• ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
    231·
    10 months ago

    I have been living away from home in an extremely cold part of the world for a few years now.

    This is a location that should be -10c at minimum all winter long. Usual temp is -15-20c with lows in the -25’s, there are supposed to be large snowfalls that are feet deep that happen so constantly that the new snow compacts the old. You used to need ski pants and large thick overcoats. Winter tires on busses and cars, trains would need plows on them.

    None of that has happened. We barely have had any -10c days in the past years. We didn’t hit it once this year. There was one 8cm snow that melted the same day. I’ve been wearing a light jacket, hoodie, or thin pants all winter. We saved hundreds of dollars on the heating system because we barely needed to turn it on. It was just constant rain. Rain rain rain rain rain, nonstop for two months. Rain that should have been snow.

    First snow should have been in late October, early November. It was 25c in late November. First snow wasn’t till early January and it instantly melted.

    Spring has already started. The birds are chirping in the morning and the temps are 10-15c. In February. The average temp in January was +15c above what the regular average is. None of the plants rested, they threw off their leaves in mid August months before they should have, and they’re waking up now, some already have buds.

    There is a massive river near me that feeds countless tributaries and is responsible for feeding hundreds of millions of people worldwide with the farms it irrigates. It was gorged with the rain, but the snowfall in the mountains is supposed to feed it till May when the last high altitude snow melts.

    There was no snow on the mountains this year. Experts are already fearing that the river will drop to an unusable level and trigger famine. It has been barely holding on, and that was with tens of millions spent artificially seeding snow in the mountains since it was at least cold enough up there. But it’s 5-10c on the mountains. They can’t even hold the artificial snow.

    We’re fucked. We’re so royally fucked.

    • rainpizza@lemmygrad.mlOP
      6·
      10 months ago

      Thanks for sharing your experience on this. Is your community rallying behind adaptive measures for these type of events? or how are you planning to tackle this in the near future?

      Honestly, in my region, we are seeing droughts last longer and lower food yields(Mexico). I worry that I won’t be on time with some measures to prepare for this upcoming shit storm.

      • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
        81·
        10 months ago

        The area is rabidly reactionary and hostile to the idea of climate change. There is a stark divide between the classes here, and the poor are incredibly uneducated, religious, and angry, and thus, easy for reactionary forces to manipulate. Further, everything is very spread out, and despite there being a massive number of people here, everything is a 15 minute car ride away from everything else.

        Little to no change has been taken or is planned. This is made worse because of the major economic drivers in the area other then farming are natural gas fracking, coal mining, chemical manufacturing, and shale oil extraction. These industries control the local legislative bodies and they have sat on their hands. From my window I can see a major railyard, and like clockwork everyday, there are multiple enormous coal trains pulling hundreds of carriages full of anthracite coal from coal mines in the mountains. Those carriages are headed to a major port city 150km away, where that coal is loaded onto cargo ships and sold across the globe.

        Crop yields are lower, the summer months are near unlivable, as it is 35-42c from nearly late April to mid September. It used to be that we would get a maybe a few hot weeks (roughly 35c) in July and August at best, but it has gotten exponentially worse. This has exacerbated droughts, and farmers are forced to drain more and more groundwater. People are also forced to pump more AC in order to simply not die of heatstroke, as many of the houses have been built for decades to be highly insulated against the harsh and long winters that no longer exist.

        Its gotten so bad that even a few of the far-right reactionaries have started mumbling about how “There isn’t as much snow nowadays as when I was a kid”. But I fear they will not wake up soon enough.

        We are diving head-first into catastrophe.

        • rainpizza@lemmygrad.mlOP
          2·
          10 months ago

          I am sorry comrade. From what you are telling us, it feels hopeless to even try to organize something.

          • ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml
            71·
            10 months ago

            You want me to dox myself? Really? Did you really just ask someone for identifiable information in an online forum?

            Did you think that question through at all? Even if I told you the country, then the region, and precise area I’m talking about would be fairly easy to deduce. Last thing I need is literal identifying information linked to my account.

            You want my age, profession, and eye colour too?