
March Temperatures in Alaska: 20 Degrees Hotter Than Usual - ciconia
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/09/climate/alaska-abnormally-hot-march.html
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japhyr
I live in southeast Alaska, and anyone who's been in Alaska for a while starts
to know people from around the state. We don't always talk about climate
change as a global phenomenon, but people are always talking about the
specific changes they're seeing and experiencing.

Southeast Alaska is a temperate rainforest. When I moved here in 2002, I spent
my first years relishing the short periods of clear skies we had. I'd plan
longer hikes for those days, and squeeze in a few of those hikes each year
when the weather cleared. I liked going hard outdoors when it was clear, and
then enjoying some inside time when it was gray and gloomy. It was a perfect
place for a programmer, because you play hard for a while when it's nice and
then spend longer periods working indoors while it rains. I like the rain too,
but it was nice to plan some bigger hikes for dry spells.

Now I make myself do indoor work when it's nice out, because we have regular
month-long dry spells. It's not just me; many people talk about how they've
adjusted their lifestyle away from a focus on rain. We all still talk as if
the rain keeps us inside, but it's less of an impact every year. Around the
state it's the same story, local changes have a wide range of direct impacts
on the everyday lives of residents here. Three miners in Nome got stranded on
an ice floe because the ice broke up in March for the first time in at least
120 years. [0]

If you're curious to hear about Alaska weather on a regular basis, Brian
Brettschneider is an Alaskan climatologist who regularly provides informative
commentary on long-term patterns and recent changes. [1]

[0] - [http://www.nomenugget.com/news/nome-gold-miners-rescued-
drif...](http://www.nomenugget.com/news/nome-gold-miners-rescued-drifting-sea-
ice)

[1] -
[https://twitter.com/Climatologist49](https://twitter.com/Climatologist49)

~~~
grecy
I live in Whitehorse, Yukon.

Tons of locals talk about how they used to drive onto the River in Whitehorse
for the annual Rendezvous festival in February - park cars on there, put up
tents, have a huge party ON the river for a week.

It hasn't frozen over solid even once in 10+ years.

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bb2018
Does anyone have good information for how rare this actually is? To me - as
someone who believes in global warming but believes the media does a
disservice exaggerating its effects - this seems like a misleading article.

How many times during a 365 day period does the temperature read 20 degrees
above (or below) the average? How many times does this happen per day, per
weekly average, per month?

As someone who grew up in New England it doesn't seem like it would be that
rare. There were weeks in July where it was over 95 when the historical
average was probably 75 and weeks in February when the average was 10 even if
the historical average was 32. What is the standard deviation for temperature
in certain areas and how rare is it to see 20 degrees variation if you are
looking at multiple windows of time that vary in length?

Sure, global warming did not cause it to be 20 degrees higher than usual? If
anything it would be +3 degrees global warming +17 degrees random variation?
Why run with 20 in the title if there is no way that global warming would be
responsible for the random variation.

~~~
spectramax
I think we need to stop saying “As someone who believes in Global Warming”. It
is as ridiculous as saying “As someone who believes in theory of gravitation”.

It somehow perpetuates an awareness that Global Warming is optional to believe
in. The belief part is off the table.

Same thing with debates about whether earth is flat or earth is 6000 years
old. The fact that these debates take place gives undue credibility to the
non-scientific opposition and elevates to the same stage as the scientific
views.

~~~
ebg13
> _It somehow perpetuates an awareness that Global Warming is optional to
> believe in. The belief part is off the table._

This is a pretty odd take. Believing _anything_ is optional. You may believe
that the evidence is incontrovertible, but even that is an optional belief.
The person you're responding to is just signaling that the questions are not
based on climate change skepticism. In 100 years that signal may no longer be
valuable, but today it probably is.

~~~
spectramax
That’s my point. Believing in anything is optional - except for hard
scientific facts that have been proven experimentally to a “believable” level
_relative_ to the other side which is presenting anecdotal evidence.

Everything can be wrong. Even theory of gravitation. That’s besides the point.

~~~
ebg13
> _Believing in anything is optional - except..._

Except nothing.

> _hard scientific facts that have been proven experimentally_

Science isn't in the business of proving things. Science develops explanatory
models that account for known evidence. Saying that science proves anything is
super wrong and leads to all kinds of problems.

~~~
spectramax
Fair, you are absolutely correct. Science is in building models about how
nature works. Mathematics is in the business of proving, I guess. I think we
are engaging in unproductive pedantry while going away from my original point.

I want to emphasize my point again - we have 2 arguments. Argument A and
argument B. A is presenting scientific evidence, in your corrected terms -
presenting a model of climate change. Argument B is anecdotal evidence. The
fact that they are both argued on the same stage gives the audience (who may
not know anything about A or B) a false assurance that both A and B are
arguable and therefore, they are on the stage. It is fine for casual
conversations, I am speaking about large debates that we still fucking have
about whether Earth is flat. It is equivalent of "Trolling" and should not be
entertained.

~~~
samiru
Many times the consensus has provided scientific evidence (e.g. geocentric
model) and has still been wrong. For some reason, I feel that something
similar is going on with the climate debate. Mix money, politics and some
aspects of religion and one just might arrive to the place where we are in
today.

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skosch
Carbon pricing, carbon pricing, carbon pricing.

It's the one thing virtually all economists agree on as the most efficient way
to catalyze large-scale change (although we'll still need regulation and
sequestration as well).

Politically, the most realistic way to get this done without a huge public
backlash is via a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend. There's a bill
before congress right now [0]. Canada implemented a variation on this at a
federal level recently.

One of the most active groups supporting this kind of legislation is Citizens'
Climate Lobby – if you care about this issue, please consider joining.

[0] Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act:
[https://teddeutch.house.gov/uploadedfiles/deutch_014_xml_116...](https://teddeutch.house.gov/uploadedfiles/deutch_014_xml_116th.pdf)

~~~
oceanplexian
If China subscribed to such a system and agreed to operate on a level playing
field, then I might give more credence to it. However they aren't, and they
won't. No amount of sequestration in the United States or Canada will have a
meaningful impact on world pollution unless the world's largest polluter is
held accountable. Anything less than that is counter-productive, putting us
economically at a disadvantage to a country, and a communist regime, that
would like nothing more than to chip away at US hegemony in the world.

~~~
skosch
China already has the largest carbon trading market in the world [0]. Perhaps
it's not aggressive enough, but they're significantly more ambitious than the
US, and their population isn't nearly as wealthy to begin with, so it'll hurt
them more. Either way, we can chose to invest now, or pay the price for this
silly game of chicken later.

Besides – how do you suggest we get China and India to cut emissions without
doing the same, if not more, at home? Perhaps Border Adjustments [1] can
alleviate some of your fears; they would protect domestic industry. All of
this has already been worked out to stupendous levels of detail by legal
scholars and Nobel-prize winning economists [2] – your armchair criticism just
shows that you're decades behind the policy wonks. Leave it to them.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_national_carbon_tradin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_national_carbon_trading_scheme)

[1] [https://www.carbontax.org/nuts-and-bolts/border-
adjustments/](https://www.carbontax.org/nuts-and-bolts/border-adjustments/)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-
science...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/business/economic-science-
nobel-prize.html)

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cconroy
Does anyone know of the implications of a year-round ice-free artic? Is the
artic salvageable at this point? It seems evident that soon the artic will
have a short period of being ice-free, kickstarting an inexorable process with
yet longer periods of being ice-free.

It is safe to assume at this point climate change is like an asteroid on a
trajectory of near term collision with Earth. I'd rather be wrong and alive
then right and extinct on this one. But thats me.

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11235813213455
Those news are great, but do people actually change their lifestyle? do
governments change too? The solution is to stop being over-consumerists, limit
births of course, and to have more permacultures to bring back more life,
better recycling, plant trees...

We are spending so much energy and resources analysing a black-hole (which is
fantastic for Science, but our ship is sinking), entertainment sports... Every
individual can and should change. Personally I did, I'm living with a really
low environmental fingerprint compared to the average here in Western Europe,
I eat mostly region-scale local vegetables, fruits, rice.., ride a bike, and
buy the strict necessary

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cagenut
my general read at this point is that the ipcc numbers have been dead on, the
"pause" was ocean warming, and now the pause is over, so things are gonna
escalate quickly. like popcorn in a microwave (over the next few decades).

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BurningFrog
PSA: It's only 11° Celsius

~~~
phpnode
only? 11°C is huge!

~~~
war1025
But if your default temperature unit is C, then 20C seems like a heck of a lot
more than 11C.

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RickJWagner
I'm all for reading science data, but an article like this makes me wonder
about Buffalo, NY. Or Chicago, or Minneapolis. Why pick Alaska to report on?

~~~
ip26
Alaska, along with the rest of the far north, is seeing both the largest
shifts as well as the most obvious shifts. Waving my hands a bit, a twenty
degree difference in Arizona means it's hotter; a twenty degree difference in
Alaska means melting permafrost, retreating glaciers, and widespread brood
failures for migratory bird populations.

~~~
bretpiatt
A 20° increase in Arizona (picking Yuma where my father grew up) would mean
much worse. The record high is 124° from 1995[1], at 144° and 5-10 minutes of
exposure we'd see death[2].

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma,_Arizona#Climate](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuma,_Arizona#Climate)
[2] [https://www.livescience.com/34128-limits-human-
survival.html](https://www.livescience.com/34128-limits-human-survival.html)

~~~
miemo
we talking about averages here, not maximums

~~~
bretpiatt
Unclear to me why average temps would move up and at the same time the
variance in the range of temps would shrink? If the average goes up 20° why
should we expect the potential maximum temperature to go up less than 20°?

