6418

Yeah, here in Utah we’re finally going to be getting some snow on New Years. It rained on Christmas and while there has been a little snow that’s fallen this year, it’s been too warm to ever accumulate and stick around.

Meanwhile, 30 years ago it was family tradition to go sledding on Thanksgiving. I can’t even remember the last time we had that kind of snow on Thanksgiving.

6419

I remember as a kid always hoping it didn’t snow on Halloween.

Now I often wonder if any of the snow will last a week in December.

6420

I’ve thought about this. I really do think buying land in the north isn’t a bad idea. I really don’t see how people in Florida and Arizona and places like that are going to make it. Heat is just as deadly as cold. They already get crazy hot days of 115 degrees in Arizona. What if that becomes 120-125 in the future?

I don’t think I’d go for permafrost but even places like Minnesota are probably going to be more desireable 30+ years from now.

6421

Until the North Atlantic current stops and everything above Iceland(?) freezes.

6422

My daughters found a caterpillar crossing the path yesterday. It was going pretty slow, maybe almost dead from the cold. (I know we’re not debating any deniers, but still, pretty eye opening).

Edit - I live near Toronto.

6423
6424

The tropics won’t be much hotter than they are now, although they are likely to be significantly stormier. The places where it will be too hot to live will be in sub-tropical and temperate zones where summertime heat and humidity will be amped up. Arizona doesn’t have much humidity, so people will still be able to live there, but places in India and the Persian Gulf might have mass casualty heat waves. Florida will be in trouble not from the heat but from sea level rise.

Northern climes will get warmer on average, but they’ll still have the same long winter nights that they do now and they might have cold snaps/polar vortices any time in the fall and winter, so they won’t be much more amenable to agriculture than they are now.

6425

Until the water runs out, I guess. I don’t think it will be the heat that drives people away from Phoenix; temperatures already approach or reach 120 and have done so for decades. But water?

6426

The weird thing about Arizona is they have taken the stance that farming is important so they use a ton of water to irrigate desert to turn it into farmland.

6427

And golf courses.

6428

It’s the same with Southern California. It’s a legacy of the old / original wealth of those cities, which was vested in owners of land who farmed or ran cattle. When I first moved to Phoenix, back in 1980, you could still drive maybe 20 minutes from the center of the city and find yourself in citrus groves.

Yes, that’s another example of how the invisible hand of the market gets the wrong result.

6429

And let us not forget Las Vegas.

6430

Despoiling the Earth to own the libs, part lxvii

6432

Unsurprising, but still scary.

“Many dozens” of threatened species had been hit hard by the fires, she said. In some cases “almost their entire distribution has been burnt”.
[…]
Bushfires don’t just burn animals to death but create starvation events. Birds lose their breeding trees and the fruits and invertebrates they feed on. Ground-dwelling mammals that do survive emerge to find an open landscape with nowhere to hide, which one ecologist said became a “hunting arena” for feral cats and foxes.
[…]

6433
6434

Can you believe they found 24 suspected arsonists who started those fires? I’ve heard of some kids with firecrackers going crazy but 24?

6435

The funny thing is that the far right is trying to say that this means the fact that the entire continent of Australia is on fire is unrelated to climate change.

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that without climate change, you wouldn’t be able to commit arson and ignite a whole continent.

6436

Indeed, I can’t imagine anyone but the far-right blaming arson for the fires started by arson.

6437

Without climate change, 24 arsonists couldn’t start fires that burned 15.6 million acres, dude.

Climate change creates the conditions where these fires spread rapidly and uncontrollably, to the degree that they cover millions and millions of acres. Climate change is what has caused Australia to have its hottest, driest year ever recorded.

6438

The dry vegetation (and environmentalists’ policies creating de facto tinder boxes) probably did contribute, it’s true.

Also, it looks like (per the source I added above, and this one), it was actually 180+ people who contributed, but they only named 24 who did it intentionally. At least that’s what I gathered from the Sydney Morney Herald and the Spectator. They have some sort of serious arsonist problem in Australia that really needs to be controlled.