“I Think God Hates Me”: 50 Wild Pics That Remind Us To Never Mess With Nature (New Pics)

Before 2021, the temperate Pacific Northwest and western Canada were highly unlikely to get a killer heat wave, but they did. Tropical Hawaii no longer feels an ocean away from drought-fueled wildfires, and last year, the remnants of Helene hit inland North Carolina, showing that hurricanes are no longer a coastal problem.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. But people and government officials are largely living in the past and haven't embraced the new norm.

"What happens with climate change is that what used to be extreme becomes average, typical, and what used to never occur in a human lifetime or maybe even in a thousand years becomes the new extreme," Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said.

"We start to experience things that just basically never happened before."

We have the data. For example, the 10-year summer average of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's climate extreme index, which tracks hurricanes, heavy rain, droughts, and high and low temperatures, is now 58% higher than it was in the 1980s. But oftentimes it doesn't materialize into meaningful action.

"There's plenty of evidence that we sit there and do absolutely nothing [about] while these risks are coming right at us like a moving railroad train, and we’re standing in the tracks. And then all of a sudden, bam," Oppenheimer added.

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate.

Scientists use computer models to simulate how individual extreme weather events unfold in two scenarios:

1. today's world with around 1.28°C of human-caused warming
2. a hypothetical world without human influence on the climate.

That way, they can estimate how much a particular storm, heatwave or drought was affected by climate change.

But time and time again, when catastrophic storms and wildfires sweep a region, the locals whose lives were upended say they didn't think it could happen to them. This mindset helps people cope, but with extreme weather happening more frequently and in more places, it can prevent them from adequately preparing.