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Actually these cliches seem only to confirm these personal observations, why else would people hold on to them? And the figure you mention and the industrial re
by tartoran 6y ago
Actually these cliches seem only to confirm these personal observations, why else would people hold on to them? And the figure you mention and the industrial revolution seem to coincide.
I too remember playing in a few feet of snow only to barely reach below freezing point a few times a winter. The last couple of winters were actually barren of any snow where I live
- Udik 6y agoThe cliches about summer and winter being "always exceptional" are from the 1870s. The effects of climate change surely weren't visible then (though I believe the climate was still warming from the "little ice age"). What these cliches suggest to me is that there is a human tendency to either mis-remember the climate of our youth or to misjudge the exceptionality of the current weather (similar somehow to how old people tend to grumble about the "new generations" and how they'll ruin everything- and it's been like that for millennia). Or alternatively, that weather patterns always change, slowly enough to be assumed as stable, but still quickly enough to be noticeable on a long human timescale. In either case, the fact that remarks on the exceptionality of the weather and its difference from the past existed before any CO2 - induced climate change was happening, says that we cannot rely on that type of impression to confirm the scientific measurements about the climate. It's strange we think otherwise, because one of the fundamental tenets of science is that subjective observation is biased and unreliable, and rigorous measures need to be taken to remove that subjective bias from observation.