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No, not the entire winter. What seems to be happening is that the normally very reliable wind patterns around the poles are breaking down as the poles heat up,

No, not the entire winter. What seems to be happening is that the normally very reliable wind patterns around the poles are breaking down as the poles heat up, and that's creating temporary warm patterns. As one of the articles notes, you might be 60 degrees F above normal for a while, then go back to "normal" winter temperatures. https://mashable.com/2018/01/30/wild-arctic-weather-siberia-temperatures-warm-100-degrees/ https://mashable.com/2018/01/30/wild-arctic-weather-siberia-... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russias-warm-winter-has-deprived-moscow-of-snow-caused-plants-to-prematurely-bloom-and-woken-bears-out-of-hibernation/2019/12/23/6ecf726c-2590-11ea-9cc9-e19cfbc87e51_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russias-warm-winter-has... https://www.newsweek.com/russian-lawmaker-blames-climate-weapon-warm-winter-1482371 https://www.newsweek.com/russian-lawmaker-blames-climate-wea... > "Alexei Zhuravlyov, a member of Russia's lower house of parliament, blamed a secret U.S. "climate weapon" for the temperature anomaly that has resulted in unusually warm temperatures this season. > The Moscow Times reported that Zhuravlyov appeared on the Govorit Moskva radio station on Tuesday, where he said that the United States was purposefully using technology to warm Russia in order to create a climate catastrophe to destabilize the country. "If [Russia's permafrost] melts now, it will be a disaster.... The Americans know this, and they're testing this weapon," he said." It's worth thinking about political instability as an inevitable follow-on to climate instability.

Reelin 7y ago
Ah yes, the 1990s Hummer - America's secret climate weapon. /s FFS, the fact that a significant number of people are probably ignorant enough to fall for such propaganda during an age in which Wikipedia and SciHub exist is a travesty.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Zhuravlyov's particular beliefs may be bullshit, but the geopolitical consequences of climate change are real. For all history, we've been used to treating the land as fixed, and borders as flexible. But the changing climate is about to make a lot of previously habitable land unlivable, and open up some previously uninhabitable areas. The countries of the world have drawn their borders on a map, but now it's the map itself that's about to change under them. Don't you think there will be pressure to readjust those borders?
alkonaut 7y ago
> No, not the entire winter. There are places that usually have quite obvious "winter" such as places in southern Sweden that this year went without any winter at all in the meteorological sense. Even being able to say that with certainty while its still Februrary is quite unusual, normally some of the coldest days are in februrary. I often skate on the lakes in Stockholm well into march.

Reelin 7y ago

Ah yes, the 1990s Hummer - America's secret climate weapon. /s FFS, the fact that a significant number of people are probably ignorant enough to fall for such propaganda during an age in which Wikipedia and SciHub exist is a travesty.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Zhuravlyov's particular beliefs may be bullshit, but the geopolitical consequences of climate change are real. For all history, we've been used to treating the land as fixed, and borders as flexible. But the changing climate is about to make a lot of previously habitable land unlivable, and open up some previously uninhabitable areas. The countries of the world have drawn their borders on a map, but now it's the map itself that's about to change under them. Don't you think there will be pressure to readjust those borders?

alkonaut 7y ago

> No, not the entire winter. There are places that usually have quite obvious "winter" such as places in southern Sweden that this year went without any winter at all in the meteorological sense. Even being able to say that with certainty while its still Februrary is quite unusual, normally some of the coldest days are in februrary. I often skate on the lakes in Stockholm well into march.