14 votes

What impact has climate change or environmental degradation had on your life?

10 comments

  1. [3]
    Amarok
    Link
    Where I live, it has been more than nine hundred days without the ground drying out - and our typical summers were baked-ground brown-grass scorchers. We haven't been able to mow the damn fields...

    Where I live, it has been more than nine hundred days without the ground drying out - and our typical summers were baked-ground brown-grass scorchers. We haven't been able to mow the damn fields in that entire time, and the grass has not been growing properly either, it's stunted. In all that time growing it's barely above ankle deep. There are a rather stunning number of trees down, soumac and birch with shallow roots can't hold on to the ground well enough to handle the winds anymore.

    Winter is now a cold rainy season with perhaps a month or two where there are occasional snows that melt away instantly. Thirty years ago, it was knee-deep snow for three solid months or even more every single year. The entire rest of the year has become never ending rain showers. If this keeps up we're going to be looking at mudslide conditions within a few years, and that's something which simply never happens around here.

    Butterflies were common in gigantic flocks when I was young here, and now if I see even a single one I mark the calendar. We still have plenty of bees and other pollinators. I haven't noticed any change in the wildlife or the birds, though there has been a sharp rise in tick population.

    Oh, and apparently tornadoes are now a thing here, another new change that simply never, ever happens in this part of the world. We've had a couple small ones hit towns nearby over the last five years.

    If I wanted this much rain I'd move to Seattle. :P

    8 votes
    1. [2]
      patience_limited
      Link Parent
      I can remember Michigan winters where the ground never thawed from October to May; now it's more like November through mid-March. Aside from the expected agricultural impacts, it meant I had an...

      I can remember Michigan winters where the ground never thawed from October to May; now it's more like November through mid-March. Aside from the expected agricultural impacts, it meant I had an extra month or so of asthma meds for ragweed and mold blooms by the time I moved south.

      4 votes
      1. Amarok
        Link Parent
        Luckily I spent most of my childhood running through the woods (or on a 3-wheeler) being stung, bitten by, and swimming in everything I could find (including rivers full of farm and sewage...

        Luckily I spent most of my childhood running through the woods (or on a 3-wheeler) being stung, bitten by, and swimming in everything I could find (including rivers full of farm and sewage runoff). I have no known allergies, even to mold. If I did I expect I'd be in hell right now.

        I have a friend who used to grow a half-dozen cannabis plants nearby, the weather here outdoors was perfect for it. He'd set them up in large pots and they were the 4'+ size variety. At this point, he's given up doing that anymore. All the plants get utterly obliterated by mold no matter where he puts them, and the slugs and other plant-eating parasites aren't far behind. I pity anyone who is trying to farm around here.

        2 votes
  2. patience_limited
    (edited )
    Link
    I got a hit of despair reading the linked analysis of support for climate change action. I've had the privilege of visiting Northern Michigan (45° N latitude) in Autumn for 20+ years, and the...

    I got a hit of despair reading the linked analysis of support for climate change action.

    I've had the privilege of visiting Northern Michigan (45° N latitude) in Autumn for 20+ years, and the impact of changing temperature is abundantly clear - we've postponed our vacation to see peak color, in successive increments, by nearly a month since we first visited.

    That means the onset of frost is 30 days later than a generation ago.

    This morning, I had to hand-pollinate tomatillo plants, for the first time ever. Not a single blossom had set fruit in a month. The days have been ominously quiet, no bees or other pollinators in sight. It's been at least 6° C warmer than normal over the past month; my car thermometer registered 40° C the day before yesterday. Had it not been for the barren plants, I could have kept telling myself that it was just exaggerated worry from news overload.

    That's all leaving aside last year's hurricanes. There was damage to our house, from 100 kph winds felt 12 km inland from the coast, and extra cleanup involved where I worked.

    So what are your most salient personal experiences of climate change and environmental degradation? How do you think we can better tell these stories in a way that connects to political impetus for change?

    5 votes
  3. [2]
    Greg
    Link
    To answer the question directly: very little. And that's hugely fucking worrying, because it breeds complacency and inaction. We've already sailed past a whole list of dangerous, potentially...

    To answer the question directly: very little. And that's hugely fucking worrying, because it breeds complacency and inaction.

    We've already sailed past a whole list of dangerous, potentially irreversible thresholds - but people look out the window and see a city that's temperate, food-secure, not yet flooded, and if anything pleasantly warmer than it used to be. By the time things really bite, we'll be so far past the point of no return that it'll be a dot on the horizon - but telling people to compromise their comfort now to avert a coming catastrophe they can't see firsthand is an uphill struggle. It even seeps into my own thinking: I know intellectually how big the issue is, and I act accordingly, but on an emotional level it just doesn't carry the same weight of visceral fear that I feel about political or economic issues.

    5 votes
    1. patience_limited
      Link Parent
      You're nowhere near the levels of delusional denial practiced by my fellow South Floridians, and the people who think it's a brilliant idea to move here and escape winter forever. Miami's streets...

      You're nowhere near the levels of delusional denial practiced by my fellow South Floridians, and the people who think it's a brilliant idea to move here and escape winter forever. Miami's streets are already flooding regularly.

      The old boiling frog myth might be true for humans.

      Nonetheless, I'm GTFO in a couple of weeks.

      3 votes
  4. [2]
    MimicSquid
    Link
    While http://iscaliforniaonfire.com/ has always said "yes", the fires are worse every year. Though I'm not in an area that's likely to burn, the smoke is dangerously bad for hundreds of miles...

    While http://iscaliforniaonfire.com/ has always said "yes", the fires are worse every year. Though I'm not in an area that's likely to burn, the smoke is dangerously bad for hundreds of miles around a major fire. I've worn an industrial particulate respirator anytime I go outside for at least two weeks out of each of the last few years, and have invested in window liners to make my house as airtight as I can manage. We have had one if the wettest winters in the last decade, and so there's plenty of dry grass to help this summer's fires spread far and fast.

    4 votes
    1. patience_limited
      Link Parent
      Not quite the same thing, but Everglades swamp fires are a regular dry season occurrence in South Florida. Army Corps of Engineers' watercourse management and drainage projects have left vast peat...

      Not quite the same thing, but Everglades swamp fires are a regular dry season occurrence in South Florida.

      Army Corps of Engineers' watercourse management and drainage projects have left vast peat beds and flammable sawgrass meadows drier than they should be. Climate change has meant hurricanes and heavier storms with lots of lightning strikes. Agricultural burning is still permitted, even though it's gotten out of control and sparked wildfires.

      The National Park Service is having to manage the situation with controlled burns. But in general, it means weeks or months of horrible air quality, Weird Florida news stories about homeless alligators turning up in unexpected places, and road closures.

      1 vote
  5. moonbathers
    Link
    The average high for March in my area of Wisconsin is 43 degrees. In March 2012, we had a heat wave in which 15 days were above 70 degrees, including 4 above 80. That same year we had 30 days...

    The average high for March in my area of Wisconsin is 43 degrees. In March 2012, we had a heat wave in which 15 days were above 70 degrees, including 4 above 80. That same year we had 30 days where the high was at least 90, in an average year we have 4.

    In 2017 we had a week of consecutive days in February where the high temperature reached 60 degrees, compared to an average high of 31.

    Last August the Madison area received record rainfall which caused massive flooding across the city. There's been an ongoing discussion since about whether to lower Lake Mendota to its natural level in order to better accommodate future floods.

    The water from my parents' well isn't safe to drink because of high nitrate content from the farm next door. It really bugs me that they can't drink their own water. Similarly, the lakes in Madison are disgusting because of farm runoff and I've turned down friends in the past to jump in them because of it.

    Those are all I can think of off the top of my head, though I'm sure there's more.

    3 votes
  6. rogue_cricket
    (edited )
    Link
    To anwer the title: Flooding feels like it is accelerating, although I haven't done any kind of actual analysis. I live in a valley which has one major river running through it, as well as another...

    To anwer the title: Flooding feels like it is accelerating, although I haven't done any kind of actual analysis. I live in a valley which has one major river running through it, as well as another smaller river. It floods regularly, but it seems to be getting worse.

    This year we had what would have been a 50-year flood, except for last year, which was also a 50-year flood. Peoples' homes are becoming uninhabitable and the water brings detritus and who-knows-what other kinds of backwash from failing pumps into places that had previously been clean and safe.

    I'm not sure of the exact mechanism of it but there's been some clearcutting along riverbanks which is probably a bigger contributor than climate change. A lot of it is done by a single company which also owns all of our regional newspapers! The entire situation locally feels like a microcosm of a larger impending catastrophe.

    More to the point of the article itself:

    I won't get into the whole situation, but the federal government started to institute a carbon tax recently. Some provinces protested. Those provinces that did not come up with their own plans out of "protest" were forced in under the federal plan, including mine. The way people react you'd think the government shot their dog.

    The wild thing is that I got a carbon credit rebate on my income taxes that actually pays for MORE than what the tax would cost me on increased fuel prices. People don't understand it at all, and I'm... resigned, almost. I'm so tired.

    It's like I'm on a boat with a ton of people, and some of them just keep gathering up more and more rocks. And as the boat gets heavier, and gets lower and lower in the water, I'm begging them to toss some of their rocks overboard so we don't all sink together. But all they do is snap at me about how I'm the one infringing on them by even asking and they have a God-given right to gather as many rocks as they'd like and who's to say it's the rocks causing the boat to dip anyway? They'll say or believe anything as long as it justifies their useless collection. I feel like the only thing I have to look forward to is the bitter vindication when we go under.

    3 votes