How has climate change affected you?

[Gerhard Gerber]

I watched part of an interview where the person made the statement Earth has never had a stable climate.......

This is not meant to be a debate about Global Warming, whether the theory is true, causes etc etc.....

I would like to hear about changes to your local environment that you've experienced in your life time.


My country and the  whole of Southern Africa is in the grips of a major drought right on the heels of another drought with one sub-standard rainfall year in between. 

This means things are getting ugly, farmers are selling livestock before they perish, and wild animals are dying of thirst and hunger.


We are and always have been affected by El Nino and I have my theories regarding this, but the fact remains drought is a normal occurrence in this part of the world.  There are true stories from my childhood years about children 5/6 years old going hysterical during a rain shower because they'd never experienced rain.
There are parts of the country where that could be the case again......when it rains again.

So basically, aside from weather, what changes have you seen?

 

[Gerhard Gerber]

The changes that have me worried concerns plants and bugs mostly.

We've had two citrus trees die slow lingering deaths without being able to diagnose or save them. The Orange was about 30-35 years old, the Grapefruit tree was huge and much much older.

The two remaining Citrus trees seem to be completely out of whack with the seasons, for the past few years the Orange tree especially has fruits in every imaginable stage, but none ripen properly.

Bugs.....

The biggest change I've seen is with ants, a small, black ant has basically taken over.
They seem to have displaced several other ant species that were common.
They invade houses, they go everywhere and get into everything and seem unstoppable.

Best example is a fig tree that's 50-60 years old, and we've been eating figs off that tree for 40 of those years.  The past 3/4 years we've had a battle with the ants and this tree, and it's worsened to the point where you struggle to find a fig that's not full of little ants 
Last year I tried to put barriers around the trunks, bu that didn't stop them.  Oil-drenched rags work for a while.....
Poison.......well, it's a fruit tree, I don't want the poison in next year's figs.....

Next also relates to the fig tree.  About 2 years ago I notice something funny, looked like little bundles of wood shavings appearing on the bark, and then I started noticing parts of the bark dying.  When I realized the one trunk was practically ring-barked, I climbed in with a knife  and started probing.

I ended up finding several big fat white worms that were busy hollowing out the fig tree.  Figs protect themselves with latex, so this must be some kind of worm......
I saved out tree, but my cousin who lives in the same neighborhood wasn't so lucky, failed to notice what was going on and the tree collapsed eventually.

I've never seen or heard of anything like these worms, 40+ years, and lot's of fig trees everywhere......

[ddogu]

I live in Istanbul, Turkey and for the last 10 years or something the humidity in summer rose up drastically. Now, we have almost tropical-humid summers, pretty hot and very annoyingly humid. I was born here and if I was to make a comparison, the change is big. The humidity tends to increase (compared to previous ones) in winters too, and combined with cold weather, it freezes your bones lately. Also, almost zero snowfall. When I was a kid it snowed a lot, blocking roads and carparks (which is a huge fun for kids, of course hehe).

OTOH deforestation and bad city planning is on the rise too, so the effects I mentioned above could be stemming from those, too.


Farmers would have more robust feedback about this.

[Mechanickal]

A few years is nothing but a tiny dot on the earth's timeline.

It's hard to say what effects are just a temporary thing or are there to stay.

[ThePeacent]

like ddogu, here in Spain we're suffering from more humid and colder Winters, 
and every Summer is being hotter and worse than the previous one, it's a trend that is definitely showing, 
also the changes from Summer to Winter are being faster (Spring and Autumn shorter, less noticeable) and temps change more quickly and to a bigger degree than ever before 

[magentus]

like ddogu, here in Spain we're suffering from more humid and colder Winters, 
and every Summer is being hotter and worse than the previous one, it's a trend that is definitely showing, 
also the changes from Summer to Winter are being faster (Spring and Autumn shorter, less noticeable) and temps change more quickly and to a bigger degree than ever before 

Same here in the UK - much more extreme weather happening in shorter amounts of time. Records are being broken constantly year on year.

[gregozedobe]

I've lived in my current house since 1981. 

In that time I have noticed a significant reduction in rainfall, and we seem to get heavier falls, but less often.  Our local lakes used to be safe to swim in most of the time, these days blue-green algae makes them unsafe nearly all the time.

The summer sun and hot, drying westerly winds seem more severe these days, to the point where we can only grow our summer vegetables on the east side of our house these days.  And even there they seem to struggle, so we are considering erecting a shadecloth "roof" to protect them from the hot sun and drying winds.  It used to be possible to grow a good crop of all sorts of veggies out in the open in our back yard.

We also have less water available for watering plants which doesn't help.  But I blame our politicians for that, our local population has increased greatly, but our water catchments and water storages were not increased by anywhere near the same amount.

I have noticed a change in the plants that grow around are area without human assistance (water, fertiliser etc), a lot of the less robust and drought tolerant plants have simply died out to be replaced by more robust, tougher species.

I used to see dragonflies quite often in our garden, and the occasional large butterfly, these days either are a very rare sighting.

Of course these changes may be all due to normal climate variability rather than a permanent "climate change", but whatever the cause, things have changed over the last 38 years around here.

[nate j]

I blame herbicides & pesticides more than climate change, but butterflies used to be extremely common when I was a kid.  Now, it is rare to see even one.

[gerleatherberman]

In the last 50 years, according to weather pattern documentation, the changes are drastic in the Southeastern U.S. Winter no longer gets and/or stays cold enough to kill off insects, so that is a major issue. Wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets are seen as early as January now. They are only hibernating, where they used to die off in the area. Weather patterns are more erratic than they used to be as well. Summers are so hot now that some AC systems just can't handle cooling homes and businesses.

I know climate change is a part of Earth's being, but also believe we have seriously accelerated the process. The means to remove a meaningful amount of CO2 from the atmosphere exist, but it is cheaper to deny the problem than to address it.

[MTFool]

I blame herbicides & pesticides more than climate change, but butterflies used to be extremely common when I was a kid.  Now, it is rare to see even one.

Lighting  bugs too.... We don't have them like we use to when I was a kid.     

[gerleatherberman]

I did see a large Monarch butterfly in front of the store I work in last week. It was strange, because I had not seen a Monarch butterfly, yet alone a big one, around here in years. Haven't seen any since though. We've had erratic weather patterns getting worse every year. Last week an F4(1 smurfing mile wide) tornado killed 22 people not too far from where I live. And a tornado touched down a mile from my work in January. JANUARY. 

[ezdog]

I did see a large Monarch butterfly in front of the store I work in last week. It was strange, because I had not seen a Monarch butterfly, yet alone a big one, around here in years. Haven't seen any since though. We've had erratic weather patterns getting worse every year. Last week an F4(1 smurfing mile wide) tornado killed 22 people not too far from where I live. And a tornado touched down a mile from my work in January. JANUARY. 

Man I hate when that happens.
I worked relief for the Joplin Tornado for a few weeks and that was the saddest thing I have ever seen.

I also have a tough time accepting that the Polar Ice melts and raises Ocean levels like it is now in the cycle of the Earth but who really knows.

The Earth may have been created in less than a Week but the days might have been a Million years each back then too.

[gerleatherberman]

It is hard to accept the ocean levels rising, but you can read about some coastal cities, such as Venice, and see that their time is nearing an end. The ocean only has to rise an inch to cause significant damage to ecology and geography. It is part of Earth's cycles, but we have accelerated the cycle by thousands of years.

[powernoodle]

I would like to hear about changes to your local environment that you've experienced in your life time.

None.  But I've only been watching the weather for 56 years.

I'm still waiting for "the coming ice age" that was prophesied with eagerness in the 1970's.  Before it became global warming.  Then climate change.





 

[gerleatherberman]

Impressive compartmentalization. 

[Gerhard Gerber]

Butterflies.....what's left of the huge Duranta tree in the from yard used to be a buzzing with insects, bees, wasps, butterflies.......the tree is barely alive.

Another thing that I recently thought of was a migratory hawk/buzzard  that used to fill our skies a certain time of year, we even had one go through the windscreen of my dad's car......I was 4 or 5 and very angry that I was not allowed to keep it.
I know them as "Thompson's hawks" but google does not agree, been unable to identify them.

We don't see them anymore....

[Gerhard Gerber]

Climate change is real, but I am hesitant to make too much of it because everything tends to cycle.

My impression is that the seasons have moved a month, so for us that means late rains.  Problem with that is we had thunder showers on the day I was born, which is solidly into winter.

We've had practically no rain and we're into Fall, we still need rain to fill the dams, but it's too late for the plants.......I've heard it said the late rain makes the grass rot......not that there's much grass.....

[gerleatherberman]

NatGeo created a very good, and scientifically accurate - politically neutral, page that outlines the facts in a way that we don't need a Bachelor's in climate-science to understand. It is a few years old, but the concept and information are still relevant.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/04/seven-things-to-know-about-climate-change/

Subjective experience can usually be shoddy for determining what is going on long-term(not saying everyone's experience is, but the likelihood any of us have eidetic memory is very low). Science records the data, so subjectivity doesn't play a roll. Most people, who seem to deny we have accelerated/altered the processes and/or polluted the atmosphere, generally aren't willing to learn and look into the science, data and facts. Which is fine, because that is what some wish to do for sociopolitical and/or religious reasons. Personally, I enjoy learning and understanding complicated concepts and processes. 

Edit: A couple of years old, not a few.

[lovecraft25]

Snow has become a rare thing here (500m alt.) in the winter. Now you need to climb past 1000m to have snow in the winter... 20 years ago, every winter had 20cm of snow at 500m alt. For the last 10 years, it's becoming scarce to have snow at this height. There's a lot of visible, durable changes. Can't do a full list in a minute... I now "10 years is nothing", but hey, just what I see.

[Don Pablo]

Lighting  bugs too.... We don't have them like we use to when I was a kid.     

I've never seen one of those. Are they cool?

[microbe]

I moved from one climate to another some 15 years ago. In my home climate, winters in general are less colder, and summers have become drier then the averages, while various heat records are set in the last few years, and never seen water shortages last summer. As an example, this year they had the warmest 29 Feb since they started keeping records.
The climate where I live now in general doesn't have cold winters, but its supposed to have wet winters. This year, it has rained 3 days so far. It's the first winter I have seen mountain streams that are bone dry. The overall rainfall may have become rarer, but the intensity of rainfall has increased, with floods due to excessive rainfall around the country. My area was flooded twice in the last 3 years, and pensioners that lived here all their lives had never known this area to flood before. Summers are reaching higher peak temperatures, with last years 48C / 118F being the hottest I have personally experienced in those 15 years. Scorchers. Forrest fires numbers have been higher then average in the last years.
Overall, It is getting warmer and drier in the last decades, and it is noticeable.

[ddogu]

like ddogu, here in Spain we're suffering from more humid and colder Winters, 
and every Summer is being hotter and worse than the previous one, it's a trend that is definitely showing, 
also the changes from Summer to Winter are being faster (Spring and Autumn shorter, less noticeable) and temps change more quickly and to a bigger degree than ever before 

All the more reason to enjoy mojitos during summer!   

[ddogu]

Same here in the UK - much more extreme weather happening in shorter amounts of time. Records are being broken constantly year on year.

And magentus, all the more reason to enjoy more pints of Guinness during summer!  

[Ron Who]

Records being broken here as well. But that doesn´t mean anything on a larger scale like say 25 to 50 years; deviations from average values are to be expected. That´s the way statistics works.

What I observed, over the last 50 years, are insect species moving north. Quite a few originally Mediterranean species are now fairly common in the Netherlands, and Arctic species are leaving. That is, even if you don´t believe meteorologists this still means that Western Europe is gradually warming up.

As to the causes of the warming up, and whether we should try and stop it, seems to depend on politics rather than rationality.

[MTFool]

I've never seen one of those. Are they cool?

Pretty cool,,,we used to catch them and put them in jars and watch them light up,( then let them go afterwards)

[pomsbz]

To be honest I've been living here for 20 years now give or take, I haven't seen any weather here that hasn't been repeated at some point during that time. From crazy snow to heat waves. I saw it all back in '98-2003 also. It's been a mild but very rainy (for us) winter this year and heck, we need all the rain we can get so no complaints.

[ddogu]

Pretty cool,,,we used to catch them and put them in jars and watch them light up,( then let them go afterwards)

We did the same thing! Dad used to catch them, we'd turn offthe lights and watch mesmerized  

[Gerhard Gerber]

Records being broken here as well. But that doesn´t mean anything on a larger scale like say 25 to 50 years; deviations from average values are to be expected. That´s the way statistics works.

What I observed, over the last 50 years, are insect species moving north. Quite a few originally Mediterranean species are now fairly common in the Netherlands, and Arctic species are leaving. That is, even if you don´t believe meteorologists this still means that Western Europe is gradually warming up.

As to the causes of the warming up, and whether we should try and stop it, seems to depend on politics rather than rationality.

[lister]

When I am hot, I am not the good kind of hot and when I am cool I am not the right kind of cool. Smurfing temperature extremes!!!! 

 

[Gerhard Gerber]

As to the causes of the warming up, and whether we should try and stop it, seems to depend on politics rather than rationality.

I was recently introduced to another way of looking at this.

Climate change is real, the causes are not 100% certain, and even if they were we cannot just stop all these damaging activities without negatively affecting just as many people.

A new idea for me, is that the focus should be on live with and adapt to these climate changes.

Extra tax on SUV's won't fix anything.

Namibia and the whole of southern africa is in the middle of the worst drought in recorded history. Crops failed, livestock and game have been decimated, the country is dead and dry.
Spring is here and the whole country is watching the skies, truth being it will take many years of above average rainfall to recover.

Sadly governments are not good at doing the right thing, particularly african governments.  While a third of the population are literally starving, the president jets around the world.

This instead of building desalination plants