“Why are things so much more extreme?”
This is incorrect. If you take the temperature of this day for example, and compared it to record highs and lows of the past recordings, you’d likely find that extreme temperatures are jotted down all through out history.
We are currently in “Solar Maximum”
You can read about HERE
To sum it up about every 10–13 years the suns patterns have revealed it’s during this time the solar activity peaks. Think about how politicians use this to their advantage. In 1999, scare tactics of y2K were used and people even pointed at harsh whether patterns… Guess what? Solar Maximum during that period too.
It’s crazy but, of all the science subjects taught, Astronomy seems to reveal more about earth than the rest.