Yuuup. A few years ago, when the entire United States was experiencing record lows, the Earth had an above average overall temperature. Imagine how hot everywhere other than the United States must have been, if the average was still higher despite our record lows.
Fun fact, when the jet stream gets perturbed like that and develops the sinusoidal deviations that we are experiencing, it’s called a Rossby wave.
These waves are actually super normal as the jetstream shifts with the seasons and moves north/south, especially when in a La Niña phase of the ENSO, which we are in right now.
The Hadley circulation cells whose boundaries define the jet stream are driven by convection. The US lies right along a jetstream boundary between two cells, and just downwind from the pacific ocean, so our weather is particularly sensitive to the temperature differences across the pacific ocean.
El Niño patterns have a hot equatorial pacific ocean which drives significant convection on the southern cell of the jet stream crossing the US, stabilizing it. La Niña patterns have a smaller gradient between the temperatures in the cells to the north and south of the relevant jet stream, especially as climate change relatively warms the arctic faster, leading to higher amplitude destabilizations during La Niña patterns like we are experiencing now.
More fun facts about these Rossby waves: they have been proposed as the mechanism to drive the eddies that end up forming planets in protoplanetary disks around baby stars (see the wikipedia page for Rossby waves above), and as the mechanism behind the hexagonal shape of Saturn’s polar cell. Worth noting that the exact mechanism for that hexagon is still highly debated, but Peter Gierasch used to have a fun model using a modified record turn table to create a rossby wave that formed a hexagon as a proof-of-concept that has stuck with me.
I liked the image of the Titanic nosing down into the water, and deniers up on the stern end saying, “If we’re “sinking” how come we/re up so high?”
Because science, bitch!
Honestly we are way past the point of any scientific reasoning. The public has voted that they are uninterested, and the US government and large corporations are about to be uninterested too.
To be blunt… No one ever really cared, but the world kinda squeaked by putting scientists in front of statesmen and public broadcasts. Everyone kinda nodded along, and not just for global warming.
That period is over.
No one ever really cared
That’s just not true. The problem is that the people who care were never the kind of people who’d come into power in our society.
No actually the people are interested and the megacorps still destroys the planet because they have no soul they worship only profit
They cannot survive without buyers. People as a statistical whole do not care when we’re talking about entire populations
No, that is not true
Then why are so few people engaged?
Edit: sorry for the rant. Morning Adderall and lots of thoughts on the subject. :)
I think a lot simply don’t know what they can effectively do about it. As is usually the issue with lefty causes, it’s a lot more brain-work and more complicated than chanting a petty slogan and/or a vague willingness to raid a capitol with no actual goal or understanding in mind.
Right now, beyond just trying to hustle the next dollar to keep existing while under this stupidity, it’s very difficult for us average working-class folk to understand how we can actually punish these powers responsible. Corporations and their fascist backers have become hydras.
If there was some kind of “Here’s how you can effectively ruin these bastards’ day for a better tomorrow without risking prison” playbook we could agree on, I’m sure a lot of people would be willing.
We mock neoliberal masses for buying EVs thinking it’s saving the planet, but at the same time, buying something is one of the few levers the average person is allowed to pull, and they were told it would help. I’d like to think they mean well even though they’re being manipulated.
They try to recycle and try to vote and try to stop buying stuff on Amazon, then sigh and keep trudging along when that obviously doesn’t change anything. They probably get tired of being told they’re not doing anything, especially without some sort of unifying “do this instead.”
Some radicals block traffic and make a general nuisance of themselves occasionally and we watch as nothing happens.
Schoolkids appeal to liberal politicians to stop a doomed future and get chuckled out of the room. Nothing happens.
Whistleblowers expose corporate plans too evil for Saturday morning cartoons and end up conveniently killing themselves. Nothing happens.
I think we’re past the point of diminishing returns on silly stunts for “Raising awareness”.
Enough people know. Although complacent, they care. But give them a week off work to stop climate change and they still don’t know what options they have available to them. Or where their allies are.
Furthermore, generally we tend to want to be good people who don’t want to ruin our lives by openly warring with powers that be.
The Right gets away with their BS because they don’t negatively impact profits. They’re sock-puppet proxies for an astroturfed holy-war that’s ultimately about cutting labor and drilling more oil, so even treason charges aren’t enough.
But if we could finally stop arguing theory and get pissed off enough to march on Washington together or whatever, 2nd-amendment toting or not, we’d definitely be met with force for wanting to shut down the slave-driven garbage machines.
So besides “beg your reps” and “stop buying stupid things from evil companies” (almost everything at this point)…
What’s our rallying cry?
How do we engage? Who’s going to step up and lead?
No need to apologize for a rant! Rant away!
But if we could finally stop arguing theory and get pissed off enough to march on Washington together or whatever, 2nd-amendment toting or not, we’d definitely be met with force for wanting to shut down the slave-driven garbage machines.
Yeah, our parents and grand parents kicked the can down the road at best. I’d argue they actively made it worse. Now we get to choose to sacrifice for a tomorrow, or to also kick the can. Either way people are going to die.
What’s our rallying cry?
There really isn’t one. People would rather keep their head down, make no noise, and hope to die before things get bad (for them specifically). Nothing you can say will break them out of that rut. They have to be personally and directly affected to even have a chance.
How do we engage?
Sadly I’m pretty sure we’re past the point anything good happening through legislation. Without enough people actually caring a general strike isn’t going to work.
Who’s going to step up and lead?
Someone who’s charismatic and willing to be assassinated.
This is very well written, you hit the nail on the head.
Do you know? I don’t understand why I should know? I think many people are also so I don’t get the premise
Because most people aren’t actually interested
I have never doubted that almost everyone is interested in continuing the human race longer than 2 more generations, so I have not looked at the science. Everyone I talk to is interested at least so I don’t get it
People say they’re moving to avoid climate change and them move to where climate change is going to hit the hardest. What people say and what people do are often very different.
Did you change your premise from not many are interested, to not many are activists?
A few people cared, fewer did anything about it. Most were more concerned with mass production of cheap shit.
Got a heat pump to replace the gas boiler, bike instead of car and replaced the concrete paved garden with what will hopefully become a wildflower meadow with shrubs on the edges. You can actually just stop buying a lot of the stuff that is causing these problems.
The issue was never the average person. Corporations have always been the issue. Even if everyone on the planet tried to live as green as possible, the corporations would still cause too much damage for us to undo. The only way the average person could have made an impact was by attacking the corporations and their means of polluting the planet. That meant sabotaging their facilities. But the climate change movement was too focused on peaceful protest, and there has been evidence that points the blame for this on the corporations once again. For everyone, the issue wasn’t that they weren’t willing to live green enough (which is true that most people just didn’t bother, but it isn’t what caused the issue of climate change in the first place and wouldn’t have been the answer either), it was that they weren’t willing to risk their life and privileges to dismantle the system that caused it. The threat of climate change was not imminent or tangible enough for people to take real action.
God people like you make it sound so easy and then I tried it to find it’s actually even easier.
I know! Its so easy its great! Plus its generally cheaper too, so I don’t have to work very hard and I still have enough money. God damn life is easy.
Your actions you promote taking care only possible by those who own houses and have the means and funds to cover the replacements.
I understand you will say the wildflowers is basically free but it takes time that you have a privilege of having.If that’s where you set the positive actions that people can take most will not be able to achieve them and view you poorly for bragging about it.
:’(
It’s ok, some life will survive, but the human pests will be eradicated.
I’m fine with that, they chose not to be worthy. I saw the masses shout it very clearly, they want to keep this nonsense going ad undas.
Dayum. Well said. Though some people cared. We, the few, and Al Gore, for example. The great majority, no. It does appear that period is over, I agree. Perhaps this is how it has been for the last 4-5 decades. Maybe this hope’s death will be the last in our history.
There could be more options to choose from if we enacted electoral reform and gave voters the freedom to vote outside the two party system with no spoiler effect.
Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Elon thinks he’ll make it mars with neuralink implant, Peter Thiel will run his fiefdom in new Zealand, the Orange God King will…
Xi Jin ping will continue doing communism with chinese characteristics and lean harder into Confucianism, the Europeans will return to fiefdom Feudalism
It’s not the rich call it what it is. Capital. When profits are impacted we will see change. This is why I continue to say no one is going to bat an eye when Florida gets swallowed by the ocean but when New York does? That’s when we will have a collective eye opening.
Capital
Poor word choice. It is more profitable to build renewables today. Oligarchist power to protect their existing assets, is not “rational capital allocation”, but is what we get from power to corrupt capital allocation.
[Cries in Angeleno]
It’s just nature’s hernia
Sounds too complicated to be true. Obvious explanation is Jewish Space Laser!
Ha, you believe in space
Palestinian*
From that picture it looks like the weak jet stream is the problem. We just need to build a ton of wind farms across Canada to blow it harder so that it becomes more powerful. Easy.
If we want the wind farms to blow we’ll have to power them using fossil fuels of course. It’s the only solution.
And the pollution isn’t a problem, because the strong winds generated will dissipate it away.
Oh, and the entire system must be ai-based
B b but it was hot in the summertime or something
That’s science though, the people that don’t believe it will not be convinced by smart people sharing their discoveries.
But remember when we found out CFC’s were damaging the ozone layer? Somehow scientists convinced everybody to switch to more expensive, less effective refrigerants, and then it all got better. Gosh, we didn’t know how good we had it back then.
my issue with posts like these is the ppl frequenting these sites already know this, its directed at the wrong audience
I feel like you hit the nail on the head. It’s not that they don’t understand it. I don’t understand most of this, but I can try
There are people out there who just don’t believe and therefore will never try to understand
Go instead with:
Humans helping the global warming demons is causing the polar ice cap gods to become weaker, who in turn are unable to contain the cold yin winds in the poles, causing them to move to your house.
Will the increased snow cover at lower latitudes reduce warming? (I’m guessing probably yes, due to increased albedo. But, snow is also an insulator, and might be holding ground heat. I don’t know which effect will be greater.)
If it does reduce warming, will the amount be significant relative to anthropogenic climate change? (I’m guessing probably not.)
And just out of curiosity, did the Southern Hemisphere experience similar polar disturbances last winter, or in the past few years?
The problem here is that the snow will melt at some point. The reason this is happening is because the sea ice that existed year-round until now is nearly gone each summer. The lack of consistent ice covering means that there is a greater amount of energy being absorbed by the ocean, perhaps not year-round, but that it’s happening so much more in the summer is sufficient to utterly outweigh any amount of temporary snowfall anywhere else on the globe.
How do I quantify this to my hypothetical parents who reject climate change, and to my hypothetical siblings who don’t know one way or another?
I mean, you could think of it like rain. Imagine that you have a bucket, and it’s out in a rainstorm. There’s a plant in the bucket with some soil, and a tiny little pinhole in the bottom that lets out a couple of drips at any given time. Now, let’s say you want to make sure that the plant gets just the right amount of water, so that it still gets the right amount of rain, but it doesn’t flood and overpower the leak out of the bottom. What’s the simplest solution? Figure out how quickly the rain is coming down, and then cover part of the bucket so you only get the right amount of rain, right? Now imagine that some hooligan comes by and decides to muck with your bucket, because for the slightest moment, it will bring their sad, shriveled heart some measure of joy to make your life worse. They decide to move the cover. Maybe they take it off entirely, and that would guarantee the plant would die, but they’re a sick, evil little gobshite, so they only move it off when you’re out for the day, and then they put it back when you get home. When you go into your house, they take off the cover again, letting in the full torrent of rain. You look at the bucket, and wonder why the plant is getting flooded. Why isn’t the cover working anymore? Because it’s only there to help some of the time, and the damage that’s done while it’s missing is piling up faster than the drain can sink it away
The plant is the entire world ecosystem, you are the careful equilibrium that has been in place since the Oligocene, the rain is sunlight, the cover is arctic ice, the little gobshite is the corporations and individuals that have decided that their personal aggrandizement is the only thing that matters.
You want real trouble? Now imagine that when the level of water reaches high enough in the bucket, the cover doesn’t even fit anymore. That’s what happens when the permafrost and methane hydrates release their payloads in the coming years. That way lies the Permian mass extinction.
i heard climate change is a hoax
Clean yur ears out sunny
obviously you don’t want to make america great
I think we’re past the point of humour on that one.
I swear just a few years ago it was polar vortex this polar vortex that on the news everyday about the cold weather and I haven’t heard it once this year.
Weird, we’re experiencing the opposite in Europe.
That’s because the polar vortex slid off the Arctic onto North America, allowing warmer air to creep northward on your side of the globe. I remember in '21, while we had record cold in the southern US, Siberia was on fire.
Parts of Siberia are still on fire. Slava Ukraine
Glory to the heroes and all that, but gloating over the destruction is never cool.
Particularly terrible when Russians do that, but always bad no matter who says it.
This. The meme is inaccurate in that the polar vortex is in fact currently unusually strong. It’s just unusually shaped and oddly elongated. I hope the two following images show up correctly.
Strength of the polar vortex. Blue line is this winter:
source: http://weatheriscool.com/
Map showing the mean 500 hPa geopotential height and surface (2m) temperature anomalies for this week, as forecasted on Monday by ECMW:
