i remember back around 2013 or so i was saying things like "this might be the last serious winter that we get here".

then we got some brutal winters. and, i had to adjust my thinking around the topic.

the way climate change has been affecting us here has been to incrementally shift the oscillations upwards. there are 11 and 22 year solar cycles (roughly), and climate change doesn't reverse or negate those, but it can exaggerate or blunt them. the last couple of years have felt very cold, it is true, and we have seen some record breaking temperatures as well, but, on average, they've trended upwards.

but, we were at the low point of the cycle, and we're coming out of it now...

the northern hemisphere has an exaggerated importance regarding climate feedbacks. the next 11-22 years are really critical. politicians keep looking for deadlines, because they think we need some kind of business normality, that we need to get the fucking memo, but of course it's not going to actually work like that - we can't calculate the exact moment where we're officially fucked. we won't know it until it happens....

but, what we can say with some certainty is that we're entering the end game. we don't know how strong this solar cycle is going to be. if it's really, really weak then maybe we eek out another cycle before we're officially fucked; more likely is that the coming tipping points are now imminent, and we're in a race against time, as the sun starts to accelerate the process rather than slow it down.

if these tipping points click in over the next 11-22 years, then winter's years in southern canada may be numbered, and we may have seen our last serious winter, here.