The Last Three Months Were the Hottest Quarter On Record 552
New submitter NatasRevol (731260) writes The last three months were collectively the warmest ever experienced since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. From the article: "Taken as a whole, the just-finished three-month period was about 0.68 degrees Celsius (1.22 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th-century average. That may not sound like much, but the added warmth has been enough to provide a nudge to a litany of weather and climate events worldwide. Arctic sea ice is trending near record lows for this time of year, abnormally warm ocean water helped spawn the earliest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in North Carolina, and a rash of heat waves have plagued cities from India to California to the Middle East." Also, it puts to bed the supposed 'fact' that there's been a pause in temperature increase the last 17 years. Raw data shows it's still increasing.
bizwriter also wrote in with some climate related news: A new report from libertarian think tank Heartland Institute claims that new government data debunks the concept of global climate change. However, an examination of the full data and some critical consideration shows that the organization, whether unintentionally or deliberately, has inaccurately characterized and misrepresented the information and what it shows.
The Heartland Institute skews the data by taking two points and ignoring all of the data in between, kind of like grabbing two zero points from sin(x) and claiming you're looking at a steady state function.
The Heartland Institute (Score:0, Insightful)
lolololololololol, were you expecting anything else?
Check those numbers, submitter (Score:3, Insightful)
Those aren't year over year increases, they are deltas from the 1951-1980 mean - and they have indeed been flat for a while.
C'mon, I believe anthropogenic global warming is a real threat - but let's not make stuff up.
Re: The Heartland Institute (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you like them because they're untainted by facts? Good point. No, great point, wouldn't want to be led astray by facts.
Libertarian opinion on science... (Score:0, Insightful)
...there shouldn't be one. As a Libertarian myself, I realize that Libertarianism is a political philosophy. Thus if there is any science to politics (Can't say I think it's a good categorization of it) the only science Libertarian think tanks should be dealing with is political science.
Seriously, it's as related to Libertarianism as it is to the Catholic Church (actually, if anything, it'd be more related to the Catholic Church, being as their bible claims a man upstairs built the environment, after all).
It sucks to see an opinion posted from such an institute at all. The only appropriate posting would be one demonstrating how Libertarianism would interact with this science.
As for if *I* "believe" or not, I am much more set on global climate change than global warming. It's the only science I've actually seen be correct every time, and it explains the differences in the environment in the area I live, which would be one of the areas dragging down the average. However, I would never confuse my opinion on this science with being a Libertarian opinion, because that would make no more sense than trying to find the socialist opinion on if the colour blue is nice.
I have bad news for you (Score:4, Insightful)
Dear reality-based people,
You're talking to fantasy-based idiots who don't care about reality, they just want an excuse to keep treating Earth as an infinite resource and bottomless dump. They'll find an excuse to ignore this just like they find one to ignore all the rest. I'm sorry but the only thing that will make them shut up is when the changes punch the whole world in the teeth... Perhaps when I'm an old man and I tell stories about how California's central valley used to be one of the world's breadbaskets, and how the world's cities used to have beaches instead of shorewalls, and how the ocean used to teem with life before acidification killed most of the diatoms.
But at any rate, the idiots have "won" in that it's almost certainly too late to prevent some degree of disaster. All we can do now is treat the symptoms, and do our best to avoid any of the really bad ideas for treating them.
let me solve this right now (Score:2, Insightful)
1.Burning hydrocarbons: CnH2n+2 + 2O2 -> 2H2O +nCO2
2. CO2(atm) absorbs sunlight, increases vibrational energy, energy is released as atmospheric heat, warms up earth (just a little tiny bit, fine)
3. Even tho earth has it's own heat cycles, best not mess with it too much
Thus:
1. Try to burn less hydrocarbons
2. Be more energy efficient
3. Captains of Industry win on both sides: need hydrocarbons today & then drive new markets in energy efficiency. conservatives win on making money, Liberals win on job creation and paying for Obamacare
Therenow, everyone can go about their summer carefree.
For The Love of Glob! (Score:5, Insightful)
Miami is fucked. NYC, unless they build some wall, is fucked. So where are the debates on how to build the containment walls? Or the storm-proofed shelters? Or the projected increase in FEMA budget?
Or, you know, we could spin our wheels yet again bleeting on and on if humans caused this pickle or not. It doth not matter.
Re:Libertarian opinion on science... (Score:3, Insightful)
I would never confuse my opinion on this science with being a Libertarian opinion
The problem is that Libertarians are against government regulation, but are theoretically for being forced to pay for fucking shit up. In practice, a lot of Libertarians fall into two camps: "I want to toke up whenever I want" and "I want to dump whatever I want on everyone else". That practice leads to things like this, where they are desperate to prove the shit coming out of their smokestacks and effluent drains smells like a rose, because then they can continue to claim that they fully support being held responsible for fucking shit up, good thing they aren't doing any damage to anyone else.
Re:But its cooler here... (Score:4, Insightful)
As I understand Rush... He is actually claiming that "there is no empirical evidence of MAN MADE global warming."
Selective data (Score:2, Insightful)
Studies have been done on this before where the data was "managed". Certain readings that would show no temperature increase were not included citing "old equipment" or claimed that data was not relevant to their sample set. Certain instruments that would not support a desired result would have the equipment moved from the sheltered spot it was in to a much hotter area, for example over asphalt. Environmentalist have also been caught in changing the temperature reading on certain devices to be more favorable, which they called "statistical normalization" and "variance correction". Somehow this doesn't happen to equipment that supports their conclusions. Environmentalists can have the data show anything that they want.
Re:The GISS adjusted^^^ dataset (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you notice, Bill, the ice figures on that site you linked to are measured from 1979. You might want to ask yourself why.
Re:But its cooler here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually Rush has his head up his butt and can only see the inside of his intestines.
Re:Keep it honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing devil's advocate: it's kinda like pointing out that the last 3 months have been the warmest on record in an attempt to convince people that there's a warming trend.
Not really, as that statement is not a comparison of two single points. It's guaranteeing that all points on record are lower than the latest one.
Re:The Carbon Tax (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember my father talking with their friends. They would complain about high taxes and say about the politicians, "They'd tax the air we breathe if they could." They would all shake their heads. (c. 1960's)
Now these politicians have found the way to tax the air we breathe00it's called the Carbon Tax.
Re:For The Love of Glob! (Score:2, Insightful)
When the hell is the debate going to shift from 'IF' to 'Now what the fuck are we going to do?'
Answer: when the global warming proponents actually prove (1) its existence and (2) some meaningful effect in the lifetime of someone alive.
We, in the U.S., used to be under threat of nuclear attack by ICBMs. How many built bomb shelters? How many moved away from cities? That ought to give you a pretty good reference for the term "meaningful" as used above (as in its pretty damned high to reach.)
Re:say it isn't so! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except Heartland is factually lying to use, and the government telling us about AGW is based on actual scientific facts.
Re:Keep it honest (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a counter to the continuing lye that the temperature hasn't been increasing in the last decade.
There is no debate. It's happening, it's real, it's due to the excess CO2 human have been throwing into the air.
The debate we should be having is the best way to move forward with clean energy, and looking at any engineering ways we could reduce CO2 back to about 300ppm
Be we aren't having those becasue people keep lying and denying scientific facts.
There is a reason denier don't actually talk about the scientific facts, but instead lye and cherry pick.
Re:1800s (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the last sentence of the first article good enough for you?
In April, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a monthly average of 400 parts per million for the first time in at least 800,000 years.
Re:For The Love of Glob! (Score:5, Insightful)
What - ocean acidification that kills off shellfish, warmer waters that kill off reefs, warmer climates that spread pine borer beetles to brand new areas causing billions in forestry damage and millions in local business damage, the current droughts in Texas and CA that have caused millions in agricultural losses - that's not enough?
Oh, right, it isn't. Some people will say that it isn't happening until the sea floods their house and their crops and animals die. It took famously seven plagues to convince the pharao that something was amiss. I'm guessing that we'll need our own seven plagues in a year before anything happens.
English. So much fun. (Score:4, Insightful)
When the word "globally" is used in context with a subject that directly affects the globe, it's not a metaphor for (local) completeness, it means "everywhere on the globe." This is basic English.
It's been a consistently cool and wet spring and summer in the northern plains of the USA. This data is relative to the region of the northern plains, and is comprehensive within that region, but not globally. This data cannot, by itself, be interpreted as a global indicator, regardless of if it agrees or disagrees with the global data. One would not say "It has been globally cool and wet" based upon data for the northern plains.
Global climate data (you know, for the globe) will include data from all regions of the globe in order to determine a global average weather datum of any kind -- temperature, rainfall, etc. Anything less is regional. "It has been regionally cool and wet in the US northern plains this spring and summer."
Re: The Heartland Institute (Score:5, Insightful)
Err, the first chart you've linked to shows the sea ice curve being shifted progressively lower on the chart with each passing year.
"Essentially flat" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from temperatures being fairly steady (e.g. a fairly small positive growth rate) over the past decade-ish. The preceding hundred years have been a very steady upward trend, and if that was some sort of fluke wouldn't the temperature have started regressing to the mean by now? It seems more likely to me that whatever long-scale effects are causing the upward trend have been attenuated by some short-term system.
Why bother arguing anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have two religious factions bickering. No amount of evidence for either Global Warming or the opposite will ever convince anyone. So here's my suggestion:
If you think Global Warming is real, move inland and arm yourself to shoot those that try to follow once the waters rise.
If you think Global Warming is a myth, move to the shores and enjoy the surprisingly cheap real estate.
Deal?
Re:ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
"And every time we have an unusual hurricane, the people who were saying 'weather is not climate' point at the hurricane and say 'see, proof positive of global warming!'
No, actually we don't. The most anyone credible will say is that a warmer climate might mean more intense and more frequent storms.
Re:But its cooler here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you hear that on MSNBC? LOL.
I don't listen to all three hours a day, but I've listed to Rush over the last two decades and with few exceptions he hasn't changed positions on much... He does parody stuff, illustrating the logical failings of those who oppose his view, and sometimes this is quoted like he changed position. If you actually listen to the show and not the pull quotes about the show, it's usually obvious what he's doing. Of course, those who intend to defame him, don't really care what he really means.
Still don't believe me? All you got to do is go back and read his books and listen to him for a few hours to know that he hasn't changed all that much....
Re:The Heartland Institute (Score:5, Insightful)
What gets me about cherry picking is that it's so common among the deniers that(from what I've seen and tried to understand of their behavior) they've just decided that "cherrypicking" is some kind of non-criticism that is dropped without reason as a trite dismissal, rather than a serious charge about intellectual integrity.
Re: The Heartland Institute (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how a level that's still lower than almost all of the years that preceded it is "a significant rebound". If I was getting shorter by a foot a decade and one year I found I grew by an inch, I'd not take much solace in the fact.
Re: The Heartland Institute (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Like the first guy said, your chart shows sea ice area is clearly near the bottom. The summary says "trending near", not absolute lows. So you proved that point for them.
2)Your temperature graph shows quite a bit of white but on the whole, there is a lot more red tint than blue, especially considering the scale is over +/- 10C. Ask any 5 year old what the main color is for the ocean and they'll say red. Its obviously abnormally warm.
Every now and then I go down your "informed skeptic" rabbit holes to make sure I didn't miss anything in my personal conclusion that AGW is real and a problem, but every time the data YOU present always ends up refuting your point. Whats your game in all this?
Re:Its even worse than we thought (Score:5, Insightful)
I am eventually going to keel over and die anyways.
Re:D'oh!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Which is why the GW advocates should not make "The weather will get bad" pronouncements because they cannot know.
I remember all the "More severe weather" forecasts being made by the advocates back when Al Gore made his movie, problem is, just about every prediction of dire consequences has not happened. Observations have been both exactly the opposite of the predictions, and/or not anywhere as severe as expected.
Problem is though, that the GW advocates need to create some kind of crisis or nobody will care and their addenda cannot go forward, so every hurricane or drought is held up as "Proof" of GW, while the truth is, the weather has always changed over time. The knife cuts both ways though, every time there is an unusually cold winter, we laugh at the GW conferences attendees sloshing though the snow to get to their convention...
Re:Its even worse than we thought (Score:0, Insightful)
OK, I'm calling bullshit on all this "hottest since" crap.
How can you say temps are above "above the 20th-century average" and in the same breath, accuse others of cherry picking because they choose some other time frame? It's all cherry picked. 20th Century, Since Industrialization, Last X Decades, etc.
Depending on what dates you pick, you can claim we are at record lows or record highs. And for that matter, the larger the data set, the more accurate is the Average...no? So why only go back to the twentieth Century? Why no the 19th, 18th, 12th? back to when dinosaurs walked the earth? More data, the better!
This isn't Science. It's politics and public perception management.
Re: The Heartland Institute (Score:5, Insightful)
everything you said has been debunked by actual facts.
No, it is NOT true that temperatures have been essentially flat.
The sea ice is only a "rebound" because its being compared to the previous year which was THE LOWEST SEA ICE EVER RECORDED.
Thank you for the public service of displaying your ignorance, now go away.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad... [slate.com]
Re:"Essentially flat" (Score:2, Insightful)
The preceding few thousands years (since the last Ice Age) have been a very steady upward trend.
Re:Its even worse than we thought (Score:2, Insightful)
They claim it is the hottest ever recorded, and use the x+20th century to illustrate the point. Their cliam is that from the 18th, when the data was recorded to now we are at a global maximum, however for the 20th century we are also at a local maximum..
the other issue is we care about what it is doing on a long scale, but not entire earth long. If the hottest temp was 2k C on earth that is good to know, but trying to determine if we are working our way there now using that datapoint would not help us.
Re:But its cooler here... (Score:4, Insightful)
He does parody stuff, illustrating the logical failings of those who oppose his view
Rush has plenty of, uh, "logical failings" of his own. See below.
All you got to do is go back and read his books and listen to him for a few hours to know that he hasn't changed all that much....
Right, let's talk about his books.
In one, he tells people to stop worrying about the ozone layer because "the Sun makes ozone." A half-truth: yes, the Sun does make ozone, but it can't make it fast enough to overcome the destruction of ozone by CFCs.
Another similar fallacy: he says there are more trees in the USA now than when the first settlers arrived, so stop worrying about trees. I don't know, maybe that's true, but he ignores the fact that we are cutting these trees down at a much higher rate than the settlers ever did. Forestry management is about ensuring rates of growth are higher than rates of depletion, not how many trees you have at any moment.
I agree that Rush hasn't changed all that much. And he's still wrong.
Re:For The Love of Glob! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have seas 30 feet higher in 100-300 years and living with (say) 2314-year tech than current seas and year 2200 tech in 2314...or 2214. Hech, a 10% slowdown, miserably easy for an overbearing government to achieve, would yield a 30 year delta at the end. Hell, I'd rather have 2014 tech than 1984-tech.
Proposed solutions matter and should be judged in the context of tech advancement, or lack thereof. That's what saves lives.
You seem to be creating a false dichotomy, implying that addressing climate change would slow technological growth. Modernizing the power grid, storing energy from non-greenhouse gas generating power sources, better power management, electric cars, solar power, nuclear power, fusion, etc are all technologies that would make life better. Besides reducing green house gasses, energy ultimately becomes cheaper and pollution is reduced worldwide.
Sounds horrible. It's interesting to me that many opposed to AGW (not saying you), complain about the AGW alarmists, but they themselves are economic alarmists. As if addressing climate change will destroy the economy.
Re:The study focuses soley on Japan (Score:4, Insightful)
A Japanese agency does not have a global (as in the entire Earth) reference for 1891 with which to compare global (again, the entire Earth) temperatures for 2014
Why not? What prevents them from requesting data from other national science bodies? Is there some sort of science embargo on Japan that I don't know about?
Re:"Essentially flat" (Score:2, Insightful)
The preceding 100 years have not been a "steady upward trend", furthermore by all accounts CO2 was not a significant contributor in the early part of that period when temperatures rose fastest.
From basic physics it's clear CO2 will produce some warming. The important question is how much, and the jury is still very much out on that. It's highly dependent on water vapor feedback and cloud formation. The current trend seems to indicate lower sensitivity to CO2 levels than previously thought.
There's no realistic scenario where we won't see 500 PPM CO2 at least. It's encouraging that things aren't looking worse.
Re:The GISS adjusted^^^ dataset (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet if you take the raw data it doesn't show any significant difference from the adjusted data, certainly not enough to say they contradict each other.
As far as polar ice being measured from 1979, that's when the satellites went up that allowed us to monitor it continuously. Older records of ice are more fragmented (but still useful).
Re: The Heartland Institute (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to Arctic sea ice in 2013 is known as regression to the mean. [wikipedia.org] If that trend continues over the next 10 years or so then you might have something, otherwise you're just getting excited over a blip on the long term trend.
Re:The GISS adjusted^^^ dataset (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you should be taken seriously for the same reasons Jenny McCarthy should - the utter garbage you spew on a regular basis could lead innocent people with pitiful levels of scientific literacy to make harmful choices.
I take you seriously.
BTW everything roughly matches up with GISS. Everything. [csmonitor.com] There's nothing wrong with adjustments as Rei helpfully explained below. [slashdot.org]
Re:Action is needed; arguing is a delay tactic (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you keep electing people aged 50+, don't expect them to consider anything 20+ years in the future important.