Climate Change

[Roranora]

generally the American West will be increasingly arid

[dasva]

Middle of February and we have barely gotten any rain this year and it is about 82 degrees outside. By this time last year we had record breaking rainfall that destroyed the roads and knocked down a bridge and created one of the largest landslides in California recorded history.

Stupid rollercoaster weather will only get worse. I know weather vs. climate but mostly I am observing anecdotally the extreme swings from one year to the next and also since I was a kid when we didn't typically see swings like this. The entire west coast is super dry again. I hope it doesn't last as long this time.

idk about what part of California you in but my part up in the bay area has kind of been like that for as long as I remember. Like literally the year we moved down here they had water conservation ordinances and then historic flooding for next couple of years. It's very cyclical just often there is a bit of break between. Like we were mostly fine after mid/late 90s till early 2010s. Similarly as far as I can tell with the flooding in the 80s but wasn't really around then. Having hard time finding the good sites that kept up to date rainfalls and averages but from what I can tell we are only a bit below average (though most years we are either below or way above lol) actually rained just last week. We were seriously worried it might effect my weekend plans... and first day was pretty chilly but it got better. Just the next town over got hail and I'm told snow though I'm dubious of that actually falling in town. They probably meant the hills around town

[6souls]

Middle of February

Posting from the future? It's only the 2nd here.

[zoobernut]

Posting from the future? It's only the 2nd here.

What do you want from me I have a 13 month old and an almost 6 year old my brain is fried who are both sick with colds right now. Close enough...

We do have extreme years rain wise but it was never quite this swingy that I can remember. Even in the quiet years with no flooding we would get substantial rain. I am in the central coast area with a lot of mountains behind me. It has just been so dry and warm during the off years now it is surprising.

[dasva]

It's a huge state so pretty varied weather. It's swung a 2-3 times here in my lifetime before now. Though from what I recall the bigger swing is on the other end going from drought to flood like it was this time. I know socal is hurting for rain because when isn't it lol. But wasn't aware other areas didn't get much. As far as I can tell coastal norcal is mostly a semi normal maybe a little light non flood year. Kind of part of why we have so many reservoirs and huge aqueduct system. That and socal always wanted to steal the water up north or to the east where no one lives anyways lol

[thetruepandagod]

January has been some mighty fine surf weather, i'm sure summer will be a hellish heatstroke landscape.

[zoobernut]

It's a huge state so pretty varied weather. It's swung a 2-3 times here in my lifetime before now. Though from what I recall the bigger swing is on the other end going from drought to flood like it was this time. I know socal is hurting for rain because when isn't it lol. But wasn't aware other areas didn't get much. As far as I can tell coastal norcal is mostly a semi normal maybe a little light non flood year. Kind of part of why we have so many reservoirs and huge aqueduct system. That and socal always wanted to steal the water up north or to the east where no one lives anyways lol

If I am recalling this correctly when I was a kid the small portion of the coast I live on saw an average of 60 inches of rain per year '80-'90's. If you take the average starting in 2004 or '05 till now it is closer to 20-30 inches per year average now. Last year we saw just over 90 inches of rain in a two month period.

[Byrthnoth]

As sad as the polar bear story is, this is hilarious. You can imagine a hungry bear throwing ice at seals cause fuck it, what they're doing now isn't working so let's try to hit it with something instead lol.

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This basically would imply that the polar bear use tools (and, as you posed it, think.) That would make them some of the smartest non-human animals on the planet.

[dasva]

If I am recalling this correctly when I was a kid the small portion of the coast I live on saw an average of 60 inches of rain per year '80-'90's. If you take the average starting in 2004 or '05 till now it is closer to 20-30 inches per year average now. Last year we saw just over 90 inches of rain in a two month period.

Your area sounds super weird or maybe a little off on the numbers. Like here early and late 80s we had some decent floods though overall yearly rainfall wasn't too crazy. Then had a really dry for a few years. Then flooding early to mid 90s. Then closer to normal average of ~31 I think and more or less stayed around there till I moved away in 2003. No idea what it was for awhile but came back in 2010 and was drought time with us getting like 20 or less until a couple years ago.

Last year we hit and slightly beat our record of 58 in for the year and people were still worried the drought wasn't over. Like no shit newspapers and channels everywhere up until I want to say feb/march were like yeah this rain is nice but it doesn't mean we are fine. They kind of stopped saying that when dams started overflowing lol. Tried looking up some coastal central data but hardly anyone keeps records for their city. Found some noaa but it's not everywhere and highest I could find Big Sur at 77 but all the rest in the central coast region are sub 40. Most are showing only about 30% of what they'd have on average by this time in the water year though. So yeah what a diff between even the south end of norcal and central and sounds like you guys might be going into another drought

Edit: I'm gunna level and say that 90 in 2 months doesn't even sound possible. Like I'm having a hard time finding yearly records that high forget 2 month. Like the biggest 2 months of rain I can find from last rain year for central coast is jan and feb and big sur was only 58 and the next highest is santa cruz at 28. Seems like you probably multiplied by 3

[dasva]

This basically would imply that the polar bear use tools (and, as you posed it, think.) That would make them some of the smartest non-human animals on the planet.

But are they smart and bros like crows?

[Salodin]

This basically would imply that the polar bear use tools (and, as you posed it, think.) That would make them some of the smartest non-human animals on the planet.

It was a joke but they have been seen frustrated at a failed catch before. Pretty sure I read that here actually

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[Byrthnoth]

Bears are not humans, but the degree to which animals experience the world similarly to us is up for debate.

Many mammals have a lot of the same brain areas associated with emotions that are activated approximately when we think they should be for emotions. Neuroscientists will tell you that there is no evidence that animals think, but they also work in a field that depends on the fact that mouse nervous systems are close enough to humans that findings will generalize between them. The NIH isn't funding anti-anxiety medication studies in mice because it wants to address mouse anxiety.

I don't know, but it is an interesting conflict within the field that no one seemed to acknowledge.

[jacobs67]

There's no evidence that you or any other human thinks either so that doesn't say much. You could all be philosophical zombies for all I know

[Byrthnoth]

That is fundamentally the problem with behaviorists/ethologists, yes.

Regardless the emotional complexity of polar bears, though, we should probably try to save them because they are goofy ice tossers.

[6souls]

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...-more-flooding

Coastal flooding predicted to become an almost weekly event.

In fact even without a storm, high tides already are flooding cities like Miami and Norfolk, Va. And now NOAA's latest calculations portray a future where this kind of "sunny day" flooding will become a lot more frequent.

NOAA's calculations of future high tides assumes two "intermediate" forecasts of how much sea level will rise — from one and a half feet to three feet by 2100. It by no means assumes some of the more severe scenarios should the ice sheets in Greenland or the Antarctic melt. Even with intermediate rise, by 2050 cities on the Atlantic would see high tides flooding the streets 25 to 130 times a year. By 2100, it could happen almost every day. These frequencies will be influenced by weather patterns like El Nino and prevailing winds, but over time they'll occur more often from rising tides alone as sea level gets higher.

NOAA has also found the rate of increase in tidal flooding is accelerating in about a third of the places they've tracked. "The problem is going to become chronic rather quickly," says Sweet. "It's not going to be a slow, gradual change."

Well over 100 military installations that are close to coastlines have reported flooding recently. According to a report from the Center for Climate and Security (which Phillips helped write), tidal flooding will increasingly threaten equipment, fuel depots, ammunition warehouses, housing and docks. Now, Phillips says, these new tidal flooding numbers from NOAA lay out a difficult future for the Navy, which can't just retreat from coastlines. "Yet another report that sea level rise is accelerating [with] recurrent flooding just makes the sense of urgency that much more acute," she says.

[Buffy]

It's fine, Norfolk's beaches are shit.


Virginia Beach's beaches on the other hand have some nice spots.

[archibaldcrane]

lol, apparently my nuclear peeps got some of their points of view into the latest episode of Madam Secretary - the dialogue is like a play by play explanation of why nuclear power is necessary for preventing climate change, how oil and gas interests are happy to prop up wind and solar as long as they push out nuclear, how irrational and unfounded fears of meltdowns are, etc. etc.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michael.../#7c5202bf171a

[TsingTao]

Imagine if we hadn't abandoned Thorium reactors in the 60s...of if we actually got smart and started down that road today.

Neat article though. I don't watch the show, but I like the dialogue from that episode.

[Zetanio]

The fundamental lack of understanding of nuclear power is staggering.

[Fiye]

Its almost like nuclear power is a complicated thing and that fear mongering campaigns were a massive success.