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How is climate change affecting you in your area?


We have catastrophic fires raging here in Australia.

The fear - my body won't stop quivering.

I've written a blog about it here on the Mug.

Posted - November 12, 2019

Responses


  • 11107
    Were getting less snow pack in the winter which means less fresh water in the summer. I also figure it's messing up the food chain around here some of  the birds that should be migrating in the winter are sticking around and non-native species of birds and insects are showing up. Cheers! 
      November 12, 2019 2:45 PM MST
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  • 4624
    Is there enough water for agriculture and city usage?
    Do you think it might continue drying into a drought?
    Or do you anticipate more dramatic swings from one extreme to another?
    I'm guessing you're somewhere in the north of the US, or perhaps in an alpine region.
      November 13, 2019 12:35 AM MST
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  • 11107
    I live on Vancouver Island in BC Canada. Were not in a drought but things are starting to happen like water levels in some creeks gets so low fish can't get up them to span and I'm hearing that a lot of wells in my area are drying up. I think things are going to get real bad real fast. Cheers!
      November 13, 2019 8:15 AM MST
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  • 10639
    Here in the western US our rain season is shrinking.  Where it used to come November-April, we now get the bulk in January - March ... and it's nowhere near the amounts it once was (frequent droughts).  Snow used to fall as low as the lower foothills each winter, now it's staying confined to the upper mountains.  Many of the birds that were prevalent when I was younger are gone, and the ones that used to stay in the lower elevations are moving up into higher elevations (especially crows).
      November 12, 2019 2:45 PM MST
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  • 4624
    Those are quite strong changes. Is it affecting crops and livelihoods?
      November 13, 2019 12:36 AM MST
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  • 10639
    I don't know.  In this particular area, it plays havoc with the lakes (recreation).
      November 13, 2019 9:17 AM MST
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  • 5391

    I live along the Gulf of Mexico in South Florida, the higher daily tides along our coastline are the most obvious consequences of the rising seas. 

    The water is warmer as well, which is causing a great die-off of the corals and fish species that typically flourish in and around the reefs. This generates a lot more Co2 and nitrogen from decomp left unfiltered in the water, which fed a large and nasty ”red tide” this past year. 

    We also have been seeing noticeably more strong hurricanes in the last few years; word is, this may be the new normal. 

    It both amuses and sickens me that there are people who still deny the reality, and essentially nothing is being done by govt to address it. Residue of continuing incompetent leadership and the moral bankruptcy that supports it.  
    Our descendants will judge this great failure harshly, and suffer because of it. 

      November 12, 2019 3:21 PM MST
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  • 2836
    Our seasons have been changing. Spring and Fall have been getting shorter and Winters & Summers have been getting longer.

    The winters have become much colder and the snow-pack is not nearly as it used to be. This has caused problems during the rest of the year such as drought conditions. In the summer, the rainfalls minimizing

      November 12, 2019 4:13 PM MST
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  • 4624
    Will it affect your goats' grazing and milk production?
    If drought reduces your grass, do you envisage the need to buy hay?
      November 13, 2019 1:56 AM MST
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  • 3719
    Hard to know in the British Isles because the climate is still fairly moderate anyway, and a full assessment really needs what we do not have: accurate records going back for at least a millennium! (Though we do know rather anecdotally that there were warmer times 2000 years ago, a very cold spell in the Middle Ages; and more accurately, another cold spell in the 19C.)

    Even so, the last few decades, which I admit is not a fair time-span, seem to have been marked by slightly milder Winters and a sort of blurring of the seasons.

    We seem also to be having more short-term bouts of (relatively) extreme weather, such as the last week's rains that have brought serious floods to parts of the English Midlands.

    A big problem is the fallibility of the human memory, which tends to focus on the unusual or bad without putting them in historical or chronological context or proportion. Hence my comment about proper records.
      November 12, 2019 4:17 PM MST
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  • 44608
    I am an observor of animal behaviour, and have seen several oddities. Hummingbirds leaving a month later than usual. Fireflies in October. Now we are experiencing record cold and snow throughout the US. These may be anomolies, but to me they are a trend. 
    Are the fires affecting you?
      November 12, 2019 5:46 PM MST
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  • 4624
    I worry quite a lot about the changes to insect and animal populations. Many extinctions have already happened here. Many others are now occurring. There are experts and activists doing their best to try to help, but the politicians are dragging their feet over admitting the seriousness of the problem. I'm pretty sure they know the science is solid, but their current policies are all aimed at cutting expenditures irrespective of the consequences (including basic public services for humans.)

    Is your house able to keep you warm enough in winter?
    Do you get cut off by snow? Can you get about with snow-chains on your tyres?
    Do you need to squirrel groceries in your pantry?
    Are you planning any adaptations to assist in survival or comfort?

    Yes, there's a major fire out of control only one hour's drive from where I live.

    Two showers fell at my place this afternoon. Very lucky. The Bureau of Meteorology had predicted only a 10% chance. My veggies, fruit trees, the grass and forest are looking much happier even with such a tiny dose.
    But because it's been so dry it will all evaporate very quickly. We are only at the beginning of a fire season that has started three months earlier than usual. We're in the midst of unprecedented drought. I'm very worried that things will get much worse here over the next two weeks and over the summer.
    I'm starting to prepare for emergencies - but it's a huge job. I won't be able to achieve it in only a fortnight.
      November 13, 2019 2:22 AM MST
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  • 44608
    We are safe and warm in our home. We have enough snowplows to clear the major streets within a day or two, but our side street never does. We had about 4 inches two days ago and is too cold now to melt. We had a record cold this morning at -13C. About 3/4 of the country is affected by a huge polar air mass.
      November 13, 2019 7:27 AM MST
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  • 16777
    Food is getting more expensive, as there is little feed for livestock and crop yields are down due to drought. The East coast is burning, South Australia isn't - yet.
    The government can take its thoughts and prayers, write them down on the coarsest sandpaper they can find, fold it down until it's all corners and jam them firmly up their collective a$$. Action is needed, not platitudes.
    Did you know that the New South Wales state government actually SLASHED funding to firefighting services, and to the Parks and Wildlife Service that conducts fuel load reduction burn-offs in winter? True. There wasn't sufficient funds to conduct those burns, and now we are seeing the results. This post was edited by Slartibartfast at November 13, 2019 7:27 AM MST
      November 13, 2019 1:22 AM MST
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  • 4624
    Yes. :(
    I watched the speeches given by our most senior firefighters, national parks managers, a professor of pyro-geology, and an Aboriginal who has spent his life learning the traditional Aboriginal practices in all areas of the outback.
    There's no question that the LNP has been progressively slashing funding to hazard-reduction, infrastructure, equipment and research.
    But now the real costs are coming back to bite them in their a$$es. They will pay a high political price because even though the tragedies could have been much worse, they could also have been at least ten times less severe. Morrison was three days too late bringing in the help of the army.

    Barnaby and the NLP are busy claiming its not climate change, just normal variability. But their constituents of their electorates don't agree. All of us know that 1ºC higher added to the El Niño in the Indian Ocean equals the most severe drought on record. And these fires could not have happened without the drought.

    And while all of this is going on, we've already lost 90% of the Great Barrier Reef and blooms (plagues) of jellyfish are attacking the marine ecologies - all due to the combination of warming oceans.
      November 13, 2019 2:09 AM MST
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  • 2706
    I live in Michigan and the climate changes here all the time. We have Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter just like most other states do. Of course, the weather is affected by the Great Lakes but that's natural. Some Winters we get a lot of snow, some we don't. Some Summers get quite hot, some don't. It goes in cycles. It's the nature of things. It's normal. Now if you are referring to "global-warming", I have to say, I personally believe that to be a hoax, a scam, a scare tactic. The facts refuting global-warming are there for anyone to research if they are so inclined. Yes, I have researched it. :)
      November 13, 2019 2:45 AM MST
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  • 16777
    So what is your degree? Armchair research is bullsh**, the scientists whose research I believe have spent their entire lives on it. Weather and climate are NOT the same thing, and globally 8 of the last 10 years have been the hottest since records began. Glaciers are melting. The polar ice caps are thinning.
    The last time this happened was approx 600mya at the end of the Permian, and it occurred over tens of thousands of years - half a continent experienced constant volcanic eruptions, it's why Siberia is still flat. Temperatures skyrocketed and 95% of all life on Earth disappeared. This time the CO2 spike has happened in a mere 200 years, an eyeblink in terms of geological time. The only factor that can possibly have caused such a cataclysm is ... us.
      November 13, 2019 3:17 AM MST
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  • Eh,  the biggest noticeable change is the snow. It used to be from about now until April there was a decent snow pack.  Nowadays we tend to get more inches over the season, but it dumps, then melts, then dumps, then melts, etc ,etc.  Might get more snow, but it doesn't last on the ground like it used to. Winter temps bounce between more extremes 


    Also, we get way, way, way more rain in the spring and way, way, way less rain in the mid and late summer.
      November 13, 2019 6:30 AM MST
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  • 2836
    "way, way, way less rain in the mid and late summer."

    I hear you on that. I have a dug well. The end of August and beginning of September, I usually have to cart water in 
     
      November 13, 2019 7:31 AM MST
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  • 3523
    We had what should have been called a category 6 hurricane 100 miles offshore from our house.  Did you see those pictures of the Abacos in the Bahamas?  That could have been us and I don't have home owner's insurance.  My other house is my insurance against homelessness. 
      November 13, 2019 10:22 PM MST
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  • 3719
    This has made me think  of something I observed in a series of about 10 trips to Norway, spread over 20 - 30 years, with the last in 2013.

    Until the direct ferry service from England to Norway stopped c.2010, our route North from Bergen took us along Sognfjord then up and over the Turtagro pass which as I recall, lies at about 1500m altitude, in the Jotunheimen range. (Sorry - I don't think I can use here, the correct letters for one or two of the vowels.)

    That pass used to be on the snow-line, and was usually closed in Winter. Spring snow-ploughing left road-side snow-cliffs perhaps 3m high, with dirt-layers counting years. In the last few years of our visits these had gone; the numerous, small roadside lakes and pools no longer had ice-floes; and the snow-fields' lower edges were now significantly higher up the slopes.
     
      November 20, 2019 12:16 PM MST
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  • 1893
    Tjhe glaciers are retreating, the summers are getting hotter, and whole lot of other stuff.

    1.  The Donau (Danube) was so low a couple of summers back, you could walk out to Shipwrecks from WW1 around Belgrade
    2.  Where thre used to be Ice you are now finding the remnants of WW1 in the Alps on the Italian Border including human remains
    3.  Forest growth is changing
    4.  People are now starting to install A/C units because the 2-3 hot Summer days are now 30-40
    5.  Droughts are affecting the Vineyards around my house

    Humorous aside, the Resident Labradors really like bags of Ice in their summer wading pool
      November 20, 2019 9:44 PM MST
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  • 604
    EGADS....climate change my ass...

    OF COURSE IT'S CHANGING...has been since the day it was created........

    what also affects our climate is the earth's tilted axis and its relation to the sun and also SUNSPOTS are very important.
    when there are fewer sunspots, as there have been recently, our weather gets nasty.......when there are more, it's a lot better.  WHY? I have no idea.

    but it's just a cyclical thing......everything is cycles..

    as for melting glaciers, etc.,  astronomers tell us that Mars has polar ice caps, you know, like our north and south poles...and that THEY MELT AND THEN RETURN FROM TIME TO TIME....

    SEE?????????

    so let's not get all in an uproar over a NATURALLY-OCCURING CYCLICAL PHENOMONON!!!!

    OK?????????????

    GEEEEEEEZE!!!!!!

    :-D



    :)
      November 21, 2019 7:43 AM MST
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  • 3719
    The "uproar" is because the changes are greater and faster than anyone had bargained for, and are thought at least partly man-made.

    Now, how much is entirely natural and how much is induced by human activities - as by current orthodoxy - will remain to be seen. However, the natural climate changes are very slow in human terms; and our prehistoric ancestors had no problem living though the present Ice Age's last warm then cold periods, and consequent high then low sea-levels. There were not  many of them compared to our population, they had far simpler ways of life, and they simply moved to wherever suited them.

    We are living in either an interglacial or the thawing from the end of the Ice Age generally. In either case the warming and the resulting marine transgression should now be very slow; though anyway is not regular. Of these the eventual effects of the second - the end of the complete Ice Age - would be far, far worse than the former, and than what's imagined now. In geological history, the Earth's climate overall is relatively cool now - but I do stress that is geological time-spans... though geology has not stopped!

    If natural changes are the bulk of what's happening now, we can do nothing about it except adapt; somehow, with a vast  population and inextricable tangling of so many nations and societies all demanding more and more of the planet's finite, natural resources.

    If though the present rate of change is mainly anthropogenic - as feared - then we might be able to at least stave off the worst effects by minimising our influences. It might still only buy time though.

    Whether it will all work is another matter, but the consensus is that doing nothing would be worse still.

      
     
      November 24, 2019 8:28 AM MST
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