A large number of high fuel users are also lower-income Americans who are far less likely to purchase new vehicles. Many of these drivers are likely waiting for cars to filter into the used vehicle market, a process that can take years.
Maybe give higher rebates for lower income households then
My impression is that the super-drivers are actually middle-class individuals who have incredibly long commutes or jobs which involve large amounts of driving.
I think the other commenter was referring to the carbon footprint from elites using private jets and the like, versus normal Americans who use their cars for work and cant afford an EV even with a tax credit
Rebates aren't the problem they need the base amount. Like a universal income that helps cover costs of living or a % the government pays for you. They need a lump sum that can be used for the car because it's hard to save 10k+ on-top of everything else when you don't make anything.
The term “climate change” was initially popularized by Republicans under G.W. Bush as they wanted a softer term that sounded less “frightening”. It's a better term though, because it covers non-temperature effects like ocean acidification.
A warmer atmosphere means more water can be held in the air, which leads to more rain (often more extreme) but also more droughts as warmer air can remove more water from an area.
The fact that the climate has (slowly) changed in the past doesn't mean we aren't causing change now. The faulty logic is akin to People have died of cancer in the past; therefore, cigarettes don’t cause cancer now.
Unsurprisingly, windmills aren't driving whales “a little batty”. Also, wind farms are responsible for just 0.03% of all human-related bird deaths in the U.S. and onshore wind is one of the cheapest ways to generate electricity.
The primary reason the US Army wants to electrify its fighting vehicles is to reduce wartime casualties (no need for refuelling missions and electric is stealthier due to being quieter and cooler).
And once the memo came out, and people ridiculed the Republicans for it, they had talk-radio hosts claim the Democrats were responsible for a name change for the next decade or so, causing much public confusion.
That NOAA projection made me question what "sea level" even means if "sea level rise" can vary so much regionally. The extreme high end of the range (Gulf coast) is 18". The extreme low end (Carribean) is 6": 12" difference over about 2500 miles.
I did a shallow dive into sea level and learned that a variety of factors go into the calculation of sea level. Those factors have enough regional variability to mean that sea level is, in fact, a regional phenomenon.
I don’t think this is really in line with current predictions. If you are referring to the weakening or collapse of the North Atlantic ocean currents, this will lead to substantially colder temperatures only for Northern Europe, though it will have other large effects on other regions as well. But it will not be comparable to an ice age from a global perspective—the rest of the world will remain extremely hot.
Yes, I’m referring to ocean currents and how I’ve understood it, is that they carry warm currents from the equator to the poles which is a main driver of warm weather cycling the planet.
Once the ocean currents stall we lose that warmth transference and everything subsequently freezes, and quickly. Not globally, but around the 30th latitude, north and south which is enough to make Europe, Asia, North America and half of Argentina near uninhabitable.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t high C02 levels and global warming the reasoning behind the last Ice Age, circa. 11,000bc?
You do realize, the classification of having or being in an ice age is basically North- and Southpole are covered in ice/snow? We have not left the ice age.
I’m not sure to be honest. I think both? I think ‘mini’ is the planet partially frozen except for the equatorial region, and the duration is a few thousand years opposed to perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands.
But I’m guessing based off the last one. It’s a good question. Either way, it’s a bad time for bald apes who’ve forgotten how to hunt.
This is an interesting and somewhat counterintuitive phenomenon but we’ve seen it multiple times in recent years. The central and northern US seem particularly vulnerable to these arctic outbreaks, but so far it’s typically coincided with warm, dry weather in California—this year seems to fit the mold as well. But is this just coincidence or is it always going work that way?
This has big impacts on my work as an arborist—we’re trying to shift our palette of trees towards more southerly species to prepare for future heat. But if we occasionally experience exceptional cold, this can hamper those efforts as it can be deadly to more southern species. So far California has not seen this particular pattern but it only takes once for serious damage to occur.
I know this doesn't help with your project, but here's how I've managed the "intuition" part. Note that this is just the mental model I have, not actual science.
The jet stream (also known as the polar vortex when it dumps cold air southward) is powered by the temperature difference between the arctic and the subarctic. The arctic is warming faster than the subarctic, so the temperature difference is being reduced. That reduces the power of the jet stream.
The jet stream is like a wall that separates the arctic from the subarctic. As it gets weaker, arctic air "breaches the wall" or maybe the "wall" just relaxes and moves south.
Even though the arctic is rapidly warming, it's still damned cold, so it causes all kinds of problems when it escapes.
It could be just pattern seeking, but I feel that we in southern Saskatchewan are getting yo-yo weather as a result of greater fluctuations in the jet stream. We're just coming to the end (I hope!) of a dangerous cold snap. The week before it was near freezing (shirt sleeve weather around here at this time of year) and the forecast for next week is more of the same.
here is an explanation video with animations at around the 2:30 and 5:00 min mark.
The fast wind was moving more or less straight. Now that it slows down, it gets a wavy pattern, that also moves slower. As a result we get more stable cold zones and more stable heat zones. As these move slower over the planet, it results in longer cold and heat waves, with adverse weather. So the boundary doesn't get "breached" in one direction, but rather it relaxes in both directions, getting the yo-yo weather you describe.
It's unfortunate that "Global Warming" was the phrase that got lodged in the public's collective brain, because it's such a terrible summary of what is actually happening, and idiots run with it.
It can be super difficult to understand, especially when it's easy to present the same data in multiple ways. Global warming is a thing, and climate change is a thing, but it's hard to fully experience because daily weather is so variable.
For example, if you look at the last 2000 years of data, we are starting an extremely rapid temperature increase. If you zoom out to a the last 500 million years, our global temperature is still changing, but it doesn't appear to be extreme.
People just don't realize that homosapiens only really appeared 200,000 years ago and our distant ancestors started showing up 7 million years ago. Point being, we started evolving in a climate that was cool and then got colder.
For perspective, the first fungi are thought to have first appeared 650 million years ago. They have seen it all and eventually said "fuck this" and now mostly live underground. For good reason.
It's the acceleration of global warming that is bad. In the last few thousand years, we have erased ~25 million years of the last cool down period. That is bad. Very bad.
The earth will survive climate change just fine, maybe. We won't, though.
Disclaimer: All numbers are basic estimates and data changes faster than I can keep up with. I am not a scientist, but I can read charts. For my summary here, I used these:
I like this video from Gutsick Gibbon that talks a lot about evolution as it relates/related to climate change and what our future may hold if we don't change.
Problem is, idiots always cling to whatever is most beneficial for them anyway.
EV's are the perfect example.. They ignore the cost saving or time saving (if you charge from home), and at the moment are focused entirely on battery fires (which are more rare than ICE fires), towing capacity (for whatever reason, they seem to think they need to tow 4 tonnes), and seem to have forgotten that both ICE and EV's need prewarming in cold climates.
Of course they don’t. It’s a backwards shithole of a country that 1000% should not be hosting this event. They’re a petrostate who’s just going to use it to make backroom handshakes, just like the last one.
Do you honestly believe there is any country on this planet that could whoop the USA? They’ve literally been starving/killing their own citizens so they can spend more on their military for almost a century now.
All your idea would achieve is more dead humans, and very few on the side you’re okay genociding.
Climate change events are actually now just this backroom oil and gas exchanges. We're eventually going to realize that oil and gas will have to pushed into the coffin even forced at gunpoint.
While it's good to point out lies and falsehoods, anyone who cares about truth is not listening to Trump, and anyone still listening to him does not care about truth.
I thought that, and nearly didn't read the article, but it's really interesting - and useful to have these refutations to anyone who trots out these lies/distortions when talking to you.
Not that arguing with facts is actually going to change their mind, but at least you can feel good about winning the argument!
There is a more-or-less constant stream of air moving across the US. This stream of air is pushing the cold air at the north pole up north.
As the earth warms, this stream of air weakens. It can't push the cold air up north, which causes the titty that is the polar vortex to sag ever southwards.
Donald Trump, known for often giving accurate and non biased information, made some interesting claims about climate change. We believe we might have found that some of his statements... are actually false!!!!!
Disclaimer: I fully support dragging Trump to inform people about climate change.
This is good, but I find it odd that the article drives right past the question of why so many people are so determined to undermine an effective response to climate change both before and after they accept the problem as real.
It makes sense to me -- they view the entire issue as a challenge to capitalism, consumption, endless growth, and ruggeded individualism -- but I feel like this needs to be articulated. The question just looms unanswered in the article.
That's certainly a good point. But I really think it's more than that.
I've been reading recently about how Trump and the like are are basically running on a platform of going to war with the planet. You'd think they'd just want to stop talking about climate change. Former Republican Texas governor and secretary of Energy Rick Perry loves fossil fuels, but he still cultivated a wind energy sector, because there's lots of money in it. Not true for a lot of modern conservatives. They could make money on conservative climate solutions, or just steering around it, but what I see from the far right looks like they're determined to engage on the issue, just in the opposite direction from everyone else.
Like, their vision is that we're gonna beat climate change. Not by negotiating with it, though. We're going to beat it by developing the ability for the wealthy few to survive without changing anything, and then kill the biosphere to show it who's boss.
It's weird, and I think it really matters to them as more than just a defense of a few dying industries. It's like how they obsess over coal even though it's largely gone out of business. It's not about the money. It's about sending a message.
US, for decades and decades: keeps burning fossil fuels and kowtowing to fossil fuel industry at every turn while consumers beg for renewable energies/environmentally friendly investment
US, decades and decades later: “guys, china is investing in renewable energies! What are we supposed to do!!?!”
Because climate isn’t exactly equal to weather. There are effects on weather from what happens to the climate, obviously, but a warming planet doesn’t only mean warm winters. It means instability.
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