Winter has gone missing across the Midwest and Great Lakes, and time is running out to find it. Dozens of cities are on track for one of the warmest winters on record, making snow and ice rare commodities.

Several cities are missing feet of snow compared to a typical winter, ice on the Great Lakes is near record-low levels and the springlike temperatures have even spawned rare wintertime severe thunderstorms.

A classic El Niño pattern coupled with the effects of a warming climate are to blame for this “non-winter” winter, said Pete Boulay, a climatologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Winter has become the fastest-warming season for nearly 75% of the US and snowfall is declining around the globe as temperatures rise because of human-caused climate change.

  • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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    9 months ago

    >With the election looming, there will probably ramp up attacks around that time as well.

    is there any evidence to support this?

      • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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        9 months ago

        while evidence of the future is impossible, surely you’re not just guessing. what makes you think that’s a reasonable thing to expect?

          • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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            9 months ago

            but why would it ramp up around the election? the pieces you cite seem to be lone-wolf attacks with no organization or real plan.

            • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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              9 months ago

              Likely because elections are politically charged events, and they always drive an increase in politically motivated crimes.

              Given that a preponderance of these recent acts have been from right wing persons, often associated with beliefs that they want to trigger a destabilizing event for society, and that the last election had at least one notable act of right wing violence, it’s not unreasonable to predict that this election will be at least as decisive.
              Given that, concern about escalating threats to power infrastructure, with right wing groups have specifically threatened, seems prudent.

              It’s not “elections make us hate transformers”, but elections cause violence, one of the most violent groups repeatedly and specifically threatens power infrastructure, and this election is going to have more nastiness than usual, most likely.

                • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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                  9 months ago

                  The FBI has not issued a specific threat advisory for election driven violence against power infrastructure.

                  DHS has issued broad warnings about both infrastructure threats and election threats, and generalized details of specific plots involving each independently.

                  Conjecture isn’t quite the right word. This isn’t forming a conclusion based on incomplete information.
                  This is making a prediction based on prior trends. B is is correlated with C. A causes B. Therefore A happening should make you anticipate an increase in C.

                  • HACKthePRISONS@kolektiva.social
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                    9 months ago

                    i’m not trying to be difficult here, i just find that there are a lot of outlandish predictions (“trump is the end of democracy”, anyone?) and i just think there should be strong evidence for claims like that. as it is, i wouldn’t be surprised if there were no provable right-wing infrastructure attacks this year, but i wouldn’t be surprised if there were. it’s a cointoss, so saying it’s going to happen just can’t be justified in my mind.