NASA Says 2010 Tied For Warmest Year On Record 554
An anonymous reader writes "It may not seem like it, but 2010 has tied 2005 as the warmest year since people have been keeping records, according to data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. That difference is so small that it puts them in a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880." Adds jamie: "This was the 34th consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20th century average — 0.62 +/- 0.07 C above, to be precise. It was the wettest year on record too, according to the Global Historical Climatology Network."
Not so frosty piss (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Utter utter rubbish (Score:5, Insightful)
Your house is not the world. Sometimes it snows over your house, but that doesn't mean it's snowing over my house. It might even be sunny over my house.
Frankly you'd have to be a special kind of stupid to claim that global temperature averages aren't on the increase. That it's all our fault and we're all going to die? I'm still waiting to be convinced.
Lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:1, Insightful)
Mods, before you mod me down simply because you don't like what I have to say, consider this: I have a friend with, among other things, a Masters in Statistical Inference. I ran this idea past him, recently, and he agreed. I'm not just throwing mud, or trying to confuse the issue, I'm pointing out a legitimate flaw in their methodology.
Re:"Since people have been keeping records" (Score:5, Insightful)
And most of the places people like living were under water. See any problems with that?
Re:"Since people have been keeping records" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not so frosty piss (Score:2, Insightful)
Not much to flame about since I stopped reading TFA as soon as I saw "James Hansen" mentioned as the source.
where are the error bars and raw data ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prologue to Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (Score:5, Insightful)
Who gives a shit about that?
What I care about is are we hurting our own chances of living here?
Oh and stop quoting that nut case.
Re:urbanization (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't have anything to do with the urbanization that occurred between 1880 and 2011 could it?
If by "urbanization" you mean "unprecedented emission of greenhouse gases combined with massive deforestation" then yes, that's pretty well supported by theory and observation. If by "urbanization" you mean "the false rumor that the presence of concrete magically makes thermometers in the ocean and in space register higher temperatures" then no, it couldn't
Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it is the warmest year on record. So what? Keep records for long enough and you'll wind up with a coldest year too.
Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Have any of you noticed that every year they use a different set of reporting stations to "show" that it's the hottest year?
I haven't noticed that. It isn't mentioned in the article. All it says is:
The analysis produced at GISS is compiled from weather data from more than 1,000 meteorological stations around the world...
You make it sound like they chose the 5 hottest stations. Logically, they should take some statistical function of all the stations. It seems really unlikely that they are cherry picking stations to produce a result. NASA is a research organization.
P.S. If you get modded down, it will be because you made an outlandish accusation that NASA is falsifying evidence, with no evidence of your own. If what you say is true, that would be quite a scandal. I'd love to see someone point out what stations they are using and ask them why they are doing it that way.
Re:Utter utter rubbish (Score:3, Insightful)
"Money" is just a medium here; it's a matter of where it makes sense to focus our efforts and resources. You're endorsing misallocation on an unprecedented scale.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Global Warming a hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thank God man-made global warming was proven to be a hoax. Just imagine what the world might have looked like now if those conspiring scientists had been telling the truth. No doubt Nasa would be telling us that this year is now the hottest since humans began keeping records. The weather satellites would show that even when heat from the sun significantly dipped earlier this year, the world still got hotter. Russia's vast forests would be burning to the ground in the fiercest drought they have ever seen, turning the air black in Moscow, killing 15,000 people, and forcing foreign embassies to evacuate. Because warm air holds more water vapour, the world's storms would be hugely increasing in intensity and violence – drowning one fifth of Pakistan, and causing giant mudslides in China.
The world's ice sheets would be sloughing off massive melting chunks four times the size of Manhattan. The cost of bread would be soaring across the world as heat shrivelled the wheat crops. The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be fizzing into the oceans, making them more acidic and so killing 40 per cent of the phytoplankton that make up the irreplaceable base of the oceanic food chain.
Oh, wait.....
Re:"Since people have been keeping records" (Score:3, Insightful)
The places were most people like living are at or near sea level. That is why there are so many sunken civilizations.
If the water level was 15 meters higher, guess where people would like to live. I will give you a hint as to how to find out: Figure out what land will be at or near sea level.
Re:Global Warming a hoax? (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince everybody that there is a problem it will be far, far too late to do anything about it.
You have to remember that we live in a world where most people still believe in the supernatural, where people in power still consider prayer to be of value and where people still go around killing each other because they disagree about invisible beings with superpowers.
Trying to convince everyone is a pointless waste of effort. We need to find ways of making people WANT change irrespective of personal religious or political beliefs. If every naysayer on the planet actually WANTED the most fuel efficient vehicles, or light bulbs, if the NIMBYs actually WANTED wind farms in the neighborhood because they saw the advantages then we could actually move forward instead of getting stuck arguing over issues while the world slowly burns.
Re:"Since people have been keeping records" (Score:4, Insightful)
We do.. and we are.
To behave otherwise is to invite extinction.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Type "global warming" into Wolfram Alpha and limit the graphic to 100 years, 50 years and 10 years. You get an increase of 0.7C, 1.44C and somewhere between -0.8 and +0.6C. Depending on your starting point, the trend may be misleading. The one with a range of 500 years and 100 years are pretty alarming though.
Also, people massively tend to underestimate the amount of energy to warm up an entire planetary atmosphere by this amount. 0.4C looks small, until you calculate the amount of energy necessary to heat up an *entire planet*. It's like a massive juggernaut - once it rolls, it's going to take a lot to stop it.
Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it is the warmest year on record. So what? Keep records for long enough and you'll wind up with a coldest year too.
That is the point that gets me. I don't doubt that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere raised the temp a little, but history is flooded with examples of rising temps, lower temps, higher CO2, lower CO2, and I don't quite see how what we are doing rises above being background noise, in the larger picture.
That said, I do like cars that pollute less, developing better technologies that use less energy or pollute less, but not because of global warming. I just like to breath, drink water, fish, and want to have a national energy policy that isn't dependent on people half way around the globe. If were were making decisions based on those issues, it would make more sense as those are issues we can all agree on and benefit from, and don't require drastic, job killing measures, nor as heated of a debate.
Re:Skimpy data (Score:5, Insightful)
when we know that this is a lie, and temperatures have not risen since 1998.
You've been claiming this for years even though it's been shown to be bullshit the entire time. Why don't you just post it again a little later. The more you post it the truer it becomes, right?
Re:Not so frosty piss (Score:4, Insightful)
Where are the sensors for temperature located?
Are these the same historical locations, year-to-year, over the statistical time-span?
The devil hides in the details...
Time for a reality check (Score:2, Insightful)
The Earth, dear old Terra, is around 4 billion years old. That is about 114,000 times older than modern humans. If one were to scale that time to an average human lifetime, modern humans have been around for the last 5 days of the Terra's life.
People looking at the last 100, 1,000 or even 100,000 years of climate aren't looking at a statistically significant sample of data. When one gets a statistically significant amount of data, one sees that we are living in a remarkably stable period and for most Terra's history, there have been massive climate changes.
What people are really saying is that they want things to continue on in a way favorable for themselves. The simple fact is that while climate change might kill off a lot of species including humans, but it won't end all life, let alone destroy the Earth.
There will life here again. It just won't be you and that pisses you off. This entire thing is about the over-sized collective ego of the human race.
Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
And except that before the industrial revolution, it was also at a plateau for centuries, at almost the highest level for at least 400,000 years, before the industrial revolution, so perhaps something besides Buicks was causing it for the many centuries before 1800. Yes it took off after the IR, but why was it so much higher before then [grida.no], when human populations were rather sparse? That is the point that people like YOU keep ignoring. There is an issue, but the cause/effect is NOT as cut and dry as you would like to make it.
People like ME are saying, yes, lets cut emissions, lets cut CO2, but in a measured, progressive but sustainable way that might even provide jobs, and there are reasons and justifications for it even if you don't believe the science. People like you TWIST the words of conservationists, who want the same thing you want but in a more reasonable way. We aren't saying to not make changes, we are saying to meet in the middle with serious, ongoing changes with a wider base of benefit, and instead you jump on a soap box and tell everyone that either we agree with your ideas, or we just want to shit on the planet. It is no wonder that people tell environmentalists to fuck off when you are so arrogant. No wonder you post as AC. I'm not ashamed of what I know, or believe.
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time (Score:3, Insightful)
That was two years ago, it was not NASA who made the mistake and it was quickly corrected. Why are you trying to mislead readers about this?
Re:"Since people have been keeping records" (Score:4, Insightful)
The shit thing is, if the "correction" is disruptive enough, we may never get the chance to rebuild what we have now. There's only so much easily-accessible energy sitting around waiting for us to get it. If we deplete our oil reserves to low enough levels and then suffer a major global cataclysm, our descendants will be permanently stuck living an Amish lifestyle.
Not that it matters much to us, here and now - I'll be long dead before anything like that happens. But I still feel some responsibility to try and keep our species moving forward.
Re:"Since people have been keeping records" (Score:5, Insightful)
People have always believed that it's perfectly acceptable to kill off other species to keep humans around. Why do you think the Grizzley bear and wolf populations got so low?
Who are you to say that we are more important than, say, the really clever octopods who will come after us?
What a stupid question. I'm more important because I'm me and I want to live, and if that motherfucking octopod thinks he's going to take my place he better bring a whole bunch of bros and some serious weaponry otherwise he's ending up on my plate for dinner. I think a better question is what type of self hating species WOULDN'T do anything and everything in their power to survive? If you feel a deep rooted urge to jump into killer whale's mouths in order to save THEIR species then by all means do so before you spread your genes and hurt ours.
Re:Lies, damned lies and statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a global warming denier. I'm someone who thinks the globe is warming, but we don't know how much of it is man made. Likely much, maybe most, maybe less than half. But it doesn't matter if we can meet half way and make some of the changes while we debate, the changes that will improve life even if global warming was a myth: better fuel economy means less reliance on Arab countries and less pollution.
I think you will find many, many outdoor types agree with me. I'm not Johnny Huntalot, I just fish regularly and I am outdoors a lot. I also live in a county with no manufacturing, few humans, and yet we fail EPA every month from pollution from areas 90 miles from here in two different directions. (between Charlotte and Greensboro/Winston-Salem, NC) If you bother to ask, and don't ask in framing the question around global warming, you will find that most people like the idea of reducing pollution and dependence on Arab oil. Over half the nation has consumption warnings on fish from our lakes due to years of dumping PCBs in the water, for instance.
Many people who enjoy the outdoors, live in the south and are either Republican or Libertarian (like myself) or otherwise conservative at least fiscally, would agree with half the points if you don't make it a debate about global warming. There are reasons to doubt the motives on some people on both sides of the debate. The smart money avoids the debate and simply focuses on things we all already agree on. You keep harping about "global warming", you tune out half the people who would agree on half the ideas you would like to see implemented. Does it matter if people disagree on the reasons, if they agree with you on at least some of the methods?
Re:Not so frosty piss (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, data errors are NOAA's fault as they're the ones providing the raw data. The mistakes usually get corrected on their own when the records are reviewed (such as when the hurricane season gets reviewed at the end of the season). Most errors may not get discovered for awhile, as they are not used to make a sensationalized public release.
But McIntyre and Watts like to play the conspiracy card, and either encourage (or at the very least don't discourage or correct) erroneous data/conclusions of their own or that of their participants. Every single mistake is vindication for them and their audience. It's all the proof they need to mischaracterize the thousands of climate scientists in the world as evil, money-grubbing, fascist socialist bastards bent on world domination.
Basically they do the same thing the IDers do to the theory of evolution, only with less Jesus. Every now and again they discover an error, which is good because it makes the science that much better. But they have yet to do anything meaningful in discrediting the current body of climate science. The papers I know about authored by McIntyre on the subject have been ripped to shreds. Their collective postulations about weather stations was thoroughly debunked (though, of course, they continues to deny it). Most of their other arguments that I've seen in the climate community have been torn apart piece by piece by experts in the field.
It's possible to be a skeptic without being an asshole. I work with a few skeptics. We have interesting conversations ranging from analytical methods to atmospheric dynamics. But the only time McIntyre and Watts are brought up is when we either want to laugh or when we want to point out how NOT to do something.
Re:Oy vey! (Score:2, Insightful)
For religious functionaries, sure, the options would be something like that. Just 'decide' what dogma is correct, throw out whatever doesnt fit, and go with it - that's what priests do.
Science, however, doesnt work like that. If you start by arbitrarily picking out 3 hypothesis (from the essentially infinite number possible) and then proceed to simply 'decide' which one to go with, you absolutely are not doing science.
Your "i)" - Chemical treatments result in anomalous readings for specific samples? That's a testable hypothesis. Go test it. Dont just 'decide' you like it without proof. Don't just "hide" the data because you "decided" in your head that it had to be that. You go get the data and you test your hypothesis and you dont jump to any conclusions without testing it.
Your "ii)" - This is patent nonsense. Dendrochronology is in no danger here - only the mass of additional assumptions that were piled on top of it in order to use tree-ring sequences as temperature proxies. Clearly somewhere in those assumptions there is some error. Your "i)" is one possibility, but not the only one by any means.
Whenever you invent a new instrument the first thing you have to do is, check it for accuracy. And not just in a perfunctory manner, but thoroughly. And with the instrument in question (using tree-ring records as a proxy for real temperatures) it's immediately apparent that the data can be analysed in two sets. The vast majority of it is very, very difficult to check for accuracy, for lack of a more reliable record from those times to compare it to. Only at the very late end of these sequences is there another source of data which is arguably reliable enough to serve as a validation of the technique. Ok, fine, validate it against those figures, it's less than ideal but once we see it matches there, we at least have some reason to presume it accurate all the way back. Only when it's checked it doesnt validate against that data after all!
And their response is your "iii)" - just throw out the data that doesnt fit the hypothesis. "The instrumental data rendered it unecessary anyway." Unecessary for what? For scaring the bejesus out of the population and rallying political support for the measures these so-called researchers support? Well, sure. But if the goal instead were to actually generate valid scientific data then that part of the sequence is not "unecessary" in fact it's crucial, it's the most important part!
You can keep spinning like a top till you get dizzy and fall down, the fact remains that when these people ran into data that didnt fit their conclusion, their response was to "hide" it, not to investigate. Their credibility as scientists died the moment that came out. It's truly sad that so many of us these days are so scientifically illiterate that people continue to pay any attention to their pronouncements.
Re:Time for a reality check (Score:1, Insightful)
Then stop talking like it. And, your so-called scientists are NOT looking at the very long history. They are looking at a short bit of history and making pronouncements they claim to be fact which it is not.
No, I am not going to worship at the alter of the religion of climate change. I want real science, not pseudoscience.