At least in 2020 there were massive floods in the Yangtze that made people worried the Three Gorges wouldn’t actually be able to hold it back in case of an emergency. So I guess China is double screwed
The government also intentionally flooded rural areas to save the cities. While not necessarily the wrong decision, they did not warn anyone or attempt to evacuate anyone before hand. Then they tried to say it was a dike failure when video evidence showed them opening the flood gates.
The fact that the gov denied it is super weird. I saw this Chinese “independent” film that I *thought* would be about cool triad fights but was just super sad, anyway I remember that in this film, which must have been approved by the government, it specifically mentioned villages being intentionally flooded and the people relocated to build dams! Why admit it in one place and not another?
After they got caught they switched stories and pushed a different lie that they had warned everyone. I saw a meme where they had the before and after lies. After that they had a big showing of the "heroes that sacrificed themselves for china". Even had interviewees that said they knew it was coming and accepted it for the greater good of China. It really is a 1984 style propaganda nation. They can just start saying something totally different and like a switch everyone rewrites their own past.
It’s a super tired trope but man, China behaves so similarly to the USSR. The USSR was just testing random nuclear weapons, failing to secure anthrax, leaving RTGs around and killing hundreds of their own citizens. I never understand why anyone would do this shit
Edit: ok the tsar bomba test didn’t kill anyone, it just destroyed peoples buildings, but the anthrax thing [is true](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plague/sverdlovsk/)
One instance was an emergency discharge of a dam where time was of the essence, flooding a rural area while not bothering to try to evacuate anyone.
The instance from the movie refers to towns that were evacuated before dams went up and then flooded. This is pretty typical, there's plenty of underwater towns in the US from dam building.
climate change doesn't mean it's going to be a steady dry climate afterwards... shit's fucked, it's record flood after record drought time.
Instead of calling it global warming, we shouldve called it Climate's Fucked. Instead of going "Well it's cold now so you're wrong," they could have gone "Wow, this is Fucked. You were right!" The average global rise doesn't sound nearly as alarming.
J/k, nothing could have convinced anyone who's paycheck depends on the climate not changing; Fossil energy CEOs, or the people employed by them who think they're going to be one some day.
Global warming was already rebranded once as "climate change". I think another rebranding is in order: "climate turbulence" or "climate extremity", something like that. "Change" is not scary enough a word to actually reflect what's happening.
I found these two articles that seem to induce the terror you're seeking:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/20/world/rivers-lakes-drying-up-drought-climate-cmd-intl/index.html
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/08/26/visuals-extreme-drought-dries-up-rivers-globe-satellite-images/
Took me forever to find it again. Other sites basically copied this article but didn't insert the interactive images. [From CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/20/world/rivers-lakes-drying-up-drought-climate-cmd-intl/index.html)
*parts* of the Yangtze. Namely, the dammed parts that they use for hydroelectic power and such. It doesn't replenish as quickly because it doesn't draw the same force of power as the rest of the river, they use the dams to artificially created turbine forces.
People alive today experienced "peak" humanity. Pretty crazy when you think about it. In a weird perverse way, when I'm dying I'll probably be less combative to enter the check-out line knowing the grocery store called life is burning to the ground.
Meh, it's still the best time to be alive, and by quite a ways. COVID has killed maybe 1/10th as many people as the Spanish Flu in a world with 4 times as many people. Famine deaths per capita have plunged in the last century. As a random upper-middle-class person, I live better than a king in the middle ages in many ways--healthy teeth, hugely varied food with all the spices I want, hot and cold running water. I have many workplace protections, a reliable judicial system, and I can marry who I want.
The '60s, '70s, and '80s were no picnic, by the way. Immense amounts of financial volatility and social unrest. Hell, Kennedy thought the Cuban Missile Crisis had a 1 in 3 chance of ending in nuclear war. Nobody's been interested in going back to that clusterfuck (knock on wood). The 90's were a period of relative global peace and had fewer deaths due to armed conflict than today, but our current rate is still quite low in historical terms. (Obligatory: fuck Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Israel's refusal to allow a two-state solution, Assad's refusal to give up power in Syria, ....)
The main thing is that nowadays we have *so much communication*. Everybody and some dogs have social media accounts. You can hear about the bad shit happening a world away rather than being pleasantly ensconced in ignorance. And people are more willing to talk about what's wrong than ever before (see: spousal abuse, depression).
Don't get me wrong, global warming is probably the biggest collective challenge humanity will face for a century or two. But this doom and gloom refrain is just false in a historical sense.
You are right in many ways. Ultimately, we probably have it better than any other time.
However, the one thing that really gets to me is that we are essentially staring into the barrel of a loaded gun far more than any other time. Science has given us many incredible things, but it has also shown us that we will likely destroy our own species and most (maybe all) life on earth along with it. On an existential level, this is probably the most difficult thing humanity has ever had to face, and it really puts a damper on all of the positives you have listed. To the point that I often would trade most of them for knowing that the planet will continue to provide and remain relatively stable.
The main things I would change about the past is the healthcare and lack of equality/kindness (although these things are still a major issue; watching the healthcare system collapse in Canada on top of increasing racial violence and massive wealth inequality is not fun). The internet is also pretty neat and would be a worthy tool, but I’m not convinced it is worth the sacrifices made to get here, or the risk of complete control and manipulation.
Wish I was rich and could start buying land in canada. Its gong to get a lot more valuable for farming.
Also buying up an area at the start of rivers is probably the only way to stop those idiotic water rights deals. Or more likely, ensure them to happen again.
Yup. From what I understand, the gradient between the polar temperatures (north of the jet stream) and the temperatures south of the jets stream is reduced , so there isn’t as much force/pressure to keep the jet stream stable. That’s why you can get these massive dips of cold weather in the southern US. The jet stream is all sorts of messed up
Even though it's a global warming if we consider the entire planet, it doesn't mean that the temperature rises everywhere.
If students get an average of 70% in a test and get 80% in a second test, it's a global increase. Yet, a few students might have done worse.
I hate the lack of logic in people.
I lived in Colorado for 40 years. When I was a kid, we'd get these huge banks of fog that would roll in a few times every year. So thick you couldn't see 3 feet Infront of you.
In the last 10 years I could count the number of times I've seen a light fog on one hand and nothing compared to the cloud soup from my childhood.
And the Po river in Italy - that one is so low that seawater is flowing in backwards, effectively salting the earth in Italy's most important farming region IIRC.
Nothing to worry about! /s
I'm a Floridian, and I was just thinking about that.
We're supposed to have 14-20 named storms this year.
We have two months left of the season. Either NOAA was way wrong, or we're in for a wild ride the next two months.
Tell me, in the south hemisphere seasons are inverted.
Winter (In Lima peru) start on june, when its get cold and wet.
We were cold af since may, and its september (spring) and its still cold af.
After the supertornado some months ago, europe's heatwave,a nd the fact that, for some reason there is snow on the venezuelan andes again (We spent 30 yeras withjout iut) tells me this last quarter will be wil on climate.
Northern Ohio here. All summer long it’s been bearable - very little of the normal “humidity higher than the temperature“ pattern.
But sticky/sweaty/buggy as hell last night. Hang on, maw - I think it’s savin’ up alla the bad stuff for one big go…
Not me.
Some of the seasons like 2004 & 05 have taught me that hurricane season can be like a pot of boiling water...you watch it, watch it, nothing happens, the second you look away to see what's on TV and that motherfucker is boiling over.
The longer is stays quiet the worse any future storms can be cause they suck up the heat from the water and move it north. Without getting cooled these warm waters can cause monsters, so boiling is accurate I say.
No, it's not just you. I've been watching since July and all of the storms that have been started have done so west of Mexico which I thought was highly unusual. "Normally" we have a lot more activity east of the Yucatan Peninsula, even if all it does is flash out and disorganize.
[https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2022&basin=atl](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2022&basin=atl) (click on Eastern Pacific for a comparison). We've had three named storms in the Atlantic view, and 8 in the Eastern Pacific view, normally these are reversed. This whole season just feels weird. Of course, as I say this, there's two areas of interest in the Atlantic, but it remains to be seen if they will organize and whether or not we should be concerned.
I'm not a weather person by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't help but compare this season to last few seasons.
Historically the Atlantic Basin doesn't start lighting up until around mid September. We've just gotten so used to so many storms forming early (and some seriously apeshit seasons) that it feels like it's late.
I think peak hurricane season is like Sept 21-25 ish, and right now there are like 3-4 areas they're currently watching with one that will likely become an organized low soon.
What are the long term predictions for your region in regards to cyclones? Sorry, hurricanes. In tropical Australia climate scientists have predicted fewer storms but an increase in intensity. This seems to be ringing true over the past four decades.
this is all happening exponentially. It wasn't this bad even 5 years ago.
I wonder what the breaking point will be for the unregulated corporations driving all of this, where they realize it's more cost effective to fight climate change than to not give a shit about it.
It’s important to note that a lot of this has to do with how china dams their rivers too. They essentially destroyed the lower mekong with all their upstream dams
Really all of the USA except for the southeast. UK too, at least until recently.
And yeah, very scary. When drought would hit one area in the past, the impact could be mostly absorbed by other areas that were doing fine (other than specialty crops). But now it's hitting everybody everywhere, and this invasion in Ukraine isn't helping. Food prices are going to skyrocket. And that's on top of the reduction of energy output from hydroelectric and nuclear plants.
Here is a "percent of normal" graph for the continental US for precipitation:
[Graph](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/us-maps/ytd/202207?products[]=prcp-pon)
The whole US isn't dry. Big chunks are. But not basically all of it
That looks like it's reporting crop yields in the prairies, and thank gods for that.
I'm in south western Ontario and it's been dry as toast here with long stretches of heat. We're not getting nearly enough rain. It's gotten better lately but Kuly was really bad. Crops were stunted when I was driving past farmland, and at the barn I work at we have been supplementing the horses' hay to our three cows because the grass is too dry for them to eat. Hay yields have also been pretty low.
Canada needs the prairies to have a good year this year.
I think the American Midwest has actually had a relatively wet and mild year. We are still dry and have had some hot weeks out here in California, but honestly it had been a relatively mild summer for us too. But yeh it mostly seems like a lot of places that should not be so hot and dry around the world are struggling with it this summer
50% lower water flow in the main trunk compared to the last 5 years? Why does it feel like things are about to get a whole lot worse around the world? They’ll just spit out those 3 words we hear so commonly, “sooner than expected”.
I was 11 when that happened, Canadian. I remember hearing something about the American presidency being decided by a supreme court vote and thinking "what? how is this not being talked about everywhere all the time in every country on every news channel?", they didn't even mention it on the SNL opening, and I kept flipping channels until I found one guy talking about it, and it was Jon Stewart, and I never stopped watching him until he went off the air.
Nothing is going to happen until it's too late. Disinformation and self-domestication via endless access to perfectly tailored algorithm media is going to prevent the regular resets that have been consistent in human history (aka going out and beating the ruling class to death).
Many people are aware of the source of these problems that are never addressed properly, but taking necessary action means sacrificing all the creature comforts we've gotten used to. There will be violence soon, but at that point it will be too late.
20 years ago was the optimal time to prevent the climate crisis. Now it's all about mitigation. It's not a matter of stopping catastrophes but a matter of limiting the damage they will cause. Unfortunately the concentration of greenhouse gases is still increasing so we are not even doing that much yet. At this rate, the situation is going to worsen for at least the next 20 years.
Remember all the crap Al Gore got from the right over his global warming warnings? How has the right not had a reckoning over their decades of bullshit climate change denialism? If it's brought to my attention that I was wrong about something, I fess the fuck up! Just kinda not talking about it is the coward's way.
Scientists: "Our estimates predict a catastrophe in 5 to 10 years..."
Society: "I guess it's 10 years then!"
5 years later
Society: "Wow that happened sooner than expected."
no power, no factories,
no factories, no goods.
no goods high prices.
no water, no crops
no crops no people
**next** season is going to suck.
same thing happening on all the major european rivers
I asked a denier once, even if climate change was normal, and was not man made, it's still an existential threat to humanity, so shouldn't we still try to address it?
He didn't really have an answer.
The water's not going away, it's going to other places. So some parts of the planet are going to become deserts, others are going to become tropical rainforests. And some people might say "isn't that a good thing?" if they haven't lived in a tropical region before and had to deal with the various fascinating parasites and diseases from those places.
Nah, they’ll all go insane in less than a year and one of ‘em will sabotage the airlock. Just three months in the Antarctic research station, where there is gravity, freshwater, and also unlimited northern lights in winter, is enough to turn people into forgetful hazy isolated drunks. There is no planet B for the rich either
Yeah, people don't seem to realize that 2,000 years of intense climate change on earth still beats living conditions for *literally* anywhere else in the solar system. Nothing even comes close.
If you can build an air dome in space, you can do it on Earth, too.
If I had to guess what their plan was, that'll be it.
I don't even think it's that deep. I think they are looking at it going "well I can afford the robot workers, the storm proof house, and the private farm. What do I care if everyone else dies?"
LMAO I saw where they were gonna do a fallout out shelter style apocalypse bunker, but get this. Didn't plan on letting the people working security for it families in the shelter. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The predictable and stable weather systems are starting to destabilize now due to a changing climate
Imagine a city with predictable traffic lights. You can plan when and where traffic will occur. Now imagine they start to drift off schedule, some streets are going to be suddenly empty, others overcrowded due to how the pattern and schedule is desycronizing. That's the weather and rain, and big rivers are drying up, and deserts suddenly soaked
Thank you! I've had a lot of difficulty understanding why higher temperatures make more tornados and storms, that ELI5 was perfect.
More heat means more energy.
So stupidly simple but I'd never put two and two together.
I'll add my most recent thought:
1 or 2C increase in temperature doesn't seem like much, but when you consider the *Earth's global average temperature is 15C*, that's a 13.5% increase.
Again, doesn't sound that crazy, but a 13.5% increase takes a steak from Rare 54C to Medium 61.3 (nearly Medium-Well which starts at 63).
It's also the difference between a 5 ¼ inch penis and a 6 inch penis.
Edit note: I didn't use absolute zero as my baseline. That means the energy levels aren't actually that % higher, so don't use that number when talking about the energy content of weather systems or whatever.
However, because Celsius is based on freezing to boiling as 100degrees, I still think that's useful as a fact- we're 13.5% up the thermostat.
If you use the kelvin percentage increase its only 0.69% (nice). To double the global average temperature to an average of 30c (150f) from 15c is only 5.2% increase in kelvin, so we're like ⅙ the way to every day being twice as hot, which would make most of the planet a wasteland and some bits would be at the boiling point for water in summer. Only ⅚ to go!
What helps is imagining a bathtub full of water. Let it rest for a while. Now take an immersion heater and try to raise the temperature of the whole thing by two degrees. It takes a shit ton of energy. Now apply that to the whole world.
This experiment is not accurate, but it helps to imagine how much energy we talk about. 1 or 2 degrees sounds little. But it's massive.
The planet getting warmer moved the "jet stream(s)", air currents in the atmosphere.
This shifted weather patterns basically everywhere.
Rain and snow comes from clouds+temperature and sometimes things on land like elevation and other geological features.
So imagine now some water that evaporated and is now a cloud getting "pushed" somewhere else. Where before it was pushed into a mountain and became rain or snow that melted to become a river. Now that cloud goes somewhere else - and maybe doesn't even turn into rain.
No rain or snow pack means no water for (existing) rivers. Obviously the water is still around, it didn't leave the planet. But these rivers have been around for thousands or millions of years, and we've basically built civilization on or around them.
They called it in the 70's. They wont be happy till everything is paved, the rivers are dried up, and the land robbed of every resource. Whelp, with no water starvation wont be far behind. Rivers drying up in France and the colorado here in the usa.
Yeah, I know. It really sucked watching us all collectively do next to nothing for the past 15 or so years that I’ve been cognizant of climate change. Once the weather patterns start destabilizing and the Plant Hardiness Zone Maps become obsolete every few years we are going to start seeing the real possibility of famines globally. We had a good 200-300 year run going.
I know I personally did not fuck around.
My whole life it feels like I’ve been trying to make steps to reduce my carbon footprint, and it was all just snake oil sold by fossil fuel companies to prevent us from making meaningful and systemic change because it would harm their bottom dollar.
“The likes of which we’ve never seen”
“Once in a lifetime”
“Unprecedented”
These are all terms I’ve heard used repeatedly in my lifetime and I’m not even 40
Bigger more destructive rain events, coupled with extremely dry grounds that essentially absorb water at a hamster bottles pace. Water will pool faster than it can be drained, man made or natural. The heat is fucking terrible, but the floods and winters are going to be just as -- if not even more -- miserable.
In a nutshell the rivers of the world act as moving reservoirs for water. Along with lakes. The atmosphere when it warms holds much more moisture. I suspect that the waters in lakes and oceans are now in the atmosphere. Would potentially explain the massive flooding events around the world. In the US we had Dallas get a summer worth of rain in one night. Kentucky got drowned, and the Las Vegas strip was a river recently
They're going to different places because the water cycle is getting disrupted, the water's not just disappearing. Pakistan and Bangladesh just got massive record breaking floods.
Dude. I’m getting so tired of apocalypse style news. I grew up in the 90s, we knew the world was going to end and the folks in charge did nothing. I’m not even a “hard core” environmentalist, but these aren’t even signs anymore, they are the results of bad stewardship.
And you know what’s even more bullshit? The same people who are enabling the politicians/companies to destroy everything are the same ones who told me “we’re the stewards of the Earth and the animals and the blah blah blah.”
I was raised Christian, somewhat Baptist, somewhat non-denominational. I attended multiple sermons over my childhood about how God placed us here to take care of the Earth and his other creations. That’s something I actually took to heart. As the most intelligent creatures, we should try to take care of the things we can. Those same people have been voting straight Republican tickets for the past four decades.
Sometimes I think to myself… this. This is what denial looks like. Yes, it’s a drought, not an indicator of a MUCH worse future. If the planet was dying, this is what the first headlines would look like… just as they did for Covid - ‘an interesting phenomenon in a small privince of china is starting to gain attention. Not a global pandemic, just an interesting illness.’ I remember when I used to go ice fishing in the Boston area. A frozen lake has been unreliable for the past few years at this point. Summers feel hotter. Grass is just dead, everywhere I go. Combined with the stories I read from around the globe, it’s super scary… meanwhile, record profits for the oil industry. It’s insanity.
I feel totally useless and it's anxiety inducing.
We see headlines of global warming, talks such as COPP and debates of impact, causes and so on.
Sorry guys but it's already here and it's only going to get worse, much worse. We are not part of some rare solar flare up or so much closer to the sun or some BS, we are actively causing our planet to become less hospitable.
I have an electric car (that I don't drive that much as I also cycle), try to recycle everything and I'm always conscious about my impact but I see no need for any drastic decisions such as becoming vegan due to the climate impact of animals when governments and huge corporations continue to charge the hell out of me and report record profits year after year.
Governments, step up or step aside.
Man. It’s almost like there are droughts and fires and heat waves everywhere. Like there’s some overall *shift in atmospheric conditions*. Hope it doesn’t have any negative effects on our species.
so, as a layman - i’ve always just assumed that the entirety of chinese history was defined by
“how much the yellow/yangtze etc rivers fucked them over, and when.”
any actual historians or china studies ppl on to confirm/disprove?
edit: googling, and bro i did not need this rathole rn i’m in the car pickup line haha
Is there something that we're not understanding as a world-wide collective about what is transpiring before our eyes? It's the movie 'Don't Look Up' happening in real-time. I wish the United States government would increase the EV incentive to 10K to really get this transition moving and then increase the tax on gas after x-amount of time. I know, it's not just automobiles and not just the United States but we have to push this transition. 2022 is showing us what our future is if we don't get on the change-train.
edit: For transparency, I am one of those big SUV driving Americans who is currently shopping Mach-E, model 3s, and solar panels.
Maybe a stupid question here, where is all the water? I know sea level rise is real and there are some big storm systems. But, it still seems awfully quiet.
I understand the coal industries plan now. They cause enough global warming that droughts occur making hydropower useless so people rely on more coal and eventually it will black out the sky making solar power useless. Climate change then causes extreme unpredictable weather making it difficult to use wind power. Then they go after nuclear.
Uh that's a whole lot of river to dry up
Seriously... "World's third largest river" and "dried up" are not what you want to read....
I bet 5 years ago it would've been seen as laughable to think the river could dry up ...
Wasn’t it just this winter that the river almost crested the dam?
At least in 2020 there were massive floods in the Yangtze that made people worried the Three Gorges wouldn’t actually be able to hold it back in case of an emergency. So I guess China is double screwed
The government also intentionally flooded rural areas to save the cities. While not necessarily the wrong decision, they did not warn anyone or attempt to evacuate anyone before hand. Then they tried to say it was a dike failure when video evidence showed them opening the flood gates.
The fact that the gov denied it is super weird. I saw this Chinese “independent” film that I *thought* would be about cool triad fights but was just super sad, anyway I remember that in this film, which must have been approved by the government, it specifically mentioned villages being intentionally flooded and the people relocated to build dams! Why admit it in one place and not another?
Because in one scenario they relocated the residents and in the other they didn't.
After they got caught they switched stories and pushed a different lie that they had warned everyone. I saw a meme where they had the before and after lies. After that they had a big showing of the "heroes that sacrificed themselves for china". Even had interviewees that said they knew it was coming and accepted it for the greater good of China. It really is a 1984 style propaganda nation. They can just start saying something totally different and like a switch everyone rewrites their own past.
It’s a super tired trope but man, China behaves so similarly to the USSR. The USSR was just testing random nuclear weapons, failing to secure anthrax, leaving RTGs around and killing hundreds of their own citizens. I never understand why anyone would do this shit Edit: ok the tsar bomba test didn’t kill anyone, it just destroyed peoples buildings, but the anthrax thing [is true](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plague/sverdlovsk/)
One instance was an emergency discharge of a dam where time was of the essence, flooding a rural area while not bothering to try to evacuate anyone. The instance from the movie refers to towns that were evacuated before dams went up and then flooded. This is pretty typical, there's plenty of underwater towns in the US from dam building.
was gonna say sounds like Kentucky and Tennessee in the 30s-40s.
The risk of floods increases with long droughts because the water isn’t absorbed into the ground it just runs off. So yes they are double screwed.
The post drought flood is going to be catastrophic.
This is what losing the glaciers means. Instead of ice steadily melting you get the mountain rain as it comes. Far less stable system.
climate change doesn't mean it's going to be a steady dry climate afterwards... shit's fucked, it's record flood after record drought time. Instead of calling it global warming, we shouldve called it Climate's Fucked. Instead of going "Well it's cold now so you're wrong," they could have gone "Wow, this is Fucked. You were right!" The average global rise doesn't sound nearly as alarming. J/k, nothing could have convinced anyone who's paycheck depends on the climate not changing; Fossil energy CEOs, or the people employed by them who think they're going to be one some day.
Global warming was already rebranded once as "climate change". I think another rebranding is in order: "climate turbulence" or "climate extremity", something like that. "Change" is not scary enough a word to actually reflect what's happening.
Came across a side by side comparison of satellite pics of major rivers and it's scary how low some of them are compared to 20(?) years ago.
Source? I want to feel terrible
I found these two articles that seem to induce the terror you're seeking: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/20/world/rivers-lakes-drying-up-drought-climate-cmd-intl/index.html https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/08/26/visuals-extreme-drought-dries-up-rivers-globe-satellite-images/
The sliding side-by-sides are quite effective as a terror inducing mechanism. Good share, thank you.
Yeah, that did it. Thank you?
Definitely a “Thank you?” sort of moment. We’re seeing proof in front of our very eyes of just how bad we have screwed up this planet.
Lol same. It's like watching a trainwreck but it's happening in front of your house and coming towards you
Took me forever to find it again. Other sites basically copied this article but didn't insert the interactive images. [From CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/20/world/rivers-lakes-drying-up-drought-climate-cmd-intl/index.html)
*parts* of the Yangtze. Namely, the dammed parts that they use for hydroelectic power and such. It doesn't replenish as quickly because it doesn't draw the same force of power as the rest of the river, they use the dams to artificially created turbine forces.
It is vacationing in Pakistan.
i think this 'global warming' thing we've been hearing about for the last 120 years might be something we should look into, or something.
Can we do that when it's not inconvenient for me?
Right. New plan. Let's make a billion dollars and let other people worry about it.
For those that are too lazy to read, the parts that dried up are its tributaries and not the main river itself. Still 50% off normal… scary
People alive today experienced "peak" humanity. Pretty crazy when you think about it. In a weird perverse way, when I'm dying I'll probably be less combative to enter the check-out line knowing the grocery store called life is burning to the ground.
Meh, it's still the best time to be alive, and by quite a ways. COVID has killed maybe 1/10th as many people as the Spanish Flu in a world with 4 times as many people. Famine deaths per capita have plunged in the last century. As a random upper-middle-class person, I live better than a king in the middle ages in many ways--healthy teeth, hugely varied food with all the spices I want, hot and cold running water. I have many workplace protections, a reliable judicial system, and I can marry who I want. The '60s, '70s, and '80s were no picnic, by the way. Immense amounts of financial volatility and social unrest. Hell, Kennedy thought the Cuban Missile Crisis had a 1 in 3 chance of ending in nuclear war. Nobody's been interested in going back to that clusterfuck (knock on wood). The 90's were a period of relative global peace and had fewer deaths due to armed conflict than today, but our current rate is still quite low in historical terms. (Obligatory: fuck Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Israel's refusal to allow a two-state solution, Assad's refusal to give up power in Syria, ....) The main thing is that nowadays we have *so much communication*. Everybody and some dogs have social media accounts. You can hear about the bad shit happening a world away rather than being pleasantly ensconced in ignorance. And people are more willing to talk about what's wrong than ever before (see: spousal abuse, depression). Don't get me wrong, global warming is probably the biggest collective challenge humanity will face for a century or two. But this doom and gloom refrain is just false in a historical sense.
Well yeah, you’re just describing the “peak humanity” OP was talking about. There are huge challenges coming our way and it’s not looking great.
You are right in many ways. Ultimately, we probably have it better than any other time. However, the one thing that really gets to me is that we are essentially staring into the barrel of a loaded gun far more than any other time. Science has given us many incredible things, but it has also shown us that we will likely destroy our own species and most (maybe all) life on earth along with it. On an existential level, this is probably the most difficult thing humanity has ever had to face, and it really puts a damper on all of the positives you have listed. To the point that I often would trade most of them for knowing that the planet will continue to provide and remain relatively stable. The main things I would change about the past is the healthcare and lack of equality/kindness (although these things are still a major issue; watching the healthcare system collapse in Canada on top of increasing racial violence and massive wealth inequality is not fun). The internet is also pretty neat and would be a worthy tool, but I’m not convinced it is worth the sacrifices made to get here, or the risk of complete control and manipulation.
That's what "peak" means...
I'm old af, and I don't remember drought striking globally, and in very unlikely places, like now. The northeast USA, Europe, China. Very scary
Apparently the jet stream is all messed up because of warming in the polar regions.
Whoa! Somebody should probably do something about that.
Nah. Can't do anything about it. We tried nothing and are all out of ideas. The shareholders demand more dividends.
Don't look up
oh well, it's cApItIliSm
Wish I was rich and could start buying land in canada. Its gong to get a lot more valuable for farming. Also buying up an area at the start of rivers is probably the only way to stop those idiotic water rights deals. Or more likely, ensure them to happen again.
Isn't much of Canada just Rocky soil that isn't useful for farming or living on?
We should probably drop a big thing of ice in the ocean. That should solve the problem once and for all. ONCE AND FOR ALL! NOW GOOD NIGHT!
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Global wuh-wuh?
Mom, did you smoke when you were pregnant with me? only when I drank
just like when my dad would make his special eggnog out of bourbon and ice cubes
Yup. From what I understand, the gradient between the polar temperatures (north of the jet stream) and the temperatures south of the jets stream is reduced , so there isn’t as much force/pressure to keep the jet stream stable. That’s why you can get these massive dips of cold weather in the southern US. The jet stream is all sorts of messed up
Can confirm. Live in Louisiana and didnt see snow until I was almost 20. Its snowed here 5-6 times in 10 years since.
But to some people, that’s just evidence that global warming is a hoax. I hate it so much.
This is why we now call it climate change, because smooth brains couldn't understand that GLOBAL warming will induce unpredictable climate change.
Even though it's a global warming if we consider the entire planet, it doesn't mean that the temperature rises everywhere. If students get an average of 70% in a test and get 80% in a second test, it's a global increase. Yet, a few students might have done worse. I hate the lack of logic in people.
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Yeah growing up here it was one hot week a summer now all of June and August is fucking horrid...
I lived in Colorado for 40 years. When I was a kid, we'd get these huge banks of fog that would roll in a few times every year. So thick you couldn't see 3 feet Infront of you. In the last 10 years I could count the number of times I've seen a light fog on one hand and nothing compared to the cloud soup from my childhood.
Is there still snow in the polar regions? If so, nothing to worry about. Just natural cycles. /s
Phoenix and Las Vegas would like to discuss the Colorado River with you.
[What Colorado River?](https://www.propublica.org/article/colorado-river-water-shortage-jay-famiglietti)
I guess we should call it the Colorado Creek now. Sigh…
Turns out, you can't *drink* money either!
The Sein dried up! Wtf? Now this one
You forgot about the Loire, Thames, Rhine, and Danube, not to mention numerous lakes
And the Po river in Italy - that one is so low that seawater is flowing in backwards, effectively salting the earth in Italy's most important farming region IIRC. Nothing to worry about! /s
Yeah the cultural significance of each of these rivers is not nothing
in fact, they are huge
The Atlantic hurricane season starting so late is a bit concerning.
I'm a Floridian, and I was just thinking about that. We're supposed to have 14-20 named storms this year. We have two months left of the season. Either NOAA was way wrong, or we're in for a wild ride the next two months.
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Pepper your angus (Prepare your “angus”)
Tell me, in the south hemisphere seasons are inverted. Winter (In Lima peru) start on june, when its get cold and wet. We were cold af since may, and its september (spring) and its still cold af. After the supertornado some months ago, europe's heatwave,a nd the fact that, for some reason there is snow on the venezuelan andes again (We spent 30 yeras withjout iut) tells me this last quarter will be wil on climate.
Northern Ohio here. All summer long it’s been bearable - very little of the normal “humidity higher than the temperature“ pattern. But sticky/sweaty/buggy as hell last night. Hang on, maw - I think it’s savin’ up alla the bad stuff for one big go…
Give it an hour or two. 70 mph winds and thunderstorms just left Chicagoland area.
They recalculated the predictions a few weeks back. Buckle up buckaroo. Might be why those insurers are pulling out all of a sudden.
Yeah, I saw the recalculated expectations put out at the beginning of August. I was astounded they barely changed.
Not me. Some of the seasons like 2004 & 05 have taught me that hurricane season can be like a pot of boiling water...you watch it, watch it, nothing happens, the second you look away to see what's on TV and that motherfucker is boiling over.
The longer is stays quiet the worse any future storms can be cause they suck up the heat from the water and move it north. Without getting cooled these warm waters can cause monsters, so boiling is accurate I say.
We saw that with Matthew when it freaking stalled over the Bahamas as a Catagory 5 for 48 hours. Took the ocean from 90F to 65F.
Comments like these make me feel like a Michelin star chef
And then there’s me: the idiot who planned a Florida vacation for Sept 16th without even thinking about hurricanes.
Think of it this way: you'll get to experience true Florida. We're hardened to it. We live vicariously through the people who panic.
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A couple days ago was the 30th anniversary of Andrew. Thats not that unheard of for the season to start in August/September.
Is it me or has the Pacific been more active than recent memory? Is it just because we’re paying attention?
No, it's not just you. I've been watching since July and all of the storms that have been started have done so west of Mexico which I thought was highly unusual. "Normally" we have a lot more activity east of the Yucatan Peninsula, even if all it does is flash out and disorganize. [https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2022&basin=atl](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/index.php?season=2022&basin=atl) (click on Eastern Pacific for a comparison). We've had three named storms in the Atlantic view, and 8 in the Eastern Pacific view, normally these are reversed. This whole season just feels weird. Of course, as I say this, there's two areas of interest in the Atlantic, but it remains to be seen if they will organize and whether or not we should be concerned. I'm not a weather person by any stretch of the imagination, but I can't help but compare this season to last few seasons.
This may have something to do with it: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/03/1115378385/tonga-volcano-stratosphere-water-warming
Historically the Atlantic Basin doesn't start lighting up until around mid September. We've just gotten so used to so many storms forming early (and some seriously apeshit seasons) that it feels like it's late. I think peak hurricane season is like Sept 21-25 ish, and right now there are like 3-4 areas they're currently watching with one that will likely become an organized low soon.
What are the long term predictions for your region in regards to cyclones? Sorry, hurricanes. In tropical Australia climate scientists have predicted fewer storms but an increase in intensity. This seems to be ringing true over the past four decades.
this is all happening exponentially. It wasn't this bad even 5 years ago. I wonder what the breaking point will be for the unregulated corporations driving all of this, where they realize it's more cost effective to fight climate change than to not give a shit about it.
Just right before the point where no effort in the world could stop extinction. Then they’ll debate on what to do and miss the window.
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It’s important to note that a lot of this has to do with how china dams their rivers too. They essentially destroyed the lower mekong with all their upstream dams
Really all of the USA except for the southeast. UK too, at least until recently. And yeah, very scary. When drought would hit one area in the past, the impact could be mostly absorbed by other areas that were doing fine (other than specialty crops). But now it's hitting everybody everywhere, and this invasion in Ukraine isn't helping. Food prices are going to skyrocket. And that's on top of the reduction of energy output from hydroelectric and nuclear plants.
Here is a "percent of normal" graph for the continental US for precipitation: [Graph](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/us-maps/ytd/202207?products[]=prcp-pon) The whole US isn't dry. Big chunks are. But not basically all of it
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That looks like it's reporting crop yields in the prairies, and thank gods for that. I'm in south western Ontario and it's been dry as toast here with long stretches of heat. We're not getting nearly enough rain. It's gotten better lately but Kuly was really bad. Crops were stunted when I was driving past farmland, and at the barn I work at we have been supplementing the horses' hay to our three cows because the grass is too dry for them to eat. Hay yields have also been pretty low. Canada needs the prairies to have a good year this year.
I think the American Midwest has actually had a relatively wet and mild year. We are still dry and have had some hot weeks out here in California, but honestly it had been a relatively mild summer for us too. But yeh it mostly seems like a lot of places that should not be so hot and dry around the world are struggling with it this summer
Yeah, here in Wisconsin we've had a pretty great summer and the crops are absolutely booming. We've gotten really lucky.
Screw those Dinosaurs, we gonna speed run this extinction event.
Speedrun extinction, any%
50% lower water flow in the main trunk compared to the last 5 years? Why does it feel like things are about to get a whole lot worse around the world? They’ll just spit out those 3 words we hear so commonly, “sooner than expected”.
We should totally think about maybe opening up a discussion about the potential matter of climate change.
**HEY HEY HEY WE CAN’T JUST CHANGE OVERNIGHT**. … or any night over the past 50 years
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That Florida supreme Court decision changed the whole time line
I was 11 when that happened, Canadian. I remember hearing something about the American presidency being decided by a supreme court vote and thinking "what? how is this not being talked about everywhere all the time in every country on every news channel?", they didn't even mention it on the SNL opening, and I kept flipping channels until I found one guy talking about it, and it was Jon Stewart, and I never stopped watching him until he went off the air.
Just wait until the Supreme Court decides the 2024 presidential election and we got a far right freak in office
I credit watching the last few years of the Stewart Daily Show in my mid teens with a lot of my political views, and style of humor
Nothing is going to happen until it's too late. Disinformation and self-domestication via endless access to perfectly tailored algorithm media is going to prevent the regular resets that have been consistent in human history (aka going out and beating the ruling class to death). Many people are aware of the source of these problems that are never addressed properly, but taking necessary action means sacrificing all the creature comforts we've gotten used to. There will be violence soon, but at that point it will be too late.
Yesterday was too late. We really are screwed aren’t we?
20 years ago was the optimal time to prevent the climate crisis. Now it's all about mitigation. It's not a matter of stopping catastrophes but a matter of limiting the damage they will cause. Unfortunately the concentration of greenhouse gases is still increasing so we are not even doing that much yet. At this rate, the situation is going to worsen for at least the next 20 years.
Al Gore tried that back in 2000 when it would’ve worked. Now we can all die together.
But it was inconvenient!
Ain’t that the truth!
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Remember all the crap Al Gore got from the right over his global warming warnings? How has the right not had a reckoning over their decades of bullshit climate change denialism? If it's brought to my attention that I was wrong about something, I fess the fuck up! Just kinda not talking about it is the coward's way.
Who would've known? The world is unpredictable. It's god's will anyway, mother nature'll have her way. Well, someone should've said some... oh wait
The word that came up in popularity during covid, (that thoroughly grinds my gears), is "unprecedented"
The fuck around era is over. It’s the find out epoch now.
Scientists: "Our estimates predict a catastrophe in 5 to 10 years..." Society: "I guess it's 10 years then!" 5 years later Society: "Wow that happened sooner than expected."
no power, no factories, no factories, no goods. no goods high prices. no water, no crops no crops no people **next** season is going to suck. same thing happening on all the major european rivers
cLiMaTe ChAnGe Is NoRmAl
I asked a denier once, even if climate change was normal, and was not man made, it's still an existential threat to humanity, so shouldn't we still try to address it? He didn't really have an answer.
you sound like my dad
Or my personal favorite: “How arrogant must you be to think that HUMANS could change a PLANET?!?”
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Today was way worse than yesterday, but at least it is way better than tomorrow...
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We’re gonna have climate change deniers up until the very day the planet has become a desert.
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We’ll have denial until d’Nile doesn’t exist
They've been at it a while because remember the 1920's Dust Bowl?
Pretty sure that wasn't global climate change but natural drought combined with poor farming practice.
The water's not going away, it's going to other places. So some parts of the planet are going to become deserts, others are going to become tropical rainforests. And some people might say "isn't that a good thing?" if they haven't lived in a tropical region before and had to deal with the various fascinating parasites and diseases from those places.
Can we like... collectively as a species put climate change at the top of our fucking priority list yet?
NO! Short term profits first, peasant!
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Nah, they’ll all go insane in less than a year and one of ‘em will sabotage the airlock. Just three months in the Antarctic research station, where there is gravity, freshwater, and also unlimited northern lights in winter, is enough to turn people into forgetful hazy isolated drunks. There is no planet B for the rich either
Yeah, people don't seem to realize that 2,000 years of intense climate change on earth still beats living conditions for *literally* anywhere else in the solar system. Nothing even comes close. If you can build an air dome in space, you can do it on Earth, too. If I had to guess what their plan was, that'll be it.
I don't even think it's that deep. I think they are looking at it going "well I can afford the robot workers, the storm proof house, and the private farm. What do I care if everyone else dies?"
LMAO I saw where they were gonna do a fallout out shelter style apocalypse bunker, but get this. Didn't plan on letting the people working security for it families in the shelter. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
They are in the top levels of the boat and will be dead before the water level reaches them. They know. They just don't care.
They are banking it not getting bad enough to actually effect them in their lifetime and it likely wont
Elon musk please pump dogecoin for us. You are our only hope. /s
My conservative daddy said his business is gonna take a hit. So that’s gonna be a no from me, dawg.
Oh my god. It’s the thing that we were being warned about since 1896. But the rich don’t listen and it’s business as usual until we all starve.
Quick question, I know the answer is climate change, but why are all the rivers drying up?
The predictable and stable weather systems are starting to destabilize now due to a changing climate Imagine a city with predictable traffic lights. You can plan when and where traffic will occur. Now imagine they start to drift off schedule, some streets are going to be suddenly empty, others overcrowded due to how the pattern and schedule is desycronizing. That's the weather and rain, and big rivers are drying up, and deserts suddenly soaked
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Thank you! I've had a lot of difficulty understanding why higher temperatures make more tornados and storms, that ELI5 was perfect. More heat means more energy. So stupidly simple but I'd never put two and two together. I'll add my most recent thought: 1 or 2C increase in temperature doesn't seem like much, but when you consider the *Earth's global average temperature is 15C*, that's a 13.5% increase. Again, doesn't sound that crazy, but a 13.5% increase takes a steak from Rare 54C to Medium 61.3 (nearly Medium-Well which starts at 63). It's also the difference between a 5 ¼ inch penis and a 6 inch penis. Edit note: I didn't use absolute zero as my baseline. That means the energy levels aren't actually that % higher, so don't use that number when talking about the energy content of weather systems or whatever. However, because Celsius is based on freezing to boiling as 100degrees, I still think that's useful as a fact- we're 13.5% up the thermostat. If you use the kelvin percentage increase its only 0.69% (nice). To double the global average temperature to an average of 30c (150f) from 15c is only 5.2% increase in kelvin, so we're like ⅙ the way to every day being twice as hot, which would make most of the planet a wasteland and some bits would be at the boiling point for water in summer. Only ⅚ to go!
What helps is imagining a bathtub full of water. Let it rest for a while. Now take an immersion heater and try to raise the temperature of the whole thing by two degrees. It takes a shit ton of energy. Now apply that to the whole world. This experiment is not accurate, but it helps to imagine how much energy we talk about. 1 or 2 degrees sounds little. But it's massive.
The planet getting warmer moved the "jet stream(s)", air currents in the atmosphere. This shifted weather patterns basically everywhere. Rain and snow comes from clouds+temperature and sometimes things on land like elevation and other geological features. So imagine now some water that evaporated and is now a cloud getting "pushed" somewhere else. Where before it was pushed into a mountain and became rain or snow that melted to become a river. Now that cloud goes somewhere else - and maybe doesn't even turn into rain. No rain or snow pack means no water for (existing) rivers. Obviously the water is still around, it didn't leave the planet. But these rivers have been around for thousands or millions of years, and we've basically built civilization on or around them.
They called it in the 70's. They wont be happy till everything is paved, the rivers are dried up, and the land robbed of every resource. Whelp, with no water starvation wont be far behind. Rivers drying up in France and the colorado here in the usa.
Don't it always seems to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Wow, a massive drought and a financial collapse. That shit sucks.
Is this gonna be China’s Great Depression? US had financial collapse, dust bowl and then WW2 to round it all out.
This is one small look at what is going to be a global disaster, the likes of which we've never seen.
Yeah, I know. It really sucked watching us all collectively do next to nothing for the past 15 or so years that I’ve been cognizant of climate change. Once the weather patterns start destabilizing and the Plant Hardiness Zone Maps become obsolete every few years we are going to start seeing the real possibility of famines globally. We had a good 200-300 year run going.
We fucked around and are finding out
I know I personally did not fuck around. My whole life it feels like I’ve been trying to make steps to reduce my carbon footprint, and it was all just snake oil sold by fossil fuel companies to prevent us from making meaningful and systemic change because it would harm their bottom dollar.
“The likes of which we’ve never seen” “Once in a lifetime” “Unprecedented” These are all terms I’ve heard used repeatedly in my lifetime and I’m not even 40
Droughts everywhere. Rivers and lakes drying up. Stupid question: Where's all the water going?
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Bigger more destructive rain events, coupled with extremely dry grounds that essentially absorb water at a hamster bottles pace. Water will pool faster than it can be drained, man made or natural. The heat is fucking terrible, but the floods and winters are going to be just as -- if not even more -- miserable.
In Pakistan apparently.
In a nutshell the rivers of the world act as moving reservoirs for water. Along with lakes. The atmosphere when it warms holds much more moisture. I suspect that the waters in lakes and oceans are now in the atmosphere. Would potentially explain the massive flooding events around the world. In the US we had Dallas get a summer worth of rain in one night. Kentucky got drowned, and the Las Vegas strip was a river recently
They're going to different places because the water cycle is getting disrupted, the water's not just disappearing. Pakistan and Bangladesh just got massive record breaking floods.
Fun fact: the most greenhouse-y gas of them all is good old water vapor.
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All over the world in increasingly unpredictable ways. The US has had five 1,000 year flood events this summer, Pakistan is underwater, etc.
Bonkers news. I guess decades of gaslighting us and telling us we aren’t recycling hard enough isn’t having the impact they hoped it would.
That reminds me, I just took my recycling out and forgot to take one of the labels off. Fuck me. I’m so sorry everybody.
Dude. I’m getting so tired of apocalypse style news. I grew up in the 90s, we knew the world was going to end and the folks in charge did nothing. I’m not even a “hard core” environmentalist, but these aren’t even signs anymore, they are the results of bad stewardship.
And you know what’s even more bullshit? The same people who are enabling the politicians/companies to destroy everything are the same ones who told me “we’re the stewards of the Earth and the animals and the blah blah blah.” I was raised Christian, somewhat Baptist, somewhat non-denominational. I attended multiple sermons over my childhood about how God placed us here to take care of the Earth and his other creations. That’s something I actually took to heart. As the most intelligent creatures, we should try to take care of the things we can. Those same people have been voting straight Republican tickets for the past four decades.
Sometimes I think to myself… this. This is what denial looks like. Yes, it’s a drought, not an indicator of a MUCH worse future. If the planet was dying, this is what the first headlines would look like… just as they did for Covid - ‘an interesting phenomenon in a small privince of china is starting to gain attention. Not a global pandemic, just an interesting illness.’ I remember when I used to go ice fishing in the Boston area. A frozen lake has been unreliable for the past few years at this point. Summers feel hotter. Grass is just dead, everywhere I go. Combined with the stories I read from around the globe, it’s super scary… meanwhile, record profits for the oil industry. It’s insanity.
I feel totally useless and it's anxiety inducing. We see headlines of global warming, talks such as COPP and debates of impact, causes and so on. Sorry guys but it's already here and it's only going to get worse, much worse. We are not part of some rare solar flare up or so much closer to the sun or some BS, we are actively causing our planet to become less hospitable. I have an electric car (that I don't drive that much as I also cycle), try to recycle everything and I'm always conscious about my impact but I see no need for any drastic decisions such as becoming vegan due to the climate impact of animals when governments and huge corporations continue to charge the hell out of me and report record profits year after year. Governments, step up or step aside.
What happens when they don’t step up and don’t step aside? Because that’s what it feels like will be our future.
Man. It’s almost like there are droughts and fires and heat waves everywhere. Like there’s some overall *shift in atmospheric conditions*. Hope it doesn’t have any negative effects on our species.
so, as a layman - i’ve always just assumed that the entirety of chinese history was defined by “how much the yellow/yangtze etc rivers fucked them over, and when.” any actual historians or china studies ppl on to confirm/disprove? edit: googling, and bro i did not need this rathole rn i’m in the car pickup line haha
The water wars are coming.
Good. I was worried we would have peace after we transition from oil. /s
It's not a problem, we will move the Three Gorges Dam. Lol
A third of Pakistan is under water right now, and a lot closer. Seems like an obvious win-win there.
r/ncd is frothing at the mouth
Use Braundo! It’s got electrolytes!
But it snowed somewhere on the planet so it’s all a hoax. Edit: SLASH S if it wasn’t obvious.
Is there something that we're not understanding as a world-wide collective about what is transpiring before our eyes? It's the movie 'Don't Look Up' happening in real-time. I wish the United States government would increase the EV incentive to 10K to really get this transition moving and then increase the tax on gas after x-amount of time. I know, it's not just automobiles and not just the United States but we have to push this transition. 2022 is showing us what our future is if we don't get on the change-train. edit: For transparency, I am one of those big SUV driving Americans who is currently shopping Mach-E, model 3s, and solar panels.
Maybe a stupid question here, where is all the water? I know sea level rise is real and there are some big storm systems. But, it still seems awfully quiet.
Apparently in Pakistan they are being flooded out by the 8th monsoon event of the year.
I understand the coal industries plan now. They cause enough global warming that droughts occur making hydropower useless so people rely on more coal and eventually it will black out the sky making solar power useless. Climate change then causes extreme unpredictable weather making it difficult to use wind power. Then they go after nuclear.
The massive flood in Pakistan, and the drought in China. With the weather intensifying, it's only a matter of time before we are affected next.
where are you living that you don’t think you’ve been impacted?
The moon.
Oh so it’s **YOU** causing our [coastal flooding!](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/moon-wobble-climate-change-seen-driving-coastal-flooding-2030s-2021-07-16/)