this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Fun fact, when the jet stream gets perturbed like that and develops the sinusoidal deviations that we are experiencing, it's called a Rossby wave.

These waves are actually super normal as the jetstream shifts with the seasons and moves north/south, especially when in a La Niña phase of the ENSO, which we are in right now.

The Hadley circulation cells whose boundaries define the jet stream are driven by convection. The US lies right along a jetstream boundary between two cells, and just downwind from the pacific ocean, so our weather is particularly sensitive to the temperature differences across the pacific ocean.

El Niño patterns have a hot equatorial pacific ocean which drives significant convection on the southern cell of the jet stream crossing the US, stabilizing it. La Niña patterns have a smaller gradient between the temperatures in the cells to the north and south of the relevant jet stream, especially as climate change relatively warms the arctic faster, leading to higher amplitude destabilizations during La Niña patterns like we are experiencing now.

More fun facts about these Rossby waves: they have been proposed as the mechanism to drive the eddies that end up forming planets in protoplanetary disks around baby stars (see the wikipedia page for Rossby waves above), and as the mechanism behind the hexagonal shape of Saturn's polar cell. Worth noting that the exact mechanism for that hexagon is still highly debated, but Peter Gierasch used to have a fun model using a modified record turn table to create a rossby wave that formed a hexagon as a proof-of-concept that has stuck with me.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I liked the image of the Titanic nosing down into the water, and deniers up on the stern end saying, "If we're "sinking" how come we/re up so high?"

Because science, bitch!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

That's science though, the people that don't believe it will not be convinced by smart people sharing their discoveries.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago

I feel like you hit the nail on the head. It's not that they don't understand it. I don't understand most of this, but I can try

There are people out there who just don't believe and therefore will never try to understand

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

Go instead with:

Humans helping the global warming demons is causing the polar ice cap gods to become weaker, who in turn are unable to contain the cold yin winds in the poles, causing them to move to your house.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I'll distribute the leopards. If you're Republican or voted for the pile of shit, just see one of the leopards. Tell them to go back where they came from, they'll know what to do. They're trained, it only takes a second. Pretty painless during... I assume. Oh it's figurative speech? Never mind! I'll get the pumas back. It was pumas right? Ew, I think this one already ate a face. Sorry sorry...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I guess the intent matters but that was kinda painful to read. I give 3 points for the intentions and effort but the execution gets 0.7 scores all across the board

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (2 children)

It's a riff on the leopards eating people's faces party joke/meme/satire/sarcasm that goes something like "I can't believe they ate our faces" says person who voted for the face eating leopards party. It basically means (in the original), you get what you vote for and shouldn't be surprised when it happens.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

It goes to show you, you learn something every day. Not always something very useful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Sure, we are happy to help!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

From that picture it looks like the weak jet stream is the problem. We just need to build a ton of wind farms across Canada to blow it harder so that it becomes more powerful. Easy.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

If we want the wind farms to blow we'll have to power them using fossil fuels of course. It's the only solution.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago

And the pollution isn't a problem, because the strong winds generated will dissipate it away.

Oh, and the entire system must be ai-based

[–] [email protected] 34 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

You need to convince them the Earth is a sphere first.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Then we need to convince them to build more big red arrows to keep the blue stuff up the top

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Wouldn't a big red circle have more power then smaller individual red arrows?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

Bet you're wishing for Trump and his sharpie now!

[–] [email protected] 58 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives

[–] [email protected] 18 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

It's not the rich call it what it is. Capital. When profits are impacted we will see change. This is why I continue to say no one is going to bat an eye when Florida gets swallowed by the ocean but when New York does? That's when we will have a collective eye opening.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 12 hours ago

Capital

Poor word choice. It is more profitable to build renewables today. Oligarchist power to protect their existing assets, is not "rational capital allocation", but is what we get from power to corrupt capital allocation.

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[–] [email protected] 136 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (17 children)

Honestly we are way past the point of any scientific reasoning. The public has voted that they are uninterested, and the US government and large corporations are about to be uninterested too.

To be blunt… No one ever really cared, but the world kinda squeaked by putting scientists in front of statesmen and public broadcasts. Everyone kinda nodded along, and not just for global warming.

That period is over.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 12 hours ago

No one ever really cared

That's just not true. The problem is that the people who care were never the kind of people who'd come into power in our society.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

A few people cared, fewer did anything about it. Most were more concerned with mass production of cheap shit.

Got a heat pump to replace the gas boiler, bike instead of car and replaced the concrete paved garden with what will hopefully become a wildflower meadow with shrubs on the edges. You can actually just stop buying a lot of the stuff that is causing these problems.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

God people like you make it sound so easy and then I tried it to find it's actually even easier.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

There could be more options to choose from if we enacted electoral reform and gave voters the freedom to vote outside the two party system with no spoiler effect.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

We'd also need campaign finance reform (revoke Citizen's United for 1), get rid of insider trading, net neutrality, etc. which would all benefit each other and benefit from electoral reform

[–] [email protected] 6 points 15 hours ago

Dayum. Well said. Though some people cared. We, the few, and Al Gore, for example. The great majority, no. It does appear that period is over, I agree. Perhaps this is how it has been for the last 4-5 decades. Maybe this hope's death will be the last in our history.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

It's just nature's hernia

[–] [email protected] 4 points 12 hours ago

B b but it was hot in the summertime or something

[–] [email protected] 50 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

Sounds too complicated to be true. Obvious explanation is Jewish Space Laser!

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[–] [email protected] 146 points 1 day ago (20 children)

Good luck convincing the rubes that. Literally heard jokes about "global warming" today in the office. Had to say, well its climate change actually and wild shit means its not doing good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Let them know that they changed the term to "climate change" so that stupid people would understand that the Earth getting hotter on average will make some places colder, because ice that used to be staying put, will now melt into water, which will flow into places where there wasn't water before.

That's about as dumbed down an explanation as is possible, I think, lol.

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