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Earth Science

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.
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The Last Three Months Were the Hottest Quarter On Record

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @09:45AM (#47457061)
    sudo apt-get install popcorn
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ColdWetDog ( 752185 )

      Don't know about you, but on MY systems, you don't need elevated privileges to get popcorn.

      Comes with that rack of Pentium IVs in the closet.

  • by jzarling ( 600712 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @09:50AM (#47457101)
    ...surely the recent "Polar Vortex" and cooler temps I am experiencing means that Global Warming is a hoax!!! Rush Limbaugh told me so.
    • Actually, Rush Limbaugh claims there is no empiracle evidence for hlobal warming. I don't see why he would claim a need for weather to support that.

      • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:08AM (#47457281)

        As I understand Rush... He is actually claiming that "there is no empirical evidence of MAN MADE global warming."

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Actually Rush has his head up his butt and can only see the inside of his intestines.

    • I will listen to him today to get refine my snark for accuracy.
  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @09:51AM (#47457111)

    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.

  • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @09:52AM (#47457127)

    Heartland Institute deliberately misrepresenting something to influence public policy? Surely you jest!

    • What's surprising is that the financial industry really stand to gain BIG from the carbon "tax" and so you would expect the Heartland Institute to be promoting their best interest.

      The scam works about like this. Anyone wanting to generate CO2 would have to buy carbon credits, imaginary items which are sold and speculated on by big finance. As CO2 limits decrease price increases = big profit.

      It's like a tax, except the revenues go directly to the banks, bypassing the government entirely.
  • the hell you say...
  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:03AM (#47457229)

    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.

  • Facts:
    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, Libera
    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:25AM (#47457473)

      CO2 does NOT absorb sunlight in significant quantities. It's lowest wavelength absorption band is in the short-wave IR where the solar incidence is already very weak.

      What CO2 does that makes it a greenhouse gas is that it prevents long-wave IR emission from the Earth into space, therefore helping to keep some of the energy that reaches the Earth from leaving.

      Please get your "facts" straight.

    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:36AM (#47457557)

      1. Try to burn less hydrocarbons
      2. Be more energy efficient

      The problem is that your "solutions" are wrong. CC is not a problem today, and will not be a problem tomorrow. But it will be a problem 30-100 years from now. In the long term the best way to reduce CC is population control ... and the best way to do that is third world education and poverty elimination ... and the best way to do that is to maximize economic growth ... and burning less hydrocarbons is NOT going to do that. A coal fired plant in Africa may emit more CO2 today, but it will improve people's lives, make them prosperous enough to educate their children, and lead to a lower population 50 years from now, this reducing CO2 emissions in the long run.

  • by Scottingham ( 2036128 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:06AM (#47457253)
    When the hell is the debate going to shift from 'IF' to 'Now what the fuck are we going to do?'

    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.
  • 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.

    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.

    Single data points cannot be used to make an argument - on either side - even if you're actually right. Intellectual dishonesty on both sides of the debate has made global warming/climate change a toxic topic.

    • Re:Keep it honest (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BasilBrush ( 643681 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:19AM (#47457403)

      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.

      • Problem is in random noise data you can always find statistics like this to prove your point. "The hottest X." "The coolest Y." Whatever. It's something everyone should have to do in a basic statistics class, finding patterns in noise to prove their point.
    • Re:Keep it honest (Score:4, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland@yaFREEBSDhoo.com minus bsd> on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:56AM (#47457705) Homepage Journal

      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.

  • Selective data (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tolvor ( 579446 )

    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 favorabl

    • [Citation needed]

    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:52AM (#47457679)

      I see that the GISS temperature series is quoted to maintain the "hottest quarter" narrative.
      See for example
      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/18/hansens-nasa-giss-cooling-the-past-warming-the-present/
      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/24/unadjusted-data-of-long-period-stations-in-giss-show-a-virtually-flat-century-scale-trend/

      Much of the data has been created by infilling gaps, homogenization, and other adjustments. They cool the past, add adjustments to the present, and drop stations out of the network creating a warming signal.

      It is no coincidence that the cleanest most reliable temperature measurement system for the USA the CRN (climate reference network run by NOAA) shows NO warming over the last decade, confirming that there has been no warming as seen in other temperature records for 13-17 years. (The 17 year is a satellite record also without adjustments by the global warming partisans).
      The CRN has triple redundant air aspirated sensors in pristine observation sites spread uniformly through out the USA, so no adjustments are needed. Despite CO2 rising. The computer models are broken. See...
      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/noaa-shows-the-pause-in-the-u-s-surface-temperature-record-over-nearly-a-decade/

      The claim that the latest X period is the warmest is like a 30 year old man claiming that the last 5 years of his life have been the tallest in his entire record. Yet hes is not growing anymore !

  • If you believe this, I have a bridge to sell you. Hardly used, great condition.

    First, clean up the data and explain the continual adjustments. You know, those adjustments that keep making the past look colder, and the present look warmer - despite effects like UHI. Make the raw data available, along with the methodology used in the processing.

    Then, and only then, should anyone believe pronouncements about "warmest months ever".

  • by Atzanteol ( 99067 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @10:19AM (#47457401) Homepage

    I really wish the pro-AGW side wouldn't focus on these events so much. It's pretty much irrelevant whether a month or quarter were "the warmest on record" and only leads to deniers pointing out all the "coldest on record" events as they happen.

    AGW is about long-term trends. Focus on that.

    • by itzly ( 3699663 )
      There aren't that many "coldest on record" events happening. Besides, deniers are going to deny.
      • There aren't that many "coldest on record" events happening.

        Really? We broke record lows just this morning. And our last month has been well below average.

        Yes, I realize my above was BS, but so is the "it's hot so it's GW" statements.

      • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        There aren't that many "coldest on record" events happening.

        Actually, there are: Google: "Coldest on record" [google.com], first hit is "NOAA: Winter 2013-2014 Among Coldest on Record"

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Close.
      AGW is about the excess trapped energy do you too much CO2
      Climate change is about the impact on the climate from the increase in energy.

      AGW is easy falsifiable science. All the test could literally be done in a decent 8th grade science class.
      Exact to the moment prediction in the climate, that's hard.

      It's important to remember the AGW and climate change are not the same thing, although closely linked, natch.

  • Arctic sea ice is trending near record lows for this time of year

    Conveniently omitted from the report is a mention of Antarctic ice — which continues to set a record after a record [wattsupwiththat.com].

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @11:25AM (#47457991)

    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?

  • "Supposed fact" (Score:5, Informative)

    by rs79 ( 71822 ) <hostmaster@open-rsc.org> on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @11:51AM (#47458315) Homepage

    You know when they're using weasel words like this they're being disingenuous:

    "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."

    "Since 2000, temperatures have been warmer than average, but they did not increase significantly. Data courtesy of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Since the turn of the century, however, the change in Earth’s global mean surface temperature has been close to zero." Note also CO2 rose the entire tie, it just didn't get any warmer for 17 years.

    This is an NOAA.gov stateent based on NOAA data. And they disagree with this? Ok, what's the source of their data? Have they told the NOAA they're wrong yet?

    http://www.climate.gov/news-fe... [climate.gov]

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