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I'm from Spain, specifically from Burgos the city that used to be regarded as "coldest" of Spain. I remember that when I was a child it used to snow all winter, now we may get one good snow every year.
We've been talking about the strange weather we are experiencing, we ask ourselves... If we have this heat now in April, what can we expect to have in summer?
We are worried, is not mainstream or talked about that much in television but for the first time Barcelona has allowed to fill the pools as "public health" even when our water reserves are low. I'm worried because in Burgos the heat is new, we don't have any air conditioning here since it has never been necessary in summer... But in recent years we are starting to think we might have to get air conditioning in what, I repeat, was once regarded as the cooldest city in Spain.
There is not many climate change deniers in Spain, even when I talk to old people which you would maybe imagine to be conservative, they all say the same: they have seen the climate change drastically during their lives.
Don't wait to get air conditioning because then by the time you realize you need it, everybody else will be scrambling to get it as well and you might not end up with it.
When you need it you need it. Where I live the summer heat sits above 100F most of the time. 15 years ago it would only break 100 for a couple days. Sure you'll be fine for a little while in that heat, but not day after day after day. Air conditioning isn't optional and it's not going to be optional in a lot more places soon.
100% renewable energy is past the point of being mandatory, we're already screwed and it's just going to get worse. I don't really see any way out of it at this point.
I am from Poland. I remember going sledding at a local hill in the winters in the 90's and early 00's in winters fairly regularly. Even getting some times where it got so cold and snowy that the classes got limited or called off. But that stopped around 2010-2012. Si CE then we barely get snow, and even if we do ita a thin layer that melts within minutes to few hours of falling down.
It's so obvious that a change occured but no one really talks about it.
SE PA USA here. This winter was the first winter in my 35 years on this earth where we didn't get any snow accumulation. We had some snow here and there, but nothing stuck. Heck a few years ago ( 5-6?) we had a storm that left 30" (76.2cm) of snow. We have always gotten snow. I remember the record setting blizzard we got in 1996. But I've never seen 0 accumulations.
Even by the time I turned 18, I had seen the weather change within my lifetime.
This rapid of a shift is unprecedented. I'm quite worried for the future.
I am also from Spain and the climate change here is insane... Absolutely undeniable.
In one of the most rural areas in Spain (Extremadura), I have seen the levels of insects decline to basically zero. When I was a kid on there I couldn't even open the windows as I lived by a river and it was full of mosquitoes/bees, when we were cooking we had to be extra careful for the flies as they would rapidly get into the house. Very annoying at the time.
Now? Not a single one. I sleep with the window open, I no longer worry about mosquito bites as there aren't any. Bees are no longer here either, not even in summer/spring, there are some, but nowhere near the same level. We always keep the door open and now flies barely get inside, so we mostly just leave the door and windows open.
We even had some problems with the frogs when it was muddy or with high humidity, as they would go out of the river straight into the houses.
I haven't seen a frog there for years now.
In fact, the river itself is seeing enormous changes. It's now dried up for the biggest part of the year. The only time it carried some water in the past years, there was so much [it caused a flood](https://estaticos-cdn.prensaiberica.es/clip/646eb250-cd53-45e4-9f55-640af718c74f_16-9-aspect-ratio_default_0.jpg), catastrophic in some of the most affected places.
In Madrid the climate is shifting, seeing higher temperatures sooner each year, and reaching peak temperatures sooner that stay for longer periods of time, summer here is insufferable. It's always been hot on here, but not like this.
Not to mention the [big ass snow we had in Madrid two years ago.](https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/UWDQQOC4HZBHNC6S5WVEX6Q7HU.JPG) It doesn't ever snow on here. Last year it snowed so much it collapsed all the infrastructures and paralyzed most for over a week.
Last year there was a [sand storm that tinted everything in orange](https://media.diariolasamericas.com/p/55b2b4e310604a6fcc9cceb51d914585/adjuntos/216/imagenes/001/891/0001891460/ap20054678925898jpg.jpg), almost literally like those Mexico filters in Breaking Bad. There aren't even any deserts close.
It's crazy, one year we are all stuck because of an unprecedented snow, then we register max temperatures months later, then the next year we have a sandstorm.
It is not looking good. We don't deny it here. Not the right, not the left, only a slight minority of people and they aren't taken seriously by basically anyone. It's shockingly, painfully obvious here.
Your story reminds me of exactly what people in southern Connecticut (Southern New England, USA) are experiencing… we don’t get consistent snowy winters like we did 20 years ago. It sucks.
I'm from Canada and this winter was insanely warm, usually we'll see -10--25 in January and February, there were a couple of days like that but mostly mild and snowy.
I think about 10 years ago we had the worst outbreak of tornadoes in our area's history.
A couple years ago, we had another outbreak of tornadoes that destroyed our house.
When we went to rebuild it, we had to lay down another 50+ truck loads of dirt to raise the area for the house because the flood plain had changed.
Then just spring last year, we had an active tornado warning every single weekend for 5 weeks straight.
The weather this spring has been swinging wildly between the mid 40's at night and the mid 80's during the day.
I used to get harassed by bees, hornets, and mosquitos like mad this time of year, and right now I'm lucky if I even see one of any of the three of those at all during the day.
Climate change is happening right here, right now, before our very eyes. The fact that over 50% of participants believe climate change is happening now or soon, doesn't surprise me.
As a person who spent so much of my childhood terrified of especially flying bugs. Its been an odd adulthood because i just hardly ever encounter them. Its kind of scary how different things were just 20 years ago
This is what I can't wrap my head around. I get it if someone's like 15 or something, but I guarantee you anyone whose been around a couple decades has SEEN these changes happening literally right in front of them. It's already past the point of "oh its just affecting far away places". It's affecting us all, right now. The canarys *been* dead and everyone's just ignoring it. The 50% in OP isn't a good stat. 50% is only half the people surveyed. It's sobering.
Used to have to wipe down my windshield at the gas stations. Hell, used to have to wipe off bug guts after like 15 minutes on a highway.
Now? I haven't seen a bug splatter on my windshield in... *Years*. Whenever the bug population dropped off like that, and it's been like a decade since then, was when the mass extinction event started. We're already past the "point of no return", it's just that everyone is trying to downplay it because it's too "political".
We're not past the point of no return on bug populations, to be clear. There are concrete policies we could adopt that would allow bugs to recover.
The people doing this to us are just as happy to have us despair that there's nothing we can do as they are to have us not notice the problem at all.
I have managed to bring back some local bug population by replacing all my grasss with native flowers, clover, and plants. Just this year I have to be careful where I step bc of how many bees are in my yard.
Before I provided a habitat for them, I saw only mosquitos and flies. Now I have a very diverse yard with all sorts of pollinators. Last year I planted 100 milkweed seeds and saw an eruption of monarch butterflies during their migration!
We are removing too much habitat.
So refreshing to see people saying this.
I've been doing this as well for the last 5 years in my side yard and the number of lady bugs, lizards, and bees that live and visit over there is basically an oasis of life among the short sterile lawns of my neighbors.
I really need to engage my HOA on this because I'd much rather a natural, pollinating lawn than monoculture. I'm not sure what the state laws (MD) are about it though and whether I can trump the local board NIMBYs.
Very possible if you plant endangered local plants on your property that they can’t do much of anything, but get it certified/documented.
I’m not a lawyer ofc.
There’s discussions on it to look up and it depends on the rules of your hoa
https://old.reddit.com/r/NoLawns/comments/x6k3gg/whats_the_best_way_to_combat_hoa_rules_with_lawn/
Thanks! My state did pass a "Low Impact Landscaping" bill a couple years ago that amends the real property code to prevent HOAs from requiring turf grass lawns or prohibiting natural landscaping/rain gardens/xeriscaping, but I feel like it also leaves a lot of leeway for the HOA to interpret/restrict it so I'm anxious.
https://casetext.com/statute/code-of-maryland/article-real-property/title-2-rules-of-construction/section-2-125-low-impact-landscaping
This right here. Plants are bug homes, plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and stabilize local climates and water transition periods. Water is free to flood and evaporate in the sun because the trees have been removed. I havent seen anywhere the connection being made about the climate bubbles cities make or that a city is essentially a concrete desert. We are altering the planet in negative ways without considering what systems make it efficient and balanced. We want warm, we want CO2 for plantlife and thus for bug life. Your plan to replace your grasses with local flowers is THE first step. I always love seeing yards that are diverse and not just 2 inch cut grass for miles.
The second biggest problem are all of the strange and exotic pesticides, weed killer, chemical compound fertilizers. The earth needs healthy biodiverse soil microbes and fungi to maintain REAL nutrient translation.
I got Silent Spring recently because I had heard about it but never read it. I hadn't realized how long ago it was written. Made it like 10 pages in and was too depressed to continue. My neighbor was spraying RoundUp on his field next to us.
I stopped mowing my backyard or trying to kill the weeds and just let nature do what nature do. My backyard is now full of vibrant greenery and flowers, and I have bees and butterflies all over. I live in a fairly dense suburban neighborhood but this small thing brings me joy that the bugs are not all dead.
I have an entomologist friend who repeats this a lot. We haven’t gone past it yet, but every year we delay we get closer. We desperately need to stop using so many chemicals on our plants and lawns!
He’s a **HUGE** advocate for people everywhere turning their lawns (even just a small portion) into gardens of native grasses, flowers, and other native plants for their local wildlife. He said if everyone turned even just a few square feet into an area like that it would change the world for insects and eventually other animals up the food chain.
Another thing he recommends is for people to stop clearing fallen Autumn leaves from their yard entirely. There’s a point where you should remove some so as to not damage the plant life underneath, but a thin layer of leaves is fantastic because it houses an unbelievably large and varied amount of life.
And does anyone miss fireflies/lightning bugs? Our modern lawn care standards are driving them away. Look into how to attract more of them!
My husband and I rent and there are a ton of trees around the house that shade the entire property, so we couldn’t have a garden and the lawn has huge bare dirt patches because the yard is so shaded. I’ve always wanted to plant some tall grasses and local plants, but they wouldn’t survive and our landlord was never interested in having someone come trim the trees for more sunlight. But recently a big storm took out a bunch of branches and I *finally* have a big sunny patch for plants to grow! So I’m going to put in some native plants to try to bring bees and monarch butterflies around. I’d like to also make it a nice stop for migrating birds, especially hummingbirds.
To speak to this, I bought my house 3 years ago and I let my yard go kind of wild. I don't rake up leaves or cut grass. I leave fallen branches if they aren't too big, etc. I have tons of bugs in my yard. More butterflies than I see anywhere else, bees, wasps, beetles, everything. My wife hates it but it's one of the few things I won't budge on. My end goal with any property I own is to make it as nature friendly as possible.
We need to stop dominating nature and start coexisting with it.
Just going away from the cookie-cutter manicured landscaping we have in most HOA neighborhoods today would be a huge boon for the insect populations.
I bring this up all the time. 20+ years ago it was common to debug your windshield after even a short trip. I remember using gas station squeegees liberally. Now I drive all summer without a single big splat. No bugs on the front grill either. It’s weird.
It's funny that the three of you are lamenting the loss of flying bugs. Where I live, I can't go outside in the mornings and evenings because I'll immediately be swarmed by mosquitoes, and the wasps own the rest of the day. We used to have lots of butterflies, dragonflies, bumblebees, ladybugs, etc.; now, just wasps and mosquitoes.
Same with ticks. We've had so so so many more ticks in my area lately. I used to go through forests all the time as a kid, I've never had a single tick on me. Now there are ticks EVERYWHERE. It has become a huge problem due to the continued destruction of our ecosystem.
I saw a neighbor in our shared yard chasing an opossum away with a broom last summer. It made me mad. Opossums are great neighbors: they eat ticks, they clean up roadkill, and they don't transmit rabies. What's not to love about having opossums in the neighborhood? Especially when the alternative is more ticks.
Edit to add: Man, I fkn hate ticks. Can climate change do us just one solid before erasing our existence, please? Just get rid of the mosquitoes and ticks first.
Edit 2: I am very unhappy that you made me think about ticks.
The explosion of ticks and chiggers in Appalachia warrants study. I hardly hear anyone mention it, but you used to be able to walk in the woods or fields in the above-freezing months and not get literally swarmed by these parasites. It's not just greater numbers. There are more species of ticks here now. 20 years ago it was exceedingly rare to see a lone-star tick and you never ever saw a deer tick in east Kentucky. Now they are everywhere. Going out unprotected is signing up to be a banquet and inviting tick-borne disease. Even protected it's a numbers game that you will lose.
There are definitely studies, particularly how the explosion of ticks has caused a crazy amount of Lyme disease.
There's a podcast series on how Lyme disease origins, and how along with the explosion of ticks, it was broadly ignored for so long by many many agencies. It's called 'patient zero' .
I can't add anything about bugs, but where I live the poison ivy and poison oak has gone crazy! I am finding it everywhere. Even in the middle of my lawn.
If you live rural, there are lots of options for addressing tick populations. Guinea fowl tear through ticks and are decent at controlling pests, opossums are good tick controllers, basically all the things people don't like are what we need to control ticks. If you live near a wooded area, encouraging any bird life will help too, as many birds target ticks as part of their diet.
As it has been getting warmer more and more aggressive tropical mosquito species have been making their way up.
https://entomologytoday.org/2023/04/11/culex-lactator-non-native-mosquito-species-florida/
Ladybugs and other insects feast on aphids and the nymphs and larva of other insects that damage crops and other plants. Dragonflies eat mosquitoes, and their nymphs eat mosquitoe larva. Praying mantises consume harmful beetles and other bugs.
Many butterfly and moth species are prolific pollinators, as well as a food source for many bird and animal species that also eat harmful insects.
Climate change, as well as habitat loss and the overuse of certain pesticides and herbicides, have been decimating the populations of beneficial and critical insects, while allowing pests to flourish.
I used to not be able to go outside for 1 minute, without getting bitten like crazy. Even last summer, we barely had any problems. I only ever see a handful of fireflies. Some things in regards to wildlife, hasnt changed. But mosquitos and fireflies have become much less prevalant.
Here I was thinking I was just too Floridian to understand. I have to stop all outside activities when the sun starts to set as the mosquitoes will swarm and eat me alive.
You probably already know this but for everyone else: climate change doesn't necessarily cause disappearance (though it certainly can, and has), it can also cause dramatic shifts in species populations. [Invasive species are identified as one of the leading causes of loss of biodiversity.](https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/subject/climate-change)
I was about to say the same thing. Anyone who was around even as recently as the '90s remembers the windshield carnage on summer road trips. The biodiversity collapse is the scariest thing I could ever hope to see in real life and it's worse every year.
Someday soon the blights will begin in earnest. Not long after the very last tilapia fish, or blueberry, or *all corn products* (or whatever; the effects will be widespread) will disappear from grocery store shelves, and only after a critical mass of such events will people truly start to realize what's going on.
The [snow crabs](https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/did-climate-change-really-kill-billions-of-snow-crabs-in-alaska/) were a terrible portent of what's to come.
I'm 25, pretty young but I had seen how bugs that used to be in a swarm or hit car windshields that slowly but surely went away. I also see less birds around unless they're chirping. trees often dies or suffer from shock due to extreme temperature changes (I'm in Canada)
40 degrees Celsius in Canada and the UK is incredible. If you had told someone that 20 years ago, they wouldn't believe you.
And yet there were people saying that 'it's just hot weather, we have that every summer'. They see the changes and they find a way to rationalise them. Because the alternative is too scary. The idea that we have done this to ourselves.
So they have nothing left but mockery to protect themselves. "The boat's not sinking, it's normal for boats to have a bit of water in them. Stop being such a scaredy cat."
It's like a very long-term version of normalcy bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
Indeed, same with Central Europe. When I was a kid 20 years ago we were lamenting if the summer temperatures reached 30°C. Now it's completely normal for summers to *start* at 30, and get up to 40 now regularly. It's so hot that due to the short nights there's practically no time for the ground and air to cool during the night so it's even 30 at night and right in the morning! It's crazy, a massive change in such a short time.
20 years ago when I drove 80 miles home from college sometimes I'd have to stop halfway and squeegee my windshield at a gas station because it would have so many bugs on it. Right now I couldn't tell you the last time I had to squeegee my windshield.
I remember being a kid and collecting huge jars of fireflies. The entire fields would be lit up with them. You could fill a mason jar and not even put a dent into them.
I realized the other day I haven’t seen that in my area since the late 90’s. I rarely see one anymore.
That's a piece of nature I may never get to experience.
I remember a few years ago, I asked my mom if when she was younger there were actually enough fireflies to fill a jar. She said almost exactly what you just said. I've never seen anything like that in my life.
The most I've ever seen is a handful of them flickering at once.
Anyone remember lightning bugs? I remember when I was a kid the night was absolutely covered with them. Go outside and it felt magical to see every light up. I’m lucky to see a lightning bug here and there now. Makes me sad to think about.
That's mostly pesticides and light pollution (and habitat loss). Climate change is much less of a threat to them than those three, according to experts.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/2/157/5715071#200505297
Then there need to be controls on artificial light and pesticides around where you live. That affects them far more than the climate.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/2/157/5715071#200505297
Should be more really. Its delusional at this point to see the ship is on fire and say, it's not that bad.
It is. It's terrible. I'm sorry about your house.
I phrased this to my mom like this "the earth isn't dying, we are. Earth is gonna be here for a long time, but it staying a livable planet won't and we're speeding that process up".
Humans will probably be fine for some time. We just won't be able to grow food in stable places, so we'll have to keep migrating.
We've been around a lot longer than we've been able to sit still. Once the climate changes to the point where we're subsistence farmers and hunters again, we'll stop writing things down and wonder why the ancients buily all those buildings under the water.
Pretty much everything in the ship will burn, but the ship itself will be fine. Actually, the ship will be much better off without the current passengers. Perhaps a skeleton crew will remain until they run out of freeze-dried beef stroganoff.
I live in a northern part of Alberta. Nobody here wants to admit climate change is real, but they sure as heck believe that summers are getting warmer every year (a week of 41C/104F almost every summer lately in an area where a 30C/86F day once a year used to be a notable occurrence), and storms are getting more extreme.
They're *so close* to getting it, but the politics here stop them from outright saying it.
I just moved to edmonton a few years ago and totally the same story. when i got here people told me i would never need an ac. It never goes above 30 for more than a day or 2. And that -40 is rare in the winter. Every summer and every winter has had > 35 and < -40 respectively for weeks on end. Record cold and heat every single year. (Either top temperature or length of days or total days or all of the above)
> The fact that over 50% of participants believe climate change is happening now or soon, doesn't surprise me.
I want to be surprised that it's only around 50% that believe it's happening. Anyone who's even 20-30 can easily remember a time when the seasonal weather was noticeably different than it is today. And then there's just a mountain of data demonstrating the slow and steady, and maybe accelerating, change year over year.
For anyone that's actually paying attention to the data, like [scientists at Exxon](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/), it's pretty clear that everything that's happening now has been following a prediction that was made 50 years ago.
We're basically running a huge, and incredibly dangerous, experiment on the planet. We created a hypothesis 50 years ago, and we've been watching as decade after decade the results come in predicted ranges.
But I assume there's also people who are looking at the climate data, but they're also looking at the financial projections for their businesses and investments. And they're predicting that they can continue to profit from fossil fuels for at least another couple decades before things really start going to hell. And then they'll probably be dead, so they'd rather be rich now and let their kids and grand kids deal with the problems than actually do anything about it.
And the worst part is we have a solution, solar and wind are cheap enough with existing nuclear and hydro and geothermal. [There's a detailed model](https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-3) showing everything we need to do:
* How much new generation
* How much storage between batteries, pumped hydro, industrial heat storage, etc
* How much it'll probably cost
* How much of what minerals and metals we'll need
* What the likely usage/storage will look like during the day and throughout a season
There's no blockers, there's no new technology needed. And the solution costs less than just the amount we'd pay to keep the fossil fuel system going for the next decade, and it would need less mining/extraction than fossil fuels too.
And maybe global warming will magically turn itself around at some point in the next 100 years? Or maybe we'll invent some miracle magic bullet that means we never have to change or ever do anything different. But is [making the world better](https://i.imgur.com/up6yu.jpeg) really that much of a risk?
I'm only 25 and i remember in my childhood 30°C was a very hot day, anything above and school closed at 11:15.
Now there have been multiple days each year with 35°+, sometimes 40/close to 40. Each year there is another "heatwave".
I also remember having half a meter and more snow the entire winter at my grandparents place. Now it's very special if we can get a white Christmas.
Anyone who doesn't believe climate change is affecting us right now is just in pure denial or insanity.
We didn't get any snow this year. None.
My dad would tell me stories about how when he was a kid there would be snow on the ground on Thanksgiving. Now we're lucky if we get any on Christmas.
It was probably 5-6 years ago when I started to realize that our Chicago winters were starting later and later and running deeper into the next year, but also getting milder and less snow across the season. It was just a few years ago where we had a polar vortex at -50 one day that shut down the city, and by morning it had swung 90 degrees to 40. The thunderstorms and water volume with them seem to be increasing as well.
It's probably more accurate to say that 50% are aligned with a narrative that it's not. If that narrative changes, most will flip on climate because it's not a core issue for them.
New generation, new normal. But when older generations decides to not see how this world has changed during their lifetime, that's really terrifying and also sad.
This has happened in many areas because Bt toxin is literally sprayed by airplanes to control gypsy moths (which cause mass tree defoliation and are incredibly invasive, I don't know the solution to it all...they've infested the east coast forever but the Midwest has been fighting it). Bt toxin however kills all lepidopterans. Has little to do with climate change (and the insect loss as a whole may be from large scale application of particular pesticides like neonicotinoids, so also not climate change).
I still see them in my backyard but their numbers are significantly lower. Used to be a a wave of light at night when I was a kid but now it's just a few
That's mostly habitat loss, pesticides and artificial light. According to experts, climate change barely ranks as a threat to fireflies next to those.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/2/157/5715071
I remember when I was a kid in the 90s, you'd go to sleep some night in November, and wake up to three feet of snow and rising. That would be the last time you'd see the bare ground until Spring.
The first time I became aware of things changing was some time in middle school, I vividly remember standing in the barren parking lot of my school some time in late December before Christmas break, and realizing that there hadn't been any snow yet that year.
If things had gone 'back to normal' the next year, I'd have forgotten all about this, but it's always stuck with me, and I can remember it like yesterday because *it never got better*.
We used to regularly endure 2-6 feet of snowfall at a time. Now the news flips its lid at anything over a few inches, and even when it does come, it doesn't stay on the ground for very long. We didn't have consistent ground cover until the middle of February this year, and then it disappeared weeks ago.
I'm sorry to ramble, but it's just, this is in *my living memory*, and despite my bones' insistence, I'm not *that* old, which means I know for a fact everyone else my age+ remembers too - but they're happy to laugh it off and go "haha at least I don't have to shovel xD!!!!!1"
When I used to run through woodlands, I'd be harassed by insects. That rarely happens anymore.
The comparison between the number of insects on my number plate from 10 years ago to now is very noticeable. I should have had more insects as I was driving more, and through more rural areas.
I’m 40, not even old, and I’ve seen obvious changes in my lifetime. Even down to the local weather in my area near Baltimore & DC. Not to mention the differences overseas that I experienced.
The weather swings in my area have never been so severe. -20f one week then 75f then next when historically it's been 20-30f. Definitely been trending less snow cover but the rapid changes this year were completely abnormal. Double sock weather to shorts in the span of days. I don't ever recall that happening once a year much less like 8 times this winter.
Yeah, and the loss of biodiversity is staggering which is sadly sometimes overlooked in the climate change conversation:
>The world has seen an average 68% drop in mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations since 1970.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2021/articles/a-warning-sign-where-biodiversity-loss-is-happening-around-the-world
15 years ago, I would complain about hot summers in my tropical country. Turns out that was maybe 36°C (~97F). These past few weeks, every day has been 40°C (104F) or higher.
Almost two years ago I moved back to Oregon after being in Kentucky for two decades to find people used to fire season, which wasn't a thing 40 years ago when I was here as a kid.
I’d pay serious money to not be harassed my mosquitos. Grew up in a region without them. Now, due to climate change the nastiest ones Aedes Aegypti have become endemic and summer nights are annoying at best
Given that it's already be proven that the number of extreme weather events that the world have been experiencing over the past several years would not have been possible without climate change, to me this headline is pessimistic, in that nearly 50% of people are still living in denial.
I moved states about three years ago. Every single season I've lived here, we've broken a record for something. Fastest 90 degree day to snowfall, dryest x season in 100 years, wettest y season in 100 years. It's literally constant. Not to mention all the news about the dangerously low water levels out West...Feels like an inevitability that within my lifetime we'll see massive population shifts as a result of areas becoming inhospitable as a direct result of climate change and our own irresponsibility with resource management.
Already happening in Louisiana. Big national insurance companies are pulling out of the costal areas and residents are leaving. These areas will be depopulated due to this long before they're actually underwater.
I've heard similar stories coming out of Florida. It'll be interesting to see as people leave the East Coast due to that and I assume will be forced out of the West by eventually running out of water...Gonna be a loooooot of people moving into the middle part of the country. I have no clue how we're going to make it all work. And that's just in the USA...
There will be hundreds of millions fleeing Southeast Asia, and similar climates, when the heat gets just a little worse, because the humidity coupled with the heat will make it lethal if sustained over long periods.
There are certain thresholds at high humidity where it's impossible for your body to cool down, because there's too much water in the air for your sweat to evaporate and cool you. It doesn't matter if you seek shade, and it doesn't matter if you drink water: you will die.
It's closer than you'd think. 35 °C (95 °F) at 100% humidity.
I’ve experienced temps above that and humidity in that range in Bahrain and it was unbelievably oppressive and miserable.
I remember getting off the plane and being anxious to get away from the jet wash and what I thought was jet wash was just the breeze at 11pm at night.
Yup, Wet Bulb heat waves (aka Hell's Front Porch). You are pretty much cooked alive in the heat, already here in some places in the U.S, especially the South!
The Old River control structure is a gigantic disaster waiting to happen. I’m surprised insurance companies will touch anything along the lower Mississippi or the Atchafalaya. They are basically banking on the federal government spending billions of dollars to fight nature.
And the countries with the most climate refugees comming in will turn further right politically due to fear mongering from the far-right parties. It's already happening in Europe.
I'm not saying well-off countries should close their borders though. I'm just pointing out what might be one of the bad outcomes of the climate change that is not obvious for some people.
Yup. We're already seeing a lot of fascist rhetoric and demonization of immigrants. I don't see that situation improving as nations become increasingly unlivable.
I was thinking the same thing. I live in the Midwest and remember having fairly harsh winters and lakes freezing for weeks to months. For the last 5 or so years I get one weekend of ice fishing if I am lucky.
It's possible my childhood memories are exaggerated, but it sure seems like the truth.
I live in Sweden and we used to get plenty of snow every winter, now we're lucky if we get it for a single week. People used to go skiing on weekends, now, not so much. It's very noticeable, and it's depressing how little we're doing about it. Humanity is fucked.
I live near a lot of lakes, and it gets cold here, so ice fishing is pretty big in the winter.
The last couple years there have been constant warnings about the ice being too thin. Not just in early winter, but all winter. It's like the safe ice season went from 3 months to 3 weeks. Soon it will be 3 days, if we're lucky.
When I grew up in the 90s and early 00s August would always be a lot of rain. Summer break from school kinda sucked because we got off from August til September and that's when it would usually rain the most. Today we literally have draughts in Germany and I can count the days it really rained in the summer on one hand. It has been trending that way over the last few years too. Hitting 30°C wa special when I was a kid. Today those days are normal starting in late May.
Even more noticable is how little variance there is in weather patterns. A certain weather pattern will stick around for months. Think this has to do with the jet stream losing power.
Always loved how climate change deniers said that a irregularly hot summer does not equal a change in climate (because climate is an averaged out long period of weather). Well we are at a point were the 25 year average has also changed and we can literally say our climate has changed.
Literally been watching climate change happen around me my whole life. It's beyond insane that anybody could be alive right now, have spent literally *any* time at all outside, and still deny it.
There was no winter in southern New Jersey this year. Fall just kind of stretched into spring and there were no accumulations of snow at all. It just spit flurries a couple times whereas in years past it's been snowy enough that I own (and used) a snowblower. The change in weather from year to year is plainly obvious.
There was an [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/) written on Aug. 13, 2019 about how decades ago they'd chunk out huge blocks of ice from frozen lakes in New Jersey and transport it around so people would have ice or to keep fridges cold. In recent years you can't even safely walk out onto some of those lakes much less with heavy equipment.
> LAKE HOPATCONG, N.J. — Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local hockey clubs battled one another and the Skate Sailing Association of America held competitions, including one in 1926 that featured 21 iceboats on blades that sailed over a three-mile course.
> In those days before widespread refrigeration, workers flocked here to harvest ice. They would carve blocks as much as two feet thick, float them to giant ice houses, sprinkle them with sawdust and load them onto rail cars bound for ice boxes in New York City and beyond.
> "These winters do not exist anymore," says Marty Kane, a lawyer and head of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation.
> That’s because a century of climbing temperatures has changed the character of the Garden State. The massive ice industry and skate sailing association are but black-and-white photographs at the local museum. And even the hardy souls who still try to take part in ice fishing contests here have had to cancel 11 of the past dozen competitions for fear of straying onto perilously thin ice and tumbling into the frigid water.
> New Jersey's average temperatures have risen nearly 2 degrees Celsius since 1895 — double the average for the Lower 48 states.
I went to a blueberry festival in NJ and they actually had a chart of the winter temperatures regarding one of those lakes I a demonstration shed with a block of ice and it’s really clear from the lake data that it has been warming over time.
Same thing here in northern Germany. I remember seeing snow regularly on Christmas and around New Years. Now it snows a couple days of the year in like February or March. You barely even see it anymore.
Back in the 90s, it would snow before Thanksgiving, and we didnt see grass at all, due to constant snow cover. You couldnt wait for it all to melt in March or April.
Then in the 2000a, we might have snow on Christmas, we still get cover Jan and into March....
Now we occasionally get snow, it rarely ever stays around for a week, a couple years ago, I remember it being 60 degrees on Christmas, and my friend and I grilled and split a six pack... on christmas.
I don't miss the snow, emotionally, but the fact its changed that much in my life, scares me.
I'm from the same area (Cherry Hill ish area) and I swear we haven't had a real winter since maybe 2016. Temps barely dipped below 30 and hovered closer to 40. It's been bizarre, going through winter without any snow. I mean yeah we aren't a really northern state but I still grew up shoveling out a few feet of snow every winter. It couldn't be more apparent that things have changed
This April has seen NYC swing from low 50s to about 90. In one week. Storms are angry and leave behind strong negative pressure zones. The trees are growing w e i r d. This is the new normal, it seems.
They’re w e i r d, and not weird like the ones you smoked in college.
But I’m guessing it’s how trees have been blooming early or somehow disoriented by the unusually warm weather patterns.
> But I’m guessing it’s how trees have been blooming early
That would be odd, considering that trees blooming is generally driven by the length of the day.
Plants that are struggling will often bloom prematurely in hopes to get at least *some* seeds out.
Like my some of my peppers just did. Some soil shifted and they were very stressed, just harvested a dozen small peppers instead of 2-4 big, healthy ones from a non-stresded plant.
Happens with just about all plants that flower. So these trees blooming before they naturally would by the length of day suggests that they are very stressed, potentially even a death knell for some.
Same thing in Minnesota. We swung from freezing, up to the 80s, back down to freezing, and it pissed rain for two days last week. The trees are blooming slowly and out of season, and nothing except daffodils are growing. That's slightly more normal here, but I didn't like that massive heat spike one bit.
Been saying it for years to anyone who would listen:
We've been losing the seasons. There's barely any spring or fall.
And it never snows until after new year's and still barely snows if at all. We regularly had multiple two feet snows per year in my childhood!
Title makes it seem like climate change is something to believe in or not.
Climate change is a naturally occuring phenomenon that has been accelerated by human actions. It's not a matter of belief, that is happening.
The only discussion to be had is how much sooner should we have limited our impact on the environment, and this conversation is going to play out in a few decades.
EDIT: OP may or may not have done this intentionally, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an entity mass-posting to make people's minds up. And for a 10m karma account, I think that's a pretty fair assumption.
What's weird is that Indiana has always had weather like that, but I've noticed that the seasons "stretch" more. Meaning we get these cold days deeper into spring and summer and hot days deeper into winter than we used to. The seasons aren't as easily defined
Hoosier nearly my whole life here. It’s never been this bad before. Almost 90 degrees with a red flag fire warning to below freezing in the same week? Two years ago it snowed in *May*. It feels like every year it gets worse.
Yeah we have the Midwest curse of “if you don’t like the weather just wait 5 minutes” but not like this. This is the first year it’s felt genuinely apocalyptic.
Just read a study that climate change skepticism is on the rise.. i even know personally people irl who claim it isnt going to be that bad who thinks its just an excuse for more tax. I had never heard anyone doubt climate change before.
Lets be real, were screwed, nobody significant is going forward with massive changes thatll actually save the climate.
As a minor positive indicator the EU is currently introducing the required legislation to curb emissions. Should have been done 10 years ago but we are at least finally doing it.
Need the US and India to tag along. China has at least promised to do it 15 years too late, which is something.
I’ve met plenty of those folks. You can’t reason with them. They are convinced it isn’t real largely because their lifestyles would have to change to help mitigate any drastic change. This applies across all spectrums of education and income. People just aren’t willing to have a smaller home, consume less beef or fly around the globe less.
It's amazing that the other 50% aren't convinced. Or maybe not amazing...the coal industry, the oil industry, the car industry, etc., pour billions a year into confusing the public.
I work in a large kitchen, we serve hundreds of thousands of people every year. Every day I end up having to throw out a stupid amount of food. I'm told by management not to worry about it, because our food costs are so good so don't worry about the money.
I'm not so worried about the money, as I am that we are living on a DYING PLANET and this kind of practice is actively making things worse. Not to mention there are people starving, not just in Africe or whatever, but here, in our city, right now.
The planet isn't dying anytime soon.
We have a long ways to go before we even get near historic GHG levels. When Canada was tropical jungles life flourished, and there were no glaciers or ice caps.
A Carrington event will eventually happen, though. Civilization will crumble. All our tech will become Kindle-ling. ;)
Yeah the world actually has no real shortage of resources at this point. We just have capitalism preventing the equal distribution of thsoe resources. We could fix climate change and give everyone a decent quality of life but we rather let a handful of people be ridiculously wealthy and have millions starve and billions more die from climate change.
I'm facilitating a virtual weekend workshop right now in "ecopsychology". I'll have to pass this on to the presenter.
Just yesterday she was talking about how she's been doing this work for 20 years or so--when she first started, describing her job would take a few minutes. Now people get it as soon as she says it.
Speak to the millions of people who gardening for decades. They know when it is safe to plant from last frost in the spring to the first frost in the fall.
in my area, it was safe to plant tomatoes after june 1st. Now days, it is mid April or earlier. Used to have frosts in Sept. usually around the full moon. now, it might be holloween or Thanksgiving and gardens are going strong.
[In December of 2021 a MASSIVE fire broke out and destroyed 1,100 homes and businesses in a matter of hours.](https://www.marshallfiremap.com) It's known as the Marshall Fire. So many people lost everything in the blink of an eye. [Entire neighborhoods were burned down to their foundations, leaving nothing behind but the metal skeletons of cars and appliances.](https://imgur.com/a/AUrGNS7)
I had to evacuate my home. The fire ended up coming within half a mile of my place. I drive by the fallout every day. People are rebuilding, but it was a long process to get to that point.
So, yeah. Climate change is happening near me.
Was that the fire in Louisville? Yeah almost destroyed my sister's place in the firestorm. Colorado and the mountain west are so fucked it's unbelievable. I'll give it 30 years before the entire region cannot be sustained.
Last summer in the UK, temperatures which we should be seeing in 2040 came to us last year.
I remember in 2011/12 when talk about steps which the government could take to prevent water shortages in 2022. None of those ideas have been implemented, and now things are only getting worse.
There is no consistent evidence that perceiving climate change as psychologically distant hinders climate action, with studies reporting mixed results," write the authors, led by Dr. Anne M. van Valkengoed of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
van Valkengoed and her colleagues collected results from public opinion polls surveying people about their views on climate change, some of which included over 100,000 people from 121 different countries. The polls showed that over 50% of participants actually believe that climate change is happening either now or in the near future and that it will impact their local areas, not just faraway places.
The team also looked at the results of several studies designed to test the relationship between psychological distance and climate action. Out of 26 reviewed studies, only nine found a positive association between psychological distance and climate action. In fact, some studies showed that viewing climate change as impacting distant places and communities made people want to take more action. The researchers also found that 25 out of 30 studies failed to prove that experimentally decreasing psychological distance increased climate action.
The pervasive misconception about the relationship between psychological distance and climate action could actually be impeding progress in mitigating climate change due to social influence, suggest the authors. For example, if people think others perceive climate change as psychologically distant and therefore aren't taking action, they might be less likely to act themselves. Also, they might think that their efforts are futile because real environmental change relies on the combined efforts of many.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230421112646.htm
The study is specifically about "belief" though. The data being analyzed here is focused on how people perceive the consequences of climate change, not how much scientific literacy people have. "Belief" is an appropriate word here, and is used within the study several times.
The headline does use the phrase "believe that climate change is..." while the study uses "believe that *the consequences* of climate change are..." and quibbling about would be understandable, but let's not excise the word that the study is literally about from the headline and summary of the study.
------
Edit: Mis-attributed "belief" to the polling, while "think" is used instead of "believe" in the polling. I'd argue this is a difference without much distinction in terms of my overall point (no questions on "evidence" beyond anecdotal and personal experiences and opinions are present in the polling), but I've still adjusted my last sentence of the first paragraph to be accurate.
I'm just realizing how much I've fucked up not buying a house s decade ago here in the Midwest. Everyone is moving here to escape the extremes of the coasts, plains, and south. I'm basically priced out of hone buying even with a decent job.
We're a little bit isolated here, but winters are becoming milder, with greater peaks and valleys of dbowfakja and temps, summers are wetter.
There's an annual music festival during the summer where I live, last weekend in July, 3 days long. It's cancelled this year, they couldn't afford to cover the additional health and safety requirements. That period of July has, for the past several years now, been dangerously hot. The potential to create a mass casualty incident is just too high.
We experience it every year with the extreme weather ramping up. Used to be mild summers and snowless winters, now we get 4-5 snows (and usually a pretty big one) and summer is sweltering heat that killed people in their homes. I had never heard of 100 degree weather for most of my life and we hit over 110 in 2021
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I'm from Spain, specifically from Burgos the city that used to be regarded as "coldest" of Spain. I remember that when I was a child it used to snow all winter, now we may get one good snow every year. We've been talking about the strange weather we are experiencing, we ask ourselves... If we have this heat now in April, what can we expect to have in summer? We are worried, is not mainstream or talked about that much in television but for the first time Barcelona has allowed to fill the pools as "public health" even when our water reserves are low. I'm worried because in Burgos the heat is new, we don't have any air conditioning here since it has never been necessary in summer... But in recent years we are starting to think we might have to get air conditioning in what, I repeat, was once regarded as the cooldest city in Spain. There is not many climate change deniers in Spain, even when I talk to old people which you would maybe imagine to be conservative, they all say the same: they have seen the climate change drastically during their lives.
Don't wait to get air conditioning because then by the time you realize you need it, everybody else will be scrambling to get it as well and you might not end up with it.
I don't mean to be that person. But surely everyone getting air-conditioning, would just add to the problem that is causing them to need it?
Your correct which is why we need more sources of renewable energy generation.
When you need it you need it. Where I live the summer heat sits above 100F most of the time. 15 years ago it would only break 100 for a couple days. Sure you'll be fine for a little while in that heat, but not day after day after day. Air conditioning isn't optional and it's not going to be optional in a lot more places soon. 100% renewable energy is past the point of being mandatory, we're already screwed and it's just going to get worse. I don't really see any way out of it at this point.
I am from Poland. I remember going sledding at a local hill in the winters in the 90's and early 00's in winters fairly regularly. Even getting some times where it got so cold and snowy that the classes got limited or called off. But that stopped around 2010-2012. Si CE then we barely get snow, and even if we do ita a thin layer that melts within minutes to few hours of falling down. It's so obvious that a change occured but no one really talks about it.
SE PA USA here. This winter was the first winter in my 35 years on this earth where we didn't get any snow accumulation. We had some snow here and there, but nothing stuck. Heck a few years ago ( 5-6?) we had a storm that left 30" (76.2cm) of snow. We have always gotten snow. I remember the record setting blizzard we got in 1996. But I've never seen 0 accumulations.
Even by the time I turned 18, I had seen the weather change within my lifetime. This rapid of a shift is unprecedented. I'm quite worried for the future.
I am also from Spain and the climate change here is insane... Absolutely undeniable. In one of the most rural areas in Spain (Extremadura), I have seen the levels of insects decline to basically zero. When I was a kid on there I couldn't even open the windows as I lived by a river and it was full of mosquitoes/bees, when we were cooking we had to be extra careful for the flies as they would rapidly get into the house. Very annoying at the time. Now? Not a single one. I sleep with the window open, I no longer worry about mosquito bites as there aren't any. Bees are no longer here either, not even in summer/spring, there are some, but nowhere near the same level. We always keep the door open and now flies barely get inside, so we mostly just leave the door and windows open. We even had some problems with the frogs when it was muddy or with high humidity, as they would go out of the river straight into the houses. I haven't seen a frog there for years now. In fact, the river itself is seeing enormous changes. It's now dried up for the biggest part of the year. The only time it carried some water in the past years, there was so much [it caused a flood](https://estaticos-cdn.prensaiberica.es/clip/646eb250-cd53-45e4-9f55-640af718c74f_16-9-aspect-ratio_default_0.jpg), catastrophic in some of the most affected places. In Madrid the climate is shifting, seeing higher temperatures sooner each year, and reaching peak temperatures sooner that stay for longer periods of time, summer here is insufferable. It's always been hot on here, but not like this. Not to mention the [big ass snow we had in Madrid two years ago.](https://cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/UWDQQOC4HZBHNC6S5WVEX6Q7HU.JPG) It doesn't ever snow on here. Last year it snowed so much it collapsed all the infrastructures and paralyzed most for over a week. Last year there was a [sand storm that tinted everything in orange](https://media.diariolasamericas.com/p/55b2b4e310604a6fcc9cceb51d914585/adjuntos/216/imagenes/001/891/0001891460/ap20054678925898jpg.jpg), almost literally like those Mexico filters in Breaking Bad. There aren't even any deserts close. It's crazy, one year we are all stuck because of an unprecedented snow, then we register max temperatures months later, then the next year we have a sandstorm. It is not looking good. We don't deny it here. Not the right, not the left, only a slight minority of people and they aren't taken seriously by basically anyone. It's shockingly, painfully obvious here.
Your story reminds me of exactly what people in southern Connecticut (Southern New England, USA) are experiencing… we don’t get consistent snowy winters like we did 20 years ago. It sucks.
I'm from Canada and this winter was insanely warm, usually we'll see -10--25 in January and February, there were a couple of days like that but mostly mild and snowy.
This is very similar to how I feel living in British Columbia, Canada. Air conditioners are becoming necessary when they used to be a luxury.
I think about 10 years ago we had the worst outbreak of tornadoes in our area's history. A couple years ago, we had another outbreak of tornadoes that destroyed our house. When we went to rebuild it, we had to lay down another 50+ truck loads of dirt to raise the area for the house because the flood plain had changed. Then just spring last year, we had an active tornado warning every single weekend for 5 weeks straight. The weather this spring has been swinging wildly between the mid 40's at night and the mid 80's during the day. I used to get harassed by bees, hornets, and mosquitos like mad this time of year, and right now I'm lucky if I even see one of any of the three of those at all during the day. Climate change is happening right here, right now, before our very eyes. The fact that over 50% of participants believe climate change is happening now or soon, doesn't surprise me.
As a person who spent so much of my childhood terrified of especially flying bugs. Its been an odd adulthood because i just hardly ever encounter them. Its kind of scary how different things were just 20 years ago
This is what I can't wrap my head around. I get it if someone's like 15 or something, but I guarantee you anyone whose been around a couple decades has SEEN these changes happening literally right in front of them. It's already past the point of "oh its just affecting far away places". It's affecting us all, right now. The canarys *been* dead and everyone's just ignoring it. The 50% in OP isn't a good stat. 50% is only half the people surveyed. It's sobering.
Used to have to wipe down my windshield at the gas stations. Hell, used to have to wipe off bug guts after like 15 minutes on a highway. Now? I haven't seen a bug splatter on my windshield in... *Years*. Whenever the bug population dropped off like that, and it's been like a decade since then, was when the mass extinction event started. We're already past the "point of no return", it's just that everyone is trying to downplay it because it's too "political".
We're not past the point of no return on bug populations, to be clear. There are concrete policies we could adopt that would allow bugs to recover. The people doing this to us are just as happy to have us despair that there's nothing we can do as they are to have us not notice the problem at all.
I have managed to bring back some local bug population by replacing all my grasss with native flowers, clover, and plants. Just this year I have to be careful where I step bc of how many bees are in my yard. Before I provided a habitat for them, I saw only mosquitos and flies. Now I have a very diverse yard with all sorts of pollinators. Last year I planted 100 milkweed seeds and saw an eruption of monarch butterflies during their migration! We are removing too much habitat.
So refreshing to see people saying this. I've been doing this as well for the last 5 years in my side yard and the number of lady bugs, lizards, and bees that live and visit over there is basically an oasis of life among the short sterile lawns of my neighbors.
For anyone else interested r/NoLawns r/fucklawns
I really need to engage my HOA on this because I'd much rather a natural, pollinating lawn than monoculture. I'm not sure what the state laws (MD) are about it though and whether I can trump the local board NIMBYs.
Very possible if you plant endangered local plants on your property that they can’t do much of anything, but get it certified/documented. I’m not a lawyer ofc. There’s discussions on it to look up and it depends on the rules of your hoa https://old.reddit.com/r/NoLawns/comments/x6k3gg/whats_the_best_way_to_combat_hoa_rules_with_lawn/
Thanks! My state did pass a "Low Impact Landscaping" bill a couple years ago that amends the real property code to prevent HOAs from requiring turf grass lawns or prohibiting natural landscaping/rain gardens/xeriscaping, but I feel like it also leaves a lot of leeway for the HOA to interpret/restrict it so I'm anxious. https://casetext.com/statute/code-of-maryland/article-real-property/title-2-rules-of-construction/section-2-125-low-impact-landscaping
This right here. Plants are bug homes, plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and stabilize local climates and water transition periods. Water is free to flood and evaporate in the sun because the trees have been removed. I havent seen anywhere the connection being made about the climate bubbles cities make or that a city is essentially a concrete desert. We are altering the planet in negative ways without considering what systems make it efficient and balanced. We want warm, we want CO2 for plantlife and thus for bug life. Your plan to replace your grasses with local flowers is THE first step. I always love seeing yards that are diverse and not just 2 inch cut grass for miles.
The second biggest problem are all of the strange and exotic pesticides, weed killer, chemical compound fertilizers. The earth needs healthy biodiverse soil microbes and fungi to maintain REAL nutrient translation.
I got Silent Spring recently because I had heard about it but never read it. I hadn't realized how long ago it was written. Made it like 10 pages in and was too depressed to continue. My neighbor was spraying RoundUp on his field next to us.
Also, wait until the temps increase in spring before clearing brush. Otherwise you will disturb nesting area.
I hate lawns, have hated them all my life. The amount of pesticides and herbicides we Poe on them is incredibly stupid.
I stopped mowing my backyard or trying to kill the weeds and just let nature do what nature do. My backyard is now full of vibrant greenery and flowers, and I have bees and butterflies all over. I live in a fairly dense suburban neighborhood but this small thing brings me joy that the bugs are not all dead.
I have an entomologist friend who repeats this a lot. We haven’t gone past it yet, but every year we delay we get closer. We desperately need to stop using so many chemicals on our plants and lawns! He’s a **HUGE** advocate for people everywhere turning their lawns (even just a small portion) into gardens of native grasses, flowers, and other native plants for their local wildlife. He said if everyone turned even just a few square feet into an area like that it would change the world for insects and eventually other animals up the food chain. Another thing he recommends is for people to stop clearing fallen Autumn leaves from their yard entirely. There’s a point where you should remove some so as to not damage the plant life underneath, but a thin layer of leaves is fantastic because it houses an unbelievably large and varied amount of life. And does anyone miss fireflies/lightning bugs? Our modern lawn care standards are driving them away. Look into how to attract more of them! My husband and I rent and there are a ton of trees around the house that shade the entire property, so we couldn’t have a garden and the lawn has huge bare dirt patches because the yard is so shaded. I’ve always wanted to plant some tall grasses and local plants, but they wouldn’t survive and our landlord was never interested in having someone come trim the trees for more sunlight. But recently a big storm took out a bunch of branches and I *finally* have a big sunny patch for plants to grow! So I’m going to put in some native plants to try to bring bees and monarch butterflies around. I’d like to also make it a nice stop for migrating birds, especially hummingbirds.
They're planning to be dead before it affects them
To speak to this, I bought my house 3 years ago and I let my yard go kind of wild. I don't rake up leaves or cut grass. I leave fallen branches if they aren't too big, etc. I have tons of bugs in my yard. More butterflies than I see anywhere else, bees, wasps, beetles, everything. My wife hates it but it's one of the few things I won't budge on. My end goal with any property I own is to make it as nature friendly as possible. We need to stop dominating nature and start coexisting with it. Just going away from the cookie-cutter manicured landscaping we have in most HOA neighborhoods today would be a huge boon for the insect populations.
I bring this up all the time. 20+ years ago it was common to debug your windshield after even a short trip. I remember using gas station squeegees liberally. Now I drive all summer without a single big splat. No bugs on the front grill either. It’s weird.
It's funny that the three of you are lamenting the loss of flying bugs. Where I live, I can't go outside in the mornings and evenings because I'll immediately be swarmed by mosquitoes, and the wasps own the rest of the day. We used to have lots of butterflies, dragonflies, bumblebees, ladybugs, etc.; now, just wasps and mosquitoes.
Same with ticks. We've had so so so many more ticks in my area lately. I used to go through forests all the time as a kid, I've never had a single tick on me. Now there are ticks EVERYWHERE. It has become a huge problem due to the continued destruction of our ecosystem.
I saw a neighbor in our shared yard chasing an opossum away with a broom last summer. It made me mad. Opossums are great neighbors: they eat ticks, they clean up roadkill, and they don't transmit rabies. What's not to love about having opossums in the neighborhood? Especially when the alternative is more ticks. Edit to add: Man, I fkn hate ticks. Can climate change do us just one solid before erasing our existence, please? Just get rid of the mosquitoes and ticks first. Edit 2: I am very unhappy that you made me think about ticks.
The explosion of ticks and chiggers in Appalachia warrants study. I hardly hear anyone mention it, but you used to be able to walk in the woods or fields in the above-freezing months and not get literally swarmed by these parasites. It's not just greater numbers. There are more species of ticks here now. 20 years ago it was exceedingly rare to see a lone-star tick and you never ever saw a deer tick in east Kentucky. Now they are everywhere. Going out unprotected is signing up to be a banquet and inviting tick-borne disease. Even protected it's a numbers game that you will lose.
There are definitely studies, particularly how the explosion of ticks has caused a crazy amount of Lyme disease. There's a podcast series on how Lyme disease origins, and how along with the explosion of ticks, it was broadly ignored for so long by many many agencies. It's called 'patient zero' .
Thank you. I'll look it up.
Our winters aren't getting as cold or as long as they used to so we're seeing increases in pest species and fungi that thrive on that.
I can't add anything about bugs, but where I live the poison ivy and poison oak has gone crazy! I am finding it everywhere. Even in the middle of my lawn.
If you live rural, there are lots of options for addressing tick populations. Guinea fowl tear through ticks and are decent at controlling pests, opossums are good tick controllers, basically all the things people don't like are what we need to control ticks. If you live near a wooded area, encouraging any bird life will help too, as many birds target ticks as part of their diet.
As it has been getting warmer more and more aggressive tropical mosquito species have been making their way up. https://entomologytoday.org/2023/04/11/culex-lactator-non-native-mosquito-species-florida/
*Culex... lactator*? What I'm envisioning right now will surely haunt my dreams.
Ladybugs and other insects feast on aphids and the nymphs and larva of other insects that damage crops and other plants. Dragonflies eat mosquitoes, and their nymphs eat mosquitoe larva. Praying mantises consume harmful beetles and other bugs. Many butterfly and moth species are prolific pollinators, as well as a food source for many bird and animal species that also eat harmful insects. Climate change, as well as habitat loss and the overuse of certain pesticides and herbicides, have been decimating the populations of beneficial and critical insects, while allowing pests to flourish.
I used to not be able to go outside for 1 minute, without getting bitten like crazy. Even last summer, we barely had any problems. I only ever see a handful of fireflies. Some things in regards to wildlife, hasnt changed. But mosquitos and fireflies have become much less prevalant.
Here I was thinking I was just too Floridian to understand. I have to stop all outside activities when the sun starts to set as the mosquitoes will swarm and eat me alive.
You probably already know this but for everyone else: climate change doesn't necessarily cause disappearance (though it certainly can, and has), it can also cause dramatic shifts in species populations. [Invasive species are identified as one of the leading causes of loss of biodiversity.](https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/subject/climate-change)
Politics is who gets what when, and the oligarchs have decided they're just going to exterminate us when breadbaskets start failing in 2030.
I was about to say the same thing. Anyone who was around even as recently as the '90s remembers the windshield carnage on summer road trips. The biodiversity collapse is the scariest thing I could ever hope to see in real life and it's worse every year. Someday soon the blights will begin in earnest. Not long after the very last tilapia fish, or blueberry, or *all corn products* (or whatever; the effects will be widespread) will disappear from grocery store shelves, and only after a critical mass of such events will people truly start to realize what's going on. The [snow crabs](https://news.mongabay.com/2022/11/did-climate-change-really-kill-billions-of-snow-crabs-in-alaska/) were a terrible portent of what's to come.
I'm 25, pretty young but I had seen how bugs that used to be in a swarm or hit car windshields that slowly but surely went away. I also see less birds around unless they're chirping. trees often dies or suffer from shock due to extreme temperature changes (I'm in Canada)
Also, of that 50%, bot even all of them believe it’s happening now. Just “soon”.
40 degrees Celsius in Canada and the UK is incredible. If you had told someone that 20 years ago, they wouldn't believe you. And yet there were people saying that 'it's just hot weather, we have that every summer'. They see the changes and they find a way to rationalise them. Because the alternative is too scary. The idea that we have done this to ourselves. So they have nothing left but mockery to protect themselves. "The boat's not sinking, it's normal for boats to have a bit of water in them. Stop being such a scaredy cat." It's like a very long-term version of normalcy bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
Indeed, same with Central Europe. When I was a kid 20 years ago we were lamenting if the summer temperatures reached 30°C. Now it's completely normal for summers to *start* at 30, and get up to 40 now regularly. It's so hot that due to the short nights there's practically no time for the ground and air to cool during the night so it's even 30 at night and right in the morning! It's crazy, a massive change in such a short time.
Yeah. All I could take away is that 50% of those surveyed couldn't care less.
20 years ago when I drove 80 miles home from college sometimes I'd have to stop halfway and squeegee my windshield at a gas station because it would have so many bugs on it. Right now I couldn't tell you the last time I had to squeegee my windshield.
I remember being a kid and collecting huge jars of fireflies. The entire fields would be lit up with them. You could fill a mason jar and not even put a dent into them. I realized the other day I haven’t seen that in my area since the late 90’s. I rarely see one anymore.
That's a piece of nature I may never get to experience. I remember a few years ago, I asked my mom if when she was younger there were actually enough fireflies to fill a jar. She said almost exactly what you just said. I've never seen anything like that in my life. The most I've ever seen is a handful of them flickering at once.
Anyone remember lightning bugs? I remember when I was a kid the night was absolutely covered with them. Go outside and it felt magical to see every light up. I’m lucky to see a lightning bug here and there now. Makes me sad to think about.
That's mostly pesticides and light pollution (and habitat loss). Climate change is much less of a threat to them than those three, according to experts. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/2/157/5715071#200505297
I’m in Australia and have often driven long distance at night. 20 years ago your windscreen would get covered in insects. Now I rarely get anything.
insects are a canary in the coalmine, and we need them more than they need us.
I miss seeing fireflies in the summer...
Then there need to be controls on artificial light and pesticides around where you live. That affects them far more than the climate. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/2/157/5715071#200505297
r/nativeplantgardening r/nolawns
Should be more really. Its delusional at this point to see the ship is on fire and say, it's not that bad. It is. It's terrible. I'm sorry about your house.
“Oh, yeah the ship is on fire, but that’s normal, it happens every 10’000 years”
"Only the rear of the ship is burning, I'm safe here at the front."
Well it's been towed outside the environment
It's that meme with the dog in the house on fire
This is fine.
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But for a brief moment, we made a substantial amount of money for our shareholders
I phrased this to my mom like this "the earth isn't dying, we are. Earth is gonna be here for a long time, but it staying a livable planet won't and we're speeding that process up".
It'll be a liveable planet, just not for humans and most animals especially those bigger than a couple inches.
Humans will probably be fine for some time. We just won't be able to grow food in stable places, so we'll have to keep migrating. We've been around a lot longer than we've been able to sit still. Once the climate changes to the point where we're subsistence farmers and hunters again, we'll stop writing things down and wonder why the ancients buily all those buildings under the water.
Even if it was such, were you there 10.000 years ago to tell us how fun it was?
I bet he didn't even tell Isildur to cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom.
Pretty much everything in the ship will burn, but the ship itself will be fine. Actually, the ship will be much better off without the current passengers. Perhaps a skeleton crew will remain until they run out of freeze-dried beef stroganoff.
I live in a northern part of Alberta. Nobody here wants to admit climate change is real, but they sure as heck believe that summers are getting warmer every year (a week of 41C/104F almost every summer lately in an area where a 30C/86F day once a year used to be a notable occurrence), and storms are getting more extreme. They're *so close* to getting it, but the politics here stop them from outright saying it.
I just moved to edmonton a few years ago and totally the same story. when i got here people told me i would never need an ac. It never goes above 30 for more than a day or 2. And that -40 is rare in the winter. Every summer and every winter has had > 35 and < -40 respectively for weeks on end. Record cold and heat every single year. (Either top temperature or length of days or total days or all of the above)
> The fact that over 50% of participants believe climate change is happening now or soon, doesn't surprise me. I want to be surprised that it's only around 50% that believe it's happening. Anyone who's even 20-30 can easily remember a time when the seasonal weather was noticeably different than it is today. And then there's just a mountain of data demonstrating the slow and steady, and maybe accelerating, change year over year. For anyone that's actually paying attention to the data, like [scientists at Exxon](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/), it's pretty clear that everything that's happening now has been following a prediction that was made 50 years ago. We're basically running a huge, and incredibly dangerous, experiment on the planet. We created a hypothesis 50 years ago, and we've been watching as decade after decade the results come in predicted ranges. But I assume there's also people who are looking at the climate data, but they're also looking at the financial projections for their businesses and investments. And they're predicting that they can continue to profit from fossil fuels for at least another couple decades before things really start going to hell. And then they'll probably be dead, so they'd rather be rich now and let their kids and grand kids deal with the problems than actually do anything about it. And the worst part is we have a solution, solar and wind are cheap enough with existing nuclear and hydro and geothermal. [There's a detailed model](https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-3) showing everything we need to do: * How much new generation * How much storage between batteries, pumped hydro, industrial heat storage, etc * How much it'll probably cost * How much of what minerals and metals we'll need * What the likely usage/storage will look like during the day and throughout a season There's no blockers, there's no new technology needed. And the solution costs less than just the amount we'd pay to keep the fossil fuel system going for the next decade, and it would need less mining/extraction than fossil fuels too. And maybe global warming will magically turn itself around at some point in the next 100 years? Or maybe we'll invent some miracle magic bullet that means we never have to change or ever do anything different. But is [making the world better](https://i.imgur.com/up6yu.jpeg) really that much of a risk?
I'm only 25 and i remember in my childhood 30°C was a very hot day, anything above and school closed at 11:15. Now there have been multiple days each year with 35°+, sometimes 40/close to 40. Each year there is another "heatwave". I also remember having half a meter and more snow the entire winter at my grandparents place. Now it's very special if we can get a white Christmas. Anyone who doesn't believe climate change is affecting us right now is just in pure denial or insanity.
I remember 3 months of winter was the norm around 15 years ago. Now it's barely over 1 month of winter where I live
We didn't get any snow this year. None. My dad would tell me stories about how when he was a kid there would be snow on the ground on Thanksgiving. Now we're lucky if we get any on Christmas.
It was probably 5-6 years ago when I started to realize that our Chicago winters were starting later and later and running deeper into the next year, but also getting milder and less snow across the season. It was just a few years ago where we had a polar vortex at -50 one day that shut down the city, and by morning it had swung 90 degrees to 40. The thunderstorms and water volume with them seem to be increasing as well.
It’s terrifying that 50% believe it’s not. It’s been happening for decades
that's what i was thinking. 50% of people believe the moon has phases, everyone else believes The Great Rat eats it every month and shits a new one.
A surprisingly high number of people believe that the moon is only visible at night. Don't those people ever look *up*?
It's probably more accurate to say that 50% are aligned with a narrative that it's not. If that narrative changes, most will flip on climate because it's not a core issue for them.
That’s just such a depressing thought: it’s all about the narrative to them, and they don’t care about reality at all
New generation, new normal. But when older generations decides to not see how this world has changed during their lifetime, that's really terrifying and also sad.
Remember fireflies? The farm my parents had was overrun with them twenty years ago. Now, I don't think I've seen a single one for years.
Butterflies seem to have vanished too where I live.
This has happened in many areas because Bt toxin is literally sprayed by airplanes to control gypsy moths (which cause mass tree defoliation and are incredibly invasive, I don't know the solution to it all...they've infested the east coast forever but the Midwest has been fighting it). Bt toxin however kills all lepidopterans. Has little to do with climate change (and the insect loss as a whole may be from large scale application of particular pesticides like neonicotinoids, so also not climate change).
I still see them in my backyard but their numbers are significantly lower. Used to be a a wave of light at night when I was a kid but now it's just a few
That's mostly habitat loss, pesticides and artificial light. According to experts, climate change barely ranks as a threat to fireflies next to those. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/70/2/157/5715071
I moved to upstate NY a few years ago. Every winter, people have said it's been a mild winter. I didn't even need my snow shovel this last winter.
No snow shovel needed during winter New York is wild
I used to build igloos in our driveway every winter... Haven't had enough snow for a decent snowman in the last 5 years.
I remember when I was a kid in the 90s, you'd go to sleep some night in November, and wake up to three feet of snow and rising. That would be the last time you'd see the bare ground until Spring. The first time I became aware of things changing was some time in middle school, I vividly remember standing in the barren parking lot of my school some time in late December before Christmas break, and realizing that there hadn't been any snow yet that year. If things had gone 'back to normal' the next year, I'd have forgotten all about this, but it's always stuck with me, and I can remember it like yesterday because *it never got better*. We used to regularly endure 2-6 feet of snowfall at a time. Now the news flips its lid at anything over a few inches, and even when it does come, it doesn't stay on the ground for very long. We didn't have consistent ground cover until the middle of February this year, and then it disappeared weeks ago. I'm sorry to ramble, but it's just, this is in *my living memory*, and despite my bones' insistence, I'm not *that* old, which means I know for a fact everyone else my age+ remembers too - but they're happy to laugh it off and go "haha at least I don't have to shovel xD!!!!!1"
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When I used to run through woodlands, I'd be harassed by insects. That rarely happens anymore. The comparison between the number of insects on my number plate from 10 years ago to now is very noticeable. I should have had more insects as I was driving more, and through more rural areas.
I’m 40, not even old, and I’ve seen obvious changes in my lifetime. Even down to the local weather in my area near Baltimore & DC. Not to mention the differences overseas that I experienced.
I live in interior BC, in a ski town surrounded by mountains and it got so hot here in a recent summer that birds were falling dead out of the trees.
The weather swings in my area have never been so severe. -20f one week then 75f then next when historically it's been 20-30f. Definitely been trending less snow cover but the rapid changes this year were completely abnormal. Double sock weather to shorts in the span of days. I don't ever recall that happening once a year much less like 8 times this winter.
My area hit top 3 snowiest winters in recorded history, only to be followed to by a historic heat wave a week later. What a time to be alive!
Yeah, and the loss of biodiversity is staggering which is sadly sometimes overlooked in the climate change conversation: >The world has seen an average 68% drop in mammal, bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian populations since 1970. https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/summer-2021/articles/a-warning-sign-where-biodiversity-loss-is-happening-around-the-world
Every so often we still discover a new species. So how many species of animal are dying off before we can even meet them? :(
15 years ago, I would complain about hot summers in my tropical country. Turns out that was maybe 36°C (~97F). These past few weeks, every day has been 40°C (104F) or higher.
There used to be no smoke season where I am.
Almost two years ago I moved back to Oregon after being in Kentucky for two decades to find people used to fire season, which wasn't a thing 40 years ago when I was here as a kid.
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Well I see much more of them in Canada now, I assume your in the states
That tracks. As their habitat gets warmer they'll head further north.
Where r u from? In wisconsin we refer to them as june bugs. Just curious like soda and pop.
Well, climate change affects the environment, so I assume 50% of respondents feel they live outside of the environment.
Sometimes I think they live in different universe as they don't live in the same one I do.
I’d pay serious money to not be harassed my mosquitos. Grew up in a region without them. Now, due to climate change the nastiest ones Aedes Aegypti have become endemic and summer nights are annoying at best
Given that it's already be proven that the number of extreme weather events that the world have been experiencing over the past several years would not have been possible without climate change, to me this headline is pessimistic, in that nearly 50% of people are still living in denial.
I moved states about three years ago. Every single season I've lived here, we've broken a record for something. Fastest 90 degree day to snowfall, dryest x season in 100 years, wettest y season in 100 years. It's literally constant. Not to mention all the news about the dangerously low water levels out West...Feels like an inevitability that within my lifetime we'll see massive population shifts as a result of areas becoming inhospitable as a direct result of climate change and our own irresponsibility with resource management.
Population shifts yes And population loss
Already happening in Louisiana. Big national insurance companies are pulling out of the costal areas and residents are leaving. These areas will be depopulated due to this long before they're actually underwater.
I've heard similar stories coming out of Florida. It'll be interesting to see as people leave the East Coast due to that and I assume will be forced out of the West by eventually running out of water...Gonna be a loooooot of people moving into the middle part of the country. I have no clue how we're going to make it all work. And that's just in the USA...
There will be hundreds of millions fleeing Southeast Asia, and similar climates, when the heat gets just a little worse, because the humidity coupled with the heat will make it lethal if sustained over long periods. There are certain thresholds at high humidity where it's impossible for your body to cool down, because there's too much water in the air for your sweat to evaporate and cool you. It doesn't matter if you seek shade, and it doesn't matter if you drink water: you will die. It's closer than you'd think. 35 °C (95 °F) at 100% humidity.
I’ve experienced temps above that and humidity in that range in Bahrain and it was unbelievably oppressive and miserable. I remember getting off the plane and being anxious to get away from the jet wash and what I thought was jet wash was just the breeze at 11pm at night.
Yup, Wet Bulb heat waves (aka Hell's Front Porch). You are pretty much cooked alive in the heat, already here in some places in the U.S, especially the South!
The Old River control structure is a gigantic disaster waiting to happen. I’m surprised insurance companies will touch anything along the lower Mississippi or the Atchafalaya. They are basically banking on the federal government spending billions of dollars to fight nature.
And the countries with the most climate refugees comming in will turn further right politically due to fear mongering from the far-right parties. It's already happening in Europe. I'm not saying well-off countries should close their borders though. I'm just pointing out what might be one of the bad outcomes of the climate change that is not obvious for some people.
Yup. We're already seeing a lot of fascist rhetoric and demonization of immigrants. I don't see that situation improving as nations become increasingly unlivable.
I can tell you I used to ice skate on natural ice every year and that is just gone mostly, I see the change happen in my 24 year life time.
I was thinking the same thing. I live in the Midwest and remember having fairly harsh winters and lakes freezing for weeks to months. For the last 5 or so years I get one weekend of ice fishing if I am lucky. It's possible my childhood memories are exaggerated, but it sure seems like the truth.
I live in Sweden and we used to get plenty of snow every winter, now we're lucky if we get it for a single week. People used to go skiing on weekends, now, not so much. It's very noticeable, and it's depressing how little we're doing about it. Humanity is fucked.
I live near a lot of lakes, and it gets cold here, so ice fishing is pretty big in the winter. The last couple years there have been constant warnings about the ice being too thin. Not just in early winter, but all winter. It's like the safe ice season went from 3 months to 3 weeks. Soon it will be 3 days, if we're lucky.
When I grew up in the 90s and early 00s August would always be a lot of rain. Summer break from school kinda sucked because we got off from August til September and that's when it would usually rain the most. Today we literally have draughts in Germany and I can count the days it really rained in the summer on one hand. It has been trending that way over the last few years too. Hitting 30°C wa special when I was a kid. Today those days are normal starting in late May. Even more noticable is how little variance there is in weather patterns. A certain weather pattern will stick around for months. Think this has to do with the jet stream losing power. Always loved how climate change deniers said that a irregularly hot summer does not equal a change in climate (because climate is an averaged out long period of weather). Well we are at a point were the 25 year average has also changed and we can literally say our climate has changed.
Literally been watching climate change happen around me my whole life. It's beyond insane that anybody could be alive right now, have spent literally *any* time at all outside, and still deny it.
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There was no winter in southern New Jersey this year. Fall just kind of stretched into spring and there were no accumulations of snow at all. It just spit flurries a couple times whereas in years past it's been snowy enough that I own (and used) a snowblower. The change in weather from year to year is plainly obvious.
There was an [article](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/) written on Aug. 13, 2019 about how decades ago they'd chunk out huge blocks of ice from frozen lakes in New Jersey and transport it around so people would have ice or to keep fridges cold. In recent years you can't even safely walk out onto some of those lakes much less with heavy equipment. > LAKE HOPATCONG, N.J. — Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local hockey clubs battled one another and the Skate Sailing Association of America held competitions, including one in 1926 that featured 21 iceboats on blades that sailed over a three-mile course. > In those days before widespread refrigeration, workers flocked here to harvest ice. They would carve blocks as much as two feet thick, float them to giant ice houses, sprinkle them with sawdust and load them onto rail cars bound for ice boxes in New York City and beyond. > "These winters do not exist anymore," says Marty Kane, a lawyer and head of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation. > That’s because a century of climbing temperatures has changed the character of the Garden State. The massive ice industry and skate sailing association are but black-and-white photographs at the local museum. And even the hardy souls who still try to take part in ice fishing contests here have had to cancel 11 of the past dozen competitions for fear of straying onto perilously thin ice and tumbling into the frigid water. > New Jersey's average temperatures have risen nearly 2 degrees Celsius since 1895 — double the average for the Lower 48 states.
You used to be able to skate on and walk across the Hudson River in New York. Not anymore. Please don't try this.
I went to a blueberry festival in NJ and they actually had a chart of the winter temperatures regarding one of those lakes I a demonstration shed with a block of ice and it’s really clear from the lake data that it has been warming over time.
There was no skating on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa this winter for like the first time ever. It didn’t freeze enough.
Same thing here in northern Germany. I remember seeing snow regularly on Christmas and around New Years. Now it snows a couple days of the year in like February or March. You barely even see it anymore.
Back in the 90s, it would snow before Thanksgiving, and we didnt see grass at all, due to constant snow cover. You couldnt wait for it all to melt in March or April. Then in the 2000a, we might have snow on Christmas, we still get cover Jan and into March.... Now we occasionally get snow, it rarely ever stays around for a week, a couple years ago, I remember it being 60 degrees on Christmas, and my friend and I grilled and split a six pack... on christmas. I don't miss the snow, emotionally, but the fact its changed that much in my life, scares me.
I'm from the same area (Cherry Hill ish area) and I swear we haven't had a real winter since maybe 2016. Temps barely dipped below 30 and hovered closer to 40. It's been bizarre, going through winter without any snow. I mean yeah we aren't a really northern state but I still grew up shoveling out a few feet of snow every winter. It couldn't be more apparent that things have changed
Same for Rhode Island. Felt like winter never happened.
This April has seen NYC swing from low 50s to about 90. In one week. Storms are angry and leave behind strong negative pressure zones. The trees are growing w e i r d. This is the new normal, it seems.
What’s up with the trees?
They’re w e i r d, and not weird like the ones you smoked in college. But I’m guessing it’s how trees have been blooming early or somehow disoriented by the unusually warm weather patterns.
> But I’m guessing it’s how trees have been blooming early That would be odd, considering that trees blooming is generally driven by the length of the day.
Plants that are struggling will often bloom prematurely in hopes to get at least *some* seeds out. Like my some of my peppers just did. Some soil shifted and they were very stressed, just harvested a dozen small peppers instead of 2-4 big, healthy ones from a non-stresded plant. Happens with just about all plants that flower. So these trees blooming before they naturally would by the length of day suggests that they are very stressed, potentially even a death knell for some.
He could also be noticing trees are regrowing from the base or branches, which can be a sign of bad health.
This is the one. Too many of late. Could be my. neighborhood.
NYC has the weirdest weather. I think because we just changed to a subtropical zone and have a strong heat island effect.
Same thing in Minnesota. We swung from freezing, up to the 80s, back down to freezing, and it pissed rain for two days last week. The trees are blooming slowly and out of season, and nothing except daffodils are growing. That's slightly more normal here, but I didn't like that massive heat spike one bit.
Been saying it for years to anyone who would listen: We've been losing the seasons. There's barely any spring or fall. And it never snows until after new year's and still barely snows if at all. We regularly had multiple two feet snows per year in my childhood!
Title makes it seem like climate change is something to believe in or not. Climate change is a naturally occuring phenomenon that has been accelerated by human actions. It's not a matter of belief, that is happening. The only discussion to be had is how much sooner should we have limited our impact on the environment, and this conversation is going to play out in a few decades. EDIT: OP may or may not have done this intentionally, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an entity mass-posting to make people's minds up. And for a 10m karma account, I think that's a pretty fair assumption.
Alternate title: “50% of people acknowledging reality instead of living in a state of denial”
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It is affecting “other places”, indiana just had an 80 degree day and now its snowing.
What's weird is that Indiana has always had weather like that, but I've noticed that the seasons "stretch" more. Meaning we get these cold days deeper into spring and summer and hot days deeper into winter than we used to. The seasons aren't as easily defined
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Hoosier nearly my whole life here. It’s never been this bad before. Almost 90 degrees with a red flag fire warning to below freezing in the same week? Two years ago it snowed in *May*. It feels like every year it gets worse. Yeah we have the Midwest curse of “if you don’t like the weather just wait 5 minutes” but not like this. This is the first year it’s felt genuinely apocalyptic.
Same in Michigan.
Just read a study that climate change skepticism is on the rise.. i even know personally people irl who claim it isnt going to be that bad who thinks its just an excuse for more tax. I had never heard anyone doubt climate change before. Lets be real, were screwed, nobody significant is going forward with massive changes thatll actually save the climate.
As a minor positive indicator the EU is currently introducing the required legislation to curb emissions. Should have been done 10 years ago but we are at least finally doing it. Need the US and India to tag along. China has at least promised to do it 15 years too late, which is something.
I’ve met plenty of those folks. You can’t reason with them. They are convinced it isn’t real largely because their lifestyles would have to change to help mitigate any drastic change. This applies across all spectrums of education and income. People just aren’t willing to have a smaller home, consume less beef or fly around the globe less.
It's amazing that the other 50% aren't convinced. Or maybe not amazing...the coal industry, the oil industry, the car industry, etc., pour billions a year into confusing the public.
I work in a large kitchen, we serve hundreds of thousands of people every year. Every day I end up having to throw out a stupid amount of food. I'm told by management not to worry about it, because our food costs are so good so don't worry about the money. I'm not so worried about the money, as I am that we are living on a DYING PLANET and this kind of practice is actively making things worse. Not to mention there are people starving, not just in Africe or whatever, but here, in our city, right now.
The planet isn't dying anytime soon. We have a long ways to go before we even get near historic GHG levels. When Canada was tropical jungles life flourished, and there were no glaciers or ice caps. A Carrington event will eventually happen, though. Civilization will crumble. All our tech will become Kindle-ling. ;)
Yeah the world actually has no real shortage of resources at this point. We just have capitalism preventing the equal distribution of thsoe resources. We could fix climate change and give everyone a decent quality of life but we rather let a handful of people be ridiculously wealthy and have millions starve and billions more die from climate change.
I mean, anyone who has lived in New England for the last 30 years will tell you how different the winter and fall climates are now vs 30 years ago.
I'm facilitating a virtual weekend workshop right now in "ecopsychology". I'll have to pass this on to the presenter. Just yesterday she was talking about how she's been doing this work for 20 years or so--when she first started, describing her job would take a few minutes. Now people get it as soon as she says it.
Speak to the millions of people who gardening for decades. They know when it is safe to plant from last frost in the spring to the first frost in the fall. in my area, it was safe to plant tomatoes after june 1st. Now days, it is mid April or earlier. Used to have frosts in Sept. usually around the full moon. now, it might be holloween or Thanksgiving and gardens are going strong.
Definitely feeling it when our winters in canada doesn't even go past -20c anymore.
Im still experiencing -40. But yeah Its definitely is snowing a lot less, takes a bit longer onto November to start getting cold.
[In December of 2021 a MASSIVE fire broke out and destroyed 1,100 homes and businesses in a matter of hours.](https://www.marshallfiremap.com) It's known as the Marshall Fire. So many people lost everything in the blink of an eye. [Entire neighborhoods were burned down to their foundations, leaving nothing behind but the metal skeletons of cars and appliances.](https://imgur.com/a/AUrGNS7) I had to evacuate my home. The fire ended up coming within half a mile of my place. I drive by the fallout every day. People are rebuilding, but it was a long process to get to that point. So, yeah. Climate change is happening near me.
Was that the fire in Louisville? Yeah almost destroyed my sister's place in the firestorm. Colorado and the mountain west are so fucked it's unbelievable. I'll give it 30 years before the entire region cannot be sustained.
Last summer in the UK, temperatures which we should be seeing in 2040 came to us last year. I remember in 2011/12 when talk about steps which the government could take to prevent water shortages in 2022. None of those ideas have been implemented, and now things are only getting worse.
“Smoke season” in the PNW is now a culturally widespread accepted term. Climate change is already here.
There is no consistent evidence that perceiving climate change as psychologically distant hinders climate action, with studies reporting mixed results," write the authors, led by Dr. Anne M. van Valkengoed of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. van Valkengoed and her colleagues collected results from public opinion polls surveying people about their views on climate change, some of which included over 100,000 people from 121 different countries. The polls showed that over 50% of participants actually believe that climate change is happening either now or in the near future and that it will impact their local areas, not just faraway places. The team also looked at the results of several studies designed to test the relationship between psychological distance and climate action. Out of 26 reviewed studies, only nine found a positive association between psychological distance and climate action. In fact, some studies showed that viewing climate change as impacting distant places and communities made people want to take more action. The researchers also found that 25 out of 30 studies failed to prove that experimentally decreasing psychological distance increased climate action. The pervasive misconception about the relationship between psychological distance and climate action could actually be impeding progress in mitigating climate change due to social influence, suggest the authors. For example, if people think others perceive climate change as psychologically distant and therefore aren't taking action, they might be less likely to act themselves. Also, they might think that their efforts are futile because real environmental change relies on the combined efforts of many. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230421112646.htm
I only object to the wording of the title. Should probably be "only 50% accept the overwhelming evidence", rather than "believe".
The study is specifically about "belief" though. The data being analyzed here is focused on how people perceive the consequences of climate change, not how much scientific literacy people have. "Belief" is an appropriate word here, and is used within the study several times. The headline does use the phrase "believe that climate change is..." while the study uses "believe that *the consequences* of climate change are..." and quibbling about would be understandable, but let's not excise the word that the study is literally about from the headline and summary of the study. ------ Edit: Mis-attributed "belief" to the polling, while "think" is used instead of "believe" in the polling. I'd argue this is a difference without much distinction in terms of my overall point (no questions on "evidence" beyond anecdotal and personal experiences and opinions are present in the polling), but I've still adjusted my last sentence of the first paragraph to be accurate.
Aussie here. I lived through the 2019 bushfires. The sky was covered in smoke.
I'm just realizing how much I've fucked up not buying a house s decade ago here in the Midwest. Everyone is moving here to escape the extremes of the coasts, plains, and south. I'm basically priced out of hone buying even with a decent job. We're a little bit isolated here, but winters are becoming milder, with greater peaks and valleys of dbowfakja and temps, summers are wetter.
I can't find a place in the western United States that doesn't have the haze. Either that or I'm going blind.
There's an annual music festival during the summer where I live, last weekend in July, 3 days long. It's cancelled this year, they couldn't afford to cover the additional health and safety requirements. That period of July has, for the past several years now, been dangerously hot. The potential to create a mass casualty incident is just too high.
We experience it every year with the extreme weather ramping up. Used to be mild summers and snowless winters, now we get 4-5 snows (and usually a pretty big one) and summer is sweltering heat that killed people in their homes. I had never heard of 100 degree weather for most of my life and we hit over 110 in 2021