Anthropogenic Climate Change

You'd be surprised. Iowa's longitude is around the same as Italy over in Europe, for context.

And Iowa has hit 118 degrees in the past. It was a freak heatwave, but one of the problems of climate change is an increase in freak weather occurrences and it means that Iowa is fully capable of achieving extended periods of heat in the 80s.

It's very common during summer for Montreal to get heatwaves that put the temperatures at over 35°C for extended periods of time.

Doesn't Iowa have the same climate classification as the southern part of Romania and northern Japan? Not to say that those freak heatwaves can't happen though given those news of snow in Texas not so long ago.

Far inland regions in the northern hemisphere generally fall into the "continental" climates, meaning that they experience a wider range of temperatures because of a lack of moderation via heat exchange with nearby warm seas. I think that the US Midwest falls on the more moderate end of that spectrum, though.

A big chunk of the Midwest is moderated by the Great Lakes. They can only do so much though.

Edited by Zendervai on Jun 12th 2022 at 10:53:29 AM

It is very much possible for a local climate to have both extremely hot summers and extremely cold winters. A continental climate tends to allow for that because it doesn't have the moderating effect of the ocean.

And just because there was a freak snowstorm in Texas does not mean that Texas is not a very hot place in summer, nor that climate change is not so bad after all. That is the fallacy of thinking climate change means it will be hot all the time, and also the fallacy of thinking very cold winters can't happen any more under climate change. They just happen less often.

Also, under some circumstances, cold winters can become more common thanks to climate change, thanks to the polar vortex weakening due to warming up of the arctic.

Climate is complicated, and so is the weather, and it can do very unexpected things sometimes.

Edited by Redmess on Jun 12th 2022 at 8:29:13 PM

Hell it's the reason we call it climate change nowadays instead of just global warming. And the reason we're shifting to climate crisis nowadays cause clearly those previous two terms just don't work for some people.

The reason we call it climate change now is because that tested as less scary with focus groups during the "denial" phase.

Climate change is arguably more overall descriptive of the short term effects, but on average the planet is getting hotter, so global warming is also correct.

Atmospheric humidity is much lower in continental climates and that makes a difference - hot but dry air still allows the human body to cool effectively, the concern about India and the Persian Gulf is hot and humid air.

NVM.

Edited by CookingCat on Jun 13th 2022 at 5:57:51 AM

I wonder what are Kansas' stances on green energy amd combating global warming.

This could be the coolest summer of the rest of your life. Summer started with an oppressive heat wave. Get used to it.

While the article title and opener are very likely doomsaying and sensationalism, it does bring up the increasing frequency, duration, season and intensity of heatwaves.

Edited by CookingCat on Jun 22nd 2022 at 4:56:21 AM

Climate Doomerism is honestly getting out of control, Not gonna lie.

"Climate Doomerism", like the climate itself, is predicted to become steadily worse.

It's kind of the inevitable result when we see the situation getting worse and no real attempt to make things better.

It’s very hard to be optimistic when we keep blowing past every deadline and the people in charge don’t even seem to notice.

Like, what am I supposed to do? The main culprits operate on a massive global scale. Am I supposed to run for office here in Canada and then have a platform of pushing back against those people and hope to god that my multi-fucking-decade plan of getting to a place of real power actually works and that Canada can put any meaningful pressure on the US?

We don’t have multiple decades to wait for the boomers to die off. And our most effective climate measure in the past few years was super fucking ableist and did nothing in the grand scheme of things. (The straw bans. Turns out that it’s possible to be deathly allergic to the materials used in a lot of the biodegradable straws and a lot of disabled people actually seriously need plastic straws for several reasons. We should have been focusing on the fishing nets that get cut loose)

An explanation about why the straw ban wasn’t actually a good thing.

Edited by Zendervai on Jun 22nd 2022 at 11:43:00 AM

The straw ban was still needed, though. Just because some people really need them or allergic doesn't mean "lets just give up on straws and keep using plastic" is the right answer. The right answer is finding better alternatives for those who need them.

I'm all for fighting ableism, obviously, but this is just using the spectre of ableism to enable defeatism.

Well, I certainly don't see the drinking straw industry moving towards producing those hypothetical better alternatives, but you can get back to the thread on that when they do.

Well, how else do you expect people to feel?

There's "defeatism" because, to be frank, the general impression is that politicians/governments in general don't care about global warming and that the media enables that continued lack of care through not covering it.

There's a NYT story that I'll find and link later about how a climate activist self-immolated himself on the steps of the Supreme Court in April, and then no one really cared. It was just "this thing happened, I guess". I don't even think the White House made a statement.

But like. A man self-immolated on the steps of the foremost judicial body in the country to bring attention to global warming and no one cared. I think that speaks volumes about the political attitude towards it, at least in the US.

The straw ban was almost aggressively pointless. Straws are such a non-issue compared to even other consumer products designed to become litter that it really read like "shut up millennials and gen z who are going to see this apocalyptic event in their lifetimes, who's quality of life is already worse than previous generations, we took a single action, isn't that enough? If it inconveniences you, good, serves you right for making me do anything"

Meanwhile, we've got borderline apocalyptic scenarios on the horizon, and far too little is being done. Places are running out of water. Within my lifetime, I have seen the changes. It used to rain for months without stopping in this temperate rainforest. Now we're lucky if it rains for more than a week. The fire season is getting significantly worse on average. A town near me has been severely damaged by fire twice in the last fifteen years, after being mostly fine for decades before. Nearly every summer sets new record temperatures, each year more places flood, more places run out of water.

And the solution we're offered? "nah we banned plastic straws we've solved microplastics and climate change all at once." Never mind that second-generation microplastics are mostly from abandoned industrial fishing nets, never mind that the vast majority of microplastics period are textile factory runoff. We banned straws! The thing which contributed a tiny fraction of a percent to the microplastic problem and virtually none to any other problem! All praise, for the day is surely saved now!

There are way better options to fix the problem which would have much larger impacts on fixing the problem while not harming consumers. But we banned straws.

Where else would we discuss them?

Edited by Florien on Jun 23rd 2022 at 2:01:56 AM

Straw bans have little to do with climate change mitigation and I don't see why folks are discussing them here.

I very distinctly remember it being framed as a climate change mitigation measure. It isn’t, for reasons of being effectively useless and having no meaningful impact on the amount of plastic produced or discarded, but it is relevant because it was sold as a way to help.

And it ran into something that’s been noted with stuff around, say, donation. A lot of people will do a minor thing they think is good and then just kinda…not do anything else because they assumed the small good thing was good enough. Like, someone makes a $2 donation at the grocery store, they might not make a larger donation they would have otherwise done elsewhere because their brain doesn’t really see the difference in scale.

It matters and is relevant because the straw ban was a worthless measure that served as an incredibly effective distraction that actively hurt a marginalized community, had no negative impact on the oil industry, and benefited nothing, but it made a lot of people think that big steps are being made.

And in terms of alternatives for disabled people: can you think of any that have been produced? At all? Or is it like the vast majority of times it’s been decided the best choice is to fuck over disabled people for no reason where the instant the problem is viewed as being solved, everyone stops caring and no one gives a shit that they just made things even harder on disabled people?

Seems like people are putting undue emphasis on a minor aspect of the problem, then - plastic straws are mainly a pollution issue and not a climate change one.

Yes, because of how it was sold to them. “It helps the environment!” Is extremely easy to misconstrue as meaning that it’s an anti-climate change measure. And that was the point.

You can buy metal straws. I have a set in my kitchen drawer. Allergy problem solved.

You should really watch that video I shared.

Did you know people can be allergic to metal? It's a real thing and a lot more common than you'd expect. Metal straws are also incredibly dangerous for people with epilepsy or other seizure disorders. Do you really think it's safe to have a metal straw in your mouth when your jaw slams shut with the entire force of your jaw muscles?

Instead of being really condescending and dismissive of disabled people, actually listen and find out what the actual arguments are.

Plastic straws are hypoallergenic, easily positionable (bendy straws primarily, nothing else works like they do, even the silicone ones aren't great for that), don't require sanitization because they're single use, aren't a risk for people with seizure disorders, are safe for hot drinks, don't dissolve if left in a liquid for too long and are significantly less of a choking hazard than any hard straw varieties.

Name a single alternative that hits every single one of those criteria. They're also a ridiculously tiny fraction of the amount of plastic waste. So, in effect, society just kind of decided to royally fuck over a ton of disabled people to accomplish nothing but a moment of feeling good.

This is why I have no hope for fixing climate change. Whenever bandwagoning for something framed as helping with climate change happens, it's almost always something inconsequential, because the oil industry will interfere with anything substantial and because there's zero will to do anything major in the political sphere, and when the worthless thing everyone's bandwagoning about is actively harmful to a marginalized minority, no one cares and it makes some people campaign harder. Because there's this horrible and pervasive thing about how disabled people deserve to be punished because if they didn't deserve it, why would they be disabled?

Edited by Zendervai on Jun 23rd 2022 at 8:06:46 AM