5 ms·
I guess the snarkers will always regale us with their snide dismissal, but as someone who has lived in one place for going on a half-century, I witness the chan
by moistly 4y ago
I guess the snarkers will always regale us with their snide dismissal, but as someone who has lived in one place for going on a half-century, I witness the change: winters had feet of snow and now have inches. Temperatures drops are harder, temperature highs have gone from 40C to nearly 50, which is insane. Rainfall patterns have changed markedly, and they’re interfacing with snowmelt and now flood events happen like never before. Because of that, forest fires, too, have gone nuts, because the summers now dry out to an extreme.
In this area we have indigenous families that have histories that go back for many hundreds and even thousands of years. I live in an area that had been idyllic for as long as any family can remember, a claim backed by geo/biological evidence. There is no record of the area climate behaving like this. The change has been abrupt and extreme and, frankly, dangerous.
- silisili 4y agoI move a lot to different cities, but was able to come to a similar conclusion in central FL in that every house older than 1980 or so had a wood burning fireplace. The thought was so gross to me even seeing them...it rarely got cold enough to even warrant heat. Of course, it was very rare in new builds, and even then usually just the decorative kind.
- nkozyra 4y agoNot to mention the idea that anyone could live in Florida before air conditioning.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoPretty soon, ie now in Pakistan and India, the wet bulb temperature, a measure of realtime humidity and temperature, will regularly exceed 120 degrees, at which point it becomes too hot for the human body to physically cool itself with sweat. Our climate is changed and changing now. It was cooler in Florida 10-20 years ago, let alone centuries ago. It's hotter now. When hundreds of millions are starving, flooded, overheated, dried out, or otherwise displaced, how do you think life will be going for those without fucking air conditioning.
- nkozyra 4y agoI grew up in Florida and the daytime temperatures were tolerable from early October to June. The data is readily available and it is hotter and more humid for far more of the year than when I was a kid. Change that fast - regardless of cause - is alarming.
- rdubs333 4y agoParts in the Midwest USA are reaching max wet bulb also.
- autoexec 4y ago> t every house older than 1980 or so had a wood burning fireplace. The thought was so gross to me even seeing them Wait, wood-burning fireplaces are gross? Do you mean aesthetically or conceptually? I doubt too many in Florida depend on them for heat like they might have in past decades, but can't fireplaces still be enjoyed for what they are? Cozy to sit near, fun to watch/cook over, great for incinerating incriminating documents, etc. As long as the nights/winters get cool enough they're still nice for some things.
- silisili 4y agoAh sorry, I meant gross as is in it's usually 90 and humid and you're already sweating looking at houses, then the idea of more heat makes you ill(at the time). In that area, it would very rarely drop below 60 in waking hours, even in the winter. I'm guessing it used to get a bit colder 40 years ago. It also makes me wonder about climate zones, as you're not supposed to be able to grow coconut palms there, but there were a healthy amount thriving...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kortilla 4y ago> In this area we have indigenous families that have histories that go back for many hundreds and even thousands of years. Where is that? Thousands of years is well beyond the histories of any North American tribes.
- moistly 4y agoDude, the West Coast has been settled for some 30000 years. People have lived in this particular interior valley for at least 3000 years. You find it hard to believe that the Interior Salish peoples don’t have a history?
- kortilla 4y agoWith no evidence, why do you assume their civilization was stable enough to carry a cohesive history? No writing system + inter-tribal conflicts makes it difficult for all but a few outlandish stories to make it more than a couple hundred years.
- ceejayoz 4y agohttps://www.nps.gov/subjects/volcanoes/traditional-knowledge-of-prehistoric-eruptions.htm https://www.nps.gov/subjects/volcanoes/traditional-knowledge... > Traditional knowledge that relates to prehistoric eruptions is part of the oral history of many Native American tribes. This knowledge even extends back to volcanic activity that occurred thousands of years in the past. > Oral traditions of the Klamath tribes and Umpqua people indicate that people witnessed the eruption of Mount Mazama 7,700 years ago. Artifacts have also been found underneath the Mazama ash layer.
- ummonk 4y agoYeah but it’s kind of ridiculous for stories of ancient volcanic eruptions to be described as “idyllic”.
- WaxedChewbacca 4y ago
- Pxtl 4y agoI've lived in the same city in the same neighborhood in Southern Ontario for my whole life. We used to have a light dusting of snow on Halloween every year like clockwork. It sucked but it's long gone and now Halloween reminds me every year of how the world has changed. The wind is new. The mornings where every lawn is covered in branches. That never happened when I was a kid. And the sudden torrential tropical-storm like downpours that vanish as quickly as they come. This has real impact on our electrical system -- the power's been out for over a week for folks in Ottawa.
- refurb 4y agoHuman memories suck. I have family who every time it snows say “i can’t remember the last time it snowed this much!”, then you look up weather records and it snowed more 3 years ago.
- nkozyra 4y agoWhich is why it's good we have recorded data to refute or support our memories.
- AlotOfReading 4y agoIt's mainly a problem for industrialized westerners. Go ask a herdsmen that spends all year outside and they'll have a fairly good memory for extreme weather events in the same way that you and I remember what the social climate of 2008 was like. Anthropologists and biologists commonly track changes in floral/faunal ranges and ecosystems by asking the people who observe them daily.
- refurb 4y agoNo, human memories are just generally pretty crappy and selective, at least compared to hard data.
- titzer 4y agoThey aren't worthless though. The current over-reliance on super-human storage systems coupled with a nasty dopamine loop that doesn't reward good memories really distorted our perceptions of what people can and should remember. Entire oral histories have been passed down centuries because brains are pretty big.
- maybelsyrup 4y ago
- labster 4y ago