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Earth Stats News Science

Death Valley Dethrones Impostor As Hottest Place On Earth 175

Hugh Pickens writes "Adam Nagourney reports that after a yearlong investigation a team of climate scientists announced that it is throwing out a reading of 136.4 degrees claimed by the city of Al Aziziyah, Libya on Sept. 13, 1922 making the 134-degree reading registered on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch in Death Valley the official world record as the hottest place on earth. 'It's about time for science, but I think we all knew it was coming,' says Randy Banis. 'You don't underestimate Death Valley. Most of us enthusiasts are proud that the extremes that we have known about at Death Valley are indeed the most harsh on earth.' The final report by 13 climatologists appointed by the World Meteorological Organization, the climate agency of the United Nations, found five reasons to disqualify the Libya claim, including questionable instruments, an inexperienced observer who made the reading, and the fact that the reading was anomalous for that region and in the context of other temperatures reported in Libya that day. 'The more we looked at it, the more obvious it appeared to be an error,' says Christopher C. Burt, a meteorologist with Weather Underground who started the debate in a blog post in 2010."
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Death Valley Dethrones Impostor As Hottest Place On Earth

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  • What if... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by filmorris ( 2466940 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @01:27PM (#42420415)
    the temperature in Libya was in Celsius?
  • by Alicat1194 ( 970019 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @01:37PM (#42420513)
    Would it, really?
  • Re:What if... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29, 2012 @01:54PM (#42420665)

    Why not switching to celcius? Except for the US and Jamaica, the whole world has...
    http://i.imgur.com/ucOQh.jpg [imgur.com]

  • by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @02:04PM (#42420729)
    Well it's easier to convert from K to C than from K to F (or C to F). Anyway, any temperature should be postfixed with the unit, especially here on /..
  • Re:What if... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by XaN-ASMoDi ( 894073 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @02:19PM (#42420861)
    How about Celsius or even kelvin? Most of the world preferably use these units, even here in the UK, home of the imperial system. Seriously, join the 20th century!
  • Dubious pride (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29, 2012 @02:30PM (#42420925)

    Promotional leaflets that still boast of Death Valley as being merely the hottest place in the United States are being rewritten, and resort owners say they are girding for a crush of heat-seeking visitors come next summer. There is even talk of having an official 100-year celebration of the record-setting measurement next July.

    “It’s about time for science, but I think we all knew it was coming,” said Randy Banis, the editor of DeathValley.com, an online newsletter promoting the valley. “You don’t underestimate Death Valley. Most of us enthusiasts are proud that the extremes that we have known about at Death Valley are indeed the most harsh on earth.”

    This seems to me to be a really dumb thing to be proud of.

  • Re:What if... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NCG_Mike ( 905098 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @03:44PM (#42421377)
    Yeah, it's a bit odd here. Temperature in Celsius and distance in miles. People's height in feet & inches and weight in stones & pounds. It's even odder in a supermarket where we use both imperial and metric. You can buy cheese at the deli in either unit. Thank goodness we ditched the old coinage for a metric system. Mind you, it'd be more hip to say we used LSD as a currency :-)
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29, 2012 @05:10PM (#42421959)

    Jesus H. M. F. Christ people!

    If it were 136.4 Kelvins it would NOT be anything like the hottest temperature recorded on Earth, in the great outdoors, we, humans, would consider it bitterly fucking cold. So unless you're not a human, or you're a moron, you're just splitting hairs. Ditto on the question of whether it's Celsius/Centigrade or Fahrenheit. If the outdoor temperature hits 136.4 or even 134 degrees C, referring to the ambient atmospheric temperature, without counting anywhere or any occasion when the temperature was higher as the result of something WE did, (like when we made the weather very hot in Dresden, Germany, or Hiroshima or Nagasaki in Japan, as a few examples that come readily to mind...) it would be hotter than anyone could handle just walking around. But it has been and currently is much hotter than that in many places on Earth, as I type this... such as inside geysers, and active volcanoes, for instance, to say nothing of the Earth's core.

    When someone speaks of or writes about the "hottest place on Earth"... IT IS UNDERSTOOD THAT THEY'RE REFERRING TO THE TEMPERATURE AS NATURALLY OCCURS DUE TO ROUTINE NATURAL EFFECTS OF SUN AND WIND AND RAIN, ETC. IT SHOULD BE LIKEWISE UNDERSTOOD, EXCEPT PERHAPS BY A BUNCH OF SMARTASSES, that when that temperature is 134 degrees, THAT IT'S IN FUCKING FAHRENHEIT!

    Quit being a bunch of assholes, you know it's Fahrenheit, I know it's Fahrenheit, and was it lazy not to add the letter F? Yes. Was it worth all of you having an argument about? Jesus Tap Dancing, Tittiefucking Christ, NO.

    You guys will argue about literally anything, won't you!?!

  • Re:What if... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by chrismcb ( 983081 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @06:15PM (#42422345) Homepage
    Because we are human beings. If we were water, then Celsius would be perfect. Fahrenheit is a scale based what is hot an cold to humans, not the freezing and boiling point of water
  • Re:What if... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GreenTech11 ( 1471589 ) on Saturday December 29, 2012 @09:50PM (#42423555)
    You're right, I'm not a scientist, and as such I know how much land an ox can plow in a day! How could the rest of the world be so silly? The only reason that the metric system hasn't been implemented in the US is laziness masquerading as self-entitlement "How dare you take this away from me! This is our history!" Hell, I'm a well educated person, and I had to google ox to find out exactly what one is in relation to a cow. (Trained for farm work apparently, often a castrated male)
  • Re:What if... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by davydagger ( 2566757 ) on Sunday December 30, 2012 @02:10AM (#42424597)
    metric makes more sense for those of us who aren't savant mathemeticians

    1 meter == fraction of the earths surface, just as much as a mans's stride as a yard, differs by 3 inches(76 mm). fuckoff.

    1 milliliter == 1 cubic centimeter

    1 gram == that same cc filled with water.

    0 Celsius - water friezes

    100 Celsius - water boils.

    as far as your beers go, you'd be much happier man drinking them liter size like they do in europe.

    no one uses oxen to plow fields anymore.

I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.

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