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Young people are so worried about climate change and all the records we're breaking. You have no idea...

(Anecdotes to follow.)

When I was a kid (70s), we had plenty of snow in the winter. (Tulsa, OK for reference.) We had "snow days" set aside for the school year. Last few winters I went home, meh, not much different than NW Florida. Maybe 10° cooler?

Been here almost 20-years. Haven't had a cold winter since 2008 or so. Gods that was a bad one. Monstrous bolus of hot air hit the polar vortex and chunked it all the way down here. Found myself saying, every winter since, "That was the warmest one yet!" Quit saying that. It was 72° today. In the middle of January.

Here's a crazy thing no one talks about; Bugs. Dad taught me to clean the car's windshield at every gas stop. Ya know, use the squeegee at the station? That was normal car maintenance. We'd often stop just for that purpose. Bug guts everywhere.

When I was in college, there was an insect invasion every year. One summer it was moths, then ladybugs, then mayflies, whatever. When I came to Florida it was mosquitoes at sundown.

Now I have a couple of acres of swamp, hardly any bugs at all. (That may be a healthy mix of predators though!) OTOH, the large spider population seems to have dwindled since I started camping there 3-years ago. Noticeably. Because I look.

Small mammals used to be common, even in the suburbs. (I'm now on the very furthest edge of town.) Foxes, rabbits, skunks, possums, coons, all that. Now I see nothing but squirrels, and few enough of them. My trail cams catch nothing, not even a single deer. (Though we saw an insane amount of females one night in Alabama at 2AM on the country highways. DOZENS. Weird.)

The occasional black bear gets scared up by human overpopulation, trashed cans splattered everywhere. Had one come in my dog door in 2020! Yeah, not seeing them any longer, not even tracks in the woods or on the sandbanks. Saw a Florida panther once! Once. (Did I mention I'm in the boonies a lot?)

Raptors seem populous enough, no idea what they're eating. Smaller birds? Not so much. Couple of years back I had 4-5 hummingbird males (they're all assholes) fighting around my feeder every summer. This year I'd see two at once, and that was rare. Barred owls used to be deafening at camp. Now I'm happy to hear one or two. Saw my first pileated woodpecker the other day!

15-years ago, frogs were drowning in our pool faster than we could scoop 'em out and newts and other amphibians were legion. Used to count tree frogs on my porch. 6 was my record! Didn't bother counting other amphibians, a dozen+ on any given evening? They would hang around the porch light for easy meals. Now I'm happy to see one or two. Put in a 20g pond around the corner for 'em. Still, not much of anyone home.

Plenty of small lizards, but I never see the 5-6 inchers anymore. Never seen a snake at camp, but the occasional black snake runs away out my flower beds. Only seen a gator twice on the water, and I'm out a lot, in lonely places. Haven't seen a water moccasin in 15+ years.

tl;dr: Anecdotal, but I've been watching our ecosystem collapse for decades. If you're young, it's probably getting worse faster than you think.