclusion that we're not utterly fucked.
If anything news stories tend to focus only on individual events rather than larger scale patterns and potential feedback loops, so they often understate the actual scale of the problem.
I actually think there's been a conscious effort by some entities writing about climate change to focus on the short term immediate stuff because they realize that talking about the big picture would make people completely apathetic and hopeless.
I was studying marine biology last year and holy shit, the low end predicted effects and feedback loops -- even only looking at the ocean -- are going to be utterly catastrophic.
The planet is going to be unrecognizable for future generations -- enjoy the last bit of stability while it lasts.
Ultimately humans were very 'lucky' to evolve and exist in a period of extreme abundance and stability on Earth. We've totally squandered that with our ignorance, hubris, and drive for short term profit and now we get to see the flip side
I've heard this exact story for over 30 years. We're supposed to be entirely underwater by now on the east coast. In the 70s everyone knew that overpopulation and starvation was right around the corner, there were models then too.
The end has been nigh for all of human history but it seems like the world keeps turning.
If a quarter of a degree celsius over 100 years or whatever is 'utterly fucked', I think we'll make it. Take a deep breath.
It tells us that USA manages it well. In the third world, in the last thirty years, people struggle for drinking water in summer, aquifers depleted, more floods, etc.
It is still melting and no it's not good when we had something similar two years ago
The article sounds like that in the next 80 years it has an effect which adds to all the other things happening.
Like the weakening of the gulf stream.
Why would you read an article like this and come to the conclusion that climate change is a narrative?
It's a scientific fact and the most crazy shit about is that we are increasing our knowledge about it every day and still don't know enough IF it will become really really bad really quick.
What is so wrong or bad for pointing our society to have much much more sustainable supply chains? Solar power and better isolated buildings?
Why do we try to keep a status quo which is not even that good?
All those cars create toxic fumes. Don't you think it would be 21 century smart to not pollute our own environment?
IF there is a cause we all humans should unite and work for having a much better future for everyone should be it.
