Ok, so I keep getting gaslighted by people around me (USA) when I comment how crazy the weather is, and how we’ve never had it like this, and they say things like “oh, you just notice it more now because you’re older” or “the weathers always done this”

But I don’t think it’s normal for weather to be -10 degrees F with snow, and then 3 days later 75 degrees F! That seems insane to me!

Unless I’m wrong and we really have had this insane type of weather “forever”. But it doesn’t feel like it.

the Question: Am I crazy, or right, and is there proof?

  • PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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    6 hours ago

    But I don’t think it’s normal for weather to be -10 degrees F with snow, and then 3 days later 75 degrees F! That seems insane to me!

    The climate is going crazy, but strictly speaking, you can’t logically conclude that from solely your local weather fluctuations. I.e., climate change is a global property of our planet, which requires global statistics…which we have, but your folks either refuse to look or refuse to listen to experts who have looked.

    And extreme weather events are more likely, but that doesn’t mean they never occurred before or never would occur without climate change.

    I’m not saying this to downplay the severity of the climate crisis or even to say that you literally can never use local weather events to reason about climate change, but IMO is it both politically and mathematically important to stress the global nature of climate change whenever it is brought up.

    • Canaconda@lemmy.ca
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      5 hours ago

      you can’t logically conclude that from solely your local weather fluctuations.

      From a pure scientific method standpoint 100%

      But changes local weather can easily be corroborated by satelite data of the polar vortex.

      Like we can see that wind from the north pole is dipping south faster than it used to. Resulting in cold snaps as the wind rushes south and heat domes in regions between the jetstreams.

      This directly results in the increasingly frequent and extreme weather fluctuations we’ve been been experiencing.

      https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02022018/cold-weather-polar-vortex-jet-stream-explained-global-warming-arctic-ice-climate-change/

      In my region we regularly have a “false spring” this time of year. We get a week of warm that melts the snow in the valley and then a week later it drops back down and snows again.

      But lately the hi’s and low’s are 10c hotter/colder. The heat in between is so warm trees start coming out of hybernation. The cold snaps so fast that it threatens local agriculture.

      We just got a foot of wet snow and tomorrow it’s supposed to br 15c and sunny.

      Couple years ago we were stuck in the heat dome and you could see the polar vortex swooping 100km below us and to either side on the weather channel.