Last January Was the Hottest Global Temperature Anomaly In Recorded History 393
merbs writes: NASA has released its global temperature data for January 2016, and, once again, the record for the hottest month in recorded history has been shattered. At a time when these kinds of records are broken with some regularity, it takes a particularly scorching month to raise eyebrows in the climate science community. It has to be the hottest hottest month by a pretty hot margin. Sure enough, last January did the trick: It was 1.13 C warmer than the global average of 1951-1980 (the benchmark NASA uses to measure warming trends)—in other words, a full 2F warmer than pre-1980 levels.
Michigan..... (Score:5, Funny)
Here in Michigan- it's been a fine spring so far!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it was a nice spring, but it seems to have given summer and fall a miss and gone straight on to winter again!
Re:Michigan..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in the western part of Germany we had no winter for at least three consecutive years. We had just a late autumn going over to a very early spring. In fact, we had such a warm december (up to +15C) that blackbirds started to breed and the offspring was quickly killed by the lack of suitable food in january.
I have several pairs of cross country skis in the cellar that haven't seen snow for years even though I live in the mountains. I didn't even have to change my bicycle tyres to studded tyres this winter and last two winters I had to change tyres only for two days or so.
Re:Michigan..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Flint before the Crash (Score:3)
Flint used to be an ok working-class factory town before they closed the factories, though it's been rapidly downhill since, and of course before the criminally incompetent water administrators poisoned everybody who was left while drinking bottled water at the office.
I've only been there once, back in the 80s, staying overnight because my connecting flight to Exciting Dayton Ohio got cancelled because of fog. If you needed to find a motel near the airport, fast food that was still open, and coffee in the
YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Funny)
For rational people? Or the other kind?
What the Anomaly is (Score:5, Informative)
How many near consecutive broken records does it take for weather extremes to no longer be called 'anomalies'?
The "anomaly" is defined as the difference in temperature from the reference baseline. Even if that difference were zero, it would still be called the temperature anomaly-- it would be an anomaly of zero.
FAQ: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/moni... [noaa.gov]
icehouse earth (Score:3, Informative)
Re:icehouse earth (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, a long comment that's mostly correct, but seems to mostly be irrelevant.
The main point-- that the Earth right now is in the middle of an ice age is indeed accurate. Earth is much cooler than it is on the average-- in fact, most of the time, Earth doesn't have frozen water at the polar caps!
And the climate was indeed much warmer (along with much higher levels of CO_2) during much of the Cretaceous. Rising CO_2 is NOT going to destroy the world-- the world has functioned just fine with higher temperatures and higher CO_2. It will adapt
The tricky part is-- we've sort of built our civilization around the climate we currently have. Flooding the seacoast, turning farmland into desert (and tundra into farmland) all these would disrupt our civilization abruptly.
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The tricky part is-- we've sort of built our civilization around the climate we currently have. Flooding the seacoast, turning farmland into desert (and tundra into farmland) all these would disrupt our civilization abruptly.
Thinking that this is any different than in prehistoric times is naive. As it turns out, much of Middle East's cities were erected around waterways that no longer exist. They didn't disappear because of man-made climate change. This is not a new problem, only this time around we can influence the rate of change to a small degree. What is debatable is whether the degree of control that we do have is enough to matter, and even if it is, is it good value for money and good use of our limited science/engineerin
Re:icehouse earth (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct... the fallacy that our climate is static is the number 1 reason I dont believe much of this debate
1. There is no "debate"
2. No scientist has ever claimed the climate is static.
the tempa go up, the temps go down, constituent ingredients that make up our atmosphere change,
No. The temperatures change for reasons. The constituent gases of the atmosphere change for reasons.
yet Earth keeps on ticking, there is NOTHING we can do for this,
Well, you are of course totally wrong. We not only can change the climate, we have.
we ride on the Earth, hang on tight and make whatever adjustments you need to to survive.
And, in order to survive the adjustment we will have to make is to stop emitting fossil CO2.
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Well, you are of course totally wrong. We not only can change the climate, we have.
Have we now??? Well, feel free to believe that, I will continue to KNOW that whatever small effect we have on this chunk of rock and water, there will be counter effects built in the natural feed back loop.
How do you "know" this? My belief is based on science. Yours, not so much.
When in doubt...follow the money on global warming scaremongering... who exactly IS profiting.
Who is profiting from the denial of science? I'd guess it's the people who are funding it, you know, fossil fuel extraction companies.
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Reasons that are not entirely understood, pointing to a an increase in CO2 that seems to correspond to a rise in temps is a nice reasoned assumption, ...
And there is a nice causal link in CO2's absorption spectrum in the infrared. That is not an assumption.
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Of course you didn't read any of the material that shows that the postulations that the climate models that are driving the climate change hysteria are built upon are wrong,
Citation? To peer reviewed science, not some "auditor" or blog?
You also are not aware that the IPCC reports consistently say that we just don't know and that it's all speculation,
You want to brush up on your reading skills, what the IPCC actually says is:
http://www.cli [climatechange2013.org]
Re:icehouse earth (Score:4, Insightful)
While true, what you say is not particularly relevant to us today. We've been in the current phase for tens of millions of years, and are unlikely to exit this anytime soon - unless perhaps by our own doing.
The planetary biosphere may well eventually flourish, in a much warmer climate. But in the short term (hundreds of years, rather than millions), sudden and drastic changes to temperature such as those we are going through now do not give the biosphere sufficient time to adapt, and mass extinctions are likely to result. Further, we humans must also adapt, which will incur significant costs as we migrate our populations & cities, infrastructure and farmlands, to more favourable locations - and likewise, these costs rise fast if we're forced to adapt quickly. Many economic studies [wikipedia.org] have been done on the financial consequences of climate mitigation vs adaption, and most find mitigation to be considerably cheaper.
If we wanted to encourage a warmer planet, this is far from the optimal way to go about it.
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Funny)
Neither do I. I just want to have the right to shoot you when you try to escape the rising water levels by climbing up onto my hill.
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So you're willing to shoot someone casually strolling by? Or do you believe films like The Day After Tomorrow are reality based?
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, there's nothing wrong defending yourself against trespassers when you've taken the time and invested the resources to prepare for life threatening circumstances. When other people feel entitled to the work you put in to be prepared for something, the word you're looking for is not "refugees," it's "looters."
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Rescuing one from certain death is not "charity".
Sorry, you are a moron.
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I for one don't think we should attempt to control nature.
What about air conditioning and heating, or purifying water?
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one don't think we should attempt to control nature.
What about air conditioning and heating, or purifying water?
Or for that matter, burning fossil fuels...
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Insightful)
What the whole discussion of anthropogenic climate change is about is thinking about the less immediate effects of our ways to control Nature. How we control Nature does not average out in the end, on the whole our changes shift Nature into a less diverse, hotter and less stable state.
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Funny because you're view corresponds to that of the people who are quite happy to completely fuck up nature.
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:4, Insightful)
It will take future analysis and records. If the trends continue, it's not an anomaly. If the temperature trends drop, then we know it was a temporary blip in the record. Only time will really tell.
Geologically speaking, we've only been recording temperatures for an infinitesimally small amount of time. Moreover, there's obviously no experimental control possible - i.e., we can't tell what the temperature would be without humans with any certainty - it's all theoretical models that are describing the trends we're seeing.
I'm not saying the models are necessarily incorrect. I'm just pointing out that they are, in fact, only predictions and models. The only way to judge their validity is to measure their ability to predict trends over time.
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And many other behaviors, and judge the validity by examining the quality of the physics implemented in them.
There are effects which are directly a result of the underlying proposed mechanism (increased greenhouse gases), such as polar regions warming more than equatorial regions, night warming more than day, stratospheric cooling and distinguish from many other possible mechanisms.
These signatures have been obser
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The last time I checked we could be certain that most of the models were incorrect, because they differed significantly in their predictions. Of course, they tended to predict the same general class of thing. I don't think any predicted that there would be increased CO2 and decreased global warming.
This is why the actual predictions that got published tended to be an average of an ensemble of predictions. And it was "pretty good, but sure not perfect". Unfortunately, when the average is better than any
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Insightful)
If the only two choices are "Absolutely right" or "completely wrong," this might make sense. The people who said "the earth is not flat, it's a sphere!" were, in fact, wrong. But, they were not as wrong as people who said that the Earth is flat.
Science actually works by making progressively better models.
The global warming models have error bars. Right now, the error bars are large-- plus or minus about 50%. But, the main feature-- the fact that increasing carbon dioxide does increase warming-- is pretty well established.
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:4, Informative)
The global warming models have error bars
The error bars weren't wide enough [nature.com].
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:4, Insightful)
You cite a paper that says "This difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and internal climate variability." but dismiss multiple papers that showed that there is little or no difference when internal climate variability was compensated for.
I know what I don't find convincing and that's the single paper effect.
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We should totally error on the side of fuck the children.
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The last time I checked we could be certain that most of the models were incorrect, because they differed significantly in their predictions.
Which models and when did you check them? I'll do a little research for you and report back.
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The last time I checked we could be certain that most of the models were incorrect, because they differed significantly in their predictions.
When did you check? Because that's not true.
Individual model runs can produce different short term (< 30 year) outcomes, but the ensemble means match each other pretty well.
(Individual model runs have to be different -- they include unpredictable events like volcanic eruptions and el-Ninos).
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It will take future analysis and records. If the trends continue, it's not an anomaly. If the temperature trends drop, then we know it was a temporary blip in the record. Only time will really tell.
Which means? Are you saying that 99 percent surety is non actionable? It must be 100 percent, or else full steam ahead?
Geologically speaking, we've only been recording temperatures for an infinitesimally small amount of time.
Infinitesimally is pretty vague, If you know it's infinitesimal, how many years is it?
Moreover, there's obviously no experimental control possible - i.e., we can't tell what the temperature would be without humans with any certainty - it's all theoretical models that are describing the trends we're seeing.
Here's part of your mistake. You are focusing on the "human" Humans don't make the CO2, they release it when they burn the sequestered CO2 in various fuels. That CO2 is the same as any other source, such as volcanic activity.
I'm not saying the models are necessarily incorrect. I'm just pointing out that they are, in fact, only predictions and models. The only way to judge their validity is to measure their ability to predict trends over time.
The problem is, the models are making predictions, and they are looking like a strong degree of correlation.
Issues or things that don't look right are constantly being compared adjusted, and updated. Science doesn't sit still. One of the big claims of the denialists about the presumed slowdown of the warming trend was announced as solved when it was found that there were measurement errors between balloon data and satellite data even the scientist who noted the discrepency. Oddly or not oddly, the denialists don't mention the later work. I've cited the work in here before. I'm not home, so I don't have the documents and links at hand.
Your post is thoughtful, so if you are interested, what I would suggest is to actually look into the data. And to look at both sides. In fact, go to denialist websites first and take a look at what they are using to refute AGW.
Then do searches. Some times it is difficult, as citations are often incomplete. But the detective work is kind of fun.
Then do a new search. Find the scientists who wrote the papers referred to. This is how I found the self refutation of one of the so called model failures. Self refutation might be a strong word - I don't meant to disparage the scientist involved, because he updated and agreed with the end correlation of data.
Perhaps after enough perusal, you might agree with me that there is a lot of cherry picking going on, and using outdated research. There is also a fair amount of disingenuous messing with data.
Check out some of the refutation sites as well. Those can be pretty illuminating.
Finally - take a look at some of the Exxon data.
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Why are people assuming I'm some "denialist"? I've already been modded down a couple of times as "overrated", which is shorthand for "I disagree with you and wish to silence you". It's hilarious... the slightest hint of wishing to validate claims with actual evidence and the pitchforks come out. And really... you must have a rather low opinion of my faculties if you seriously felt the need to point out that burning fossil fuels create the excess CO2, not the humans themselves. Sheesh.
I sincerely try to
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"Anomaly" in this case is a technical term meaning deviation from the reference value.
And everyone warmist and denialist knows this one is due to El Nino, but that won't stop the warmists from crowing over it.
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Interesting)
And everyone warmist knew that the so-called "pause" was due to a series of mild La Niñas following the extra-strong El Niño in 1998, but that didn't stop the denialists crowing over it.
Every record-breaking hottest year/month/whatever will be during a strong El Niño; that's obvious, as that's the hottest point in the ENSO cycle. What's important is that this El Niño-boosted January was hotter than every other El Niño-boosted January we've ever seen. Again.
We've had so many hottest-ever records recently that people are apparently getting blasé about them. Reminder: in the absence of a rising trend, record-breaking temperatures become steadily less common - each new record would require an ever-more unlikely confluence of factors to boost temperatures still higher than the last record.
A constant stream of highest-yet record temperatures is more than just weather; it's a rising trend [wordpress.com].
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It is probably as early and as extreme as it is due to El NiÅo, but it's a lot warmer a lot earlier than it was during the last strong El NiÅo. Perhaps it's just that this one's stronger, but that isn't entirely happenstance (only partially).
Personally, I tend to blame it on the Arctic sea ice nearly disappearing last summer, so this winter it didn't make the ocean current flowing past it as cold as it usually does...but this is just my personal speculation, and I haven't run it past any expert f
(offtopic)(meta-Slashdot) (Score:2)
Dear new Slashdot owners,
(and I don't mean this as a red-rag for the ASCII-only crowd, please consider before downmodding)
It's a pet peeve of mine when foreign letters are mangled on here; it detracts from the discussion.
El Ninyo being an illustrative example of why entry of foreign characters contained within common Latin-variant alphabets should be supported.
One poster above has successfully entered the right html escape code but it's an input-dev pain in the rear, especially if you have an enye character
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How many near consecutive broken records does it take for weather extremes to no longer be called 'anomalies'?
Because we live in a country where people get their weather education from politicians and a Groundhog in Punxatawny PA, and not from scientists.
Even when it' is found out that a leading oil company kew and lied about AGW decades ago - they still cling to their denialism.. So it ain't gonna happen.
Re: YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Interesting)
Global temperature isn't weather. Regional temperature is.
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Yeah, 18 years is too short. But the 29 years used as the baseline is plenty long enough. It's funny. Climatologists claim to have an excellent record stretching thousands of year. Why are we using 29 years as a baseline?
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Re: YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Informative)
So what is 18 years of global temperature? I've been told its also weather since 18 years is far too short of a time to count for climate. But now 1 month counts as climate?
lols
Now, that's very peculiar. Why did you pick eighteen exactly, no more and no less? Why not, say, twenty? Why eighteen?
We should always be suspicious when some very unusual number like that gets thrown up as baseline to compare against. Some blog somewhere told you to say eighteen years. Why?
Here's the data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist... [nasa.gov]
OK, now we can see. Yes, eighteen years ago-- 1998-- was indeed a high point-- more than one standard deviation above the trend line. (Note that anthropogenic warming isn't instead of random variation-- it is in addition to random variation.) But, if you pick 1998 exactly as the starting point-- no more, no less-- up until 2013 you could kind of squint, and say "look, no warming since 1998". Pick the year before 1998 to start the graph, and the warming trend is clear. Pick the year after 1998 to start the graph, and the warming trend is clear. But if you picked 1998 exactly, no more, no less, up until 2013 you could draw the graph and make it almost look flat.
Except, that was then. As of now, even with the high point at 1998... the overall warming trend is very obviously clear.
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Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how when its extra cold (snow storms, record cold winters, etc) all we hear is 'weather is not climate'.
However when its extra hot, is seems weather is climate?
No.
One exceptionally warm month, or even one warm winter, is not climate. (Nor one exceptionally cold one). Climate is long term,.
What is noteworthy is how frequently records are being set. If the temperatures were random, and not rising, you would expect records to be set only on rare occasions.
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And if the temperatures were random, you'd see roughly the same amount of broken high- and low- records. We're not.
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:YAA (Yet Another Anomaly) (Score:5, Informative)
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I thought the east cost had some record cold last December, or possibly early January.
I know that last week I was thinking what a beautiful spring day it was, but today it felt more like summer. I *do* acknowledge that this is weather rather than climate, but it's quite unusual weather. And climate is composed of the sum of lots of weather.
P.S.: I've got to disagree with the above poster who called global weather climate. Climate isn't specifically global, but it is specifically a long term average...an
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I thought the east cost had some record cold last December, or possibly early January.
I'm not certain, I live there, and had fine motorcycle rides both months.
Seriously warm weather.
Possibly, you are seeing what I call the Weather channel effect. Every winter, they go into hysterics mode, and report on record lows, huge snowstorms, and jumble it all together with various places, so that unless you have an hour to digest it, you would think that your place is going to be 20 below zero, and getting a record 100 inch snowfall. I almost never watch it, but the wife does occasionally, and they get worse every year.
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Funny how when its extra cold (snow storms, record cold winters, etc) all we hear is 'weather is not climate'. However when its extra hot, is seems weather is climate?
Just to avoid the 'but that doesnt happen!' here we have one: http://drsircus.com/world-news... [drsircus.com]
Umm, who exactly makes that argument that you are talking about? You are saying weather is climate, and you are cherry picking one area to do it from. Here is NOAA's global data. Rather different from your "Coldest month evah!" so there is no such thing as global warming.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/... [noaa.gov]
Even the fact that 2015 was a global record setter - that doesn't prove that the world is getting warmer. That's just one year. That's weather. But there is a trend of many warmer than normal years, and
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Even the fact that 2015 was a global record setter - that doesn't prove that the world is getting warmer. That's just one year. That's weather.
No it is not weather. Weather phenomena don't cover the whole globe or big parts of it.
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Funny how when its extra cold (snow storms, record cold winters, etc) all we hear is 'weather is not climate'. However when its extra hot, is seems weather is climate?
Since when has it been extra cold on a global scale? When has it snowed within your lifetime all around the globe simultaneously?
The "extra hot" we're discussing was measured on a global scale. Not local. The average temperature of the entire globe was a new record.
This is the problem with armchair climate deniers. They see a big storm (or cold winter, or whatever) in their country, and presume that it's some sort of argument against global warming. Well guess what -- the globe is significantly bigger
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First: It is highly unlikely that you lived 120 miles from the nearest observation point. 1978 was a while ago, but unless you were in far southwestern Texas, they probably still had wayyyy better coverage than that in your area.
Second: They don't just "substitute records from places over 120 miles away". Nobody does that. For places where weather stations are further apart, they use a method called bias-corrected statistical downscaling, based on a model of how temperature and precipitation correspond t
Well then (Score:5, Funny)
I eagerly await the forthcoming rational, thoughtful, and respectful discourse from both sides!
... Where's the popcorn?
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... Where's the popcorn?
Spread all over the land... Climate is changing so fast, the corn popped before they could harvest.
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Would you rather listen to some cold-blooded people carefully calculating their own self-interest?
Or some hot-headed fellow who's plan will ruin everything?
Discuss.
Cue the huge argument (Score:2)
Higher than Average... (Score:2)
Since an average is just that, an average, how did January 2016 compare to the highest January in those 30 years?
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See for yourself: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
January 2016 was not only 0.3C hotter than the previous record-holder (2015, unsurprisingly), but 0.8C hotter than any single January in the 1951-1980 baseline. It's also 0.6C hotter than any single month in that range. It's a lot, given that the global mean is so consistently stable.
Used to be a lot warmer. (Score:3, Insightful)
Used to be a lot warmer many times in history. Around year 1000, and for many generations, norsemen grew grains in Greenland. Antartica and Svalbard had tropical climate millions of years ago. It appears the earth was overall a lot wetter when is was warmer, which makes sense. Probably also a lot more violent weather.
Maybe a new ice age would be more devastating than a wet heatwave.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
"Recorded History" is 136 years (Score:3, Insightful)
136 years is a few milliseconds on climatic and geologic time scales.
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136 years is a few milliseconds on climatic and geologic time scales.
No, it's 136 years.
And yet (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you live in the US it is appropriate the scream that the US is responsible. This doesn't deny that China is doing more (though they are improving).
FWIW, if you drive a car you are not only responsible for the emissions that you create when you drive, but also for the emissions created during the manufacture, and later during it's disposal. So while the manufacturers are responsible, SO ARE THE USERS.
That said, if the US continues to decrease Carbon emissions, then the main problem will be consumption o
Re:And yet (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, what a cheap shot! Way to make it America's fault...again. I've got some bad news for you, and it comes from one of your own high priests. Close your eyes...this is going to hurt.
A quick and easy solution (Score:2)
in other words, a full 2F warmer than pre-1980 levels.
Simply devalue the degree Fahrenheit. Most of the world uses Celsius, so few people will be affected by it. And at a stroke you've managed what governments all over the world do when faced with an annoying problem: redefined it out of existence. The final step would be to rename Climate Change to something else, reset all the counters so that all old measurements cannot be converted. Then just carry on as if nothing had happened.
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And here in LA at the beach it was in the upper 80s F when we'd usually expect something more like 65 F. Local temperatures != global average.
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
In particular, the charts and graphs linked in the article shows January temperatures going back to 1880. (And yes, this January was warmer than all of them.) I think you may be conflating different statements into a single assumption?
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I couldn't find a good link, but this blog covers it pretty good:
https://stevengoddard.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
I'm not saying that global warming, or climate change, or whatever you want to call it doesn't happen. I'm just a bit sceptical about the "Either you are with us or you are against us"-mentality of it all.
Let's do what we can to compesate and at the same time be open to information for all
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity, where precisely do you believe it say recorded history began in 1951?
The summary does not says that recorded history began in 1951. It says that 1951-1980 average serves as baseline for the temperature anomaly "0" level.
I'll respond to you and the sibling post simultaneously.
The headline says "Last January Was the Hottest Global Temperature Anomaly In Recorded History". The summary says "It was 1.13 C warmer than the global average of 1951-1980". Taken together, that says that recorded history began in 1951. I mentioned both the words "headline" and "summary" in my original post. You were expected to put them together yourself.
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I'll respond to you and the sibling post simultaneously.
The headline says "Last January Was the Hottest Global Temperature Anomaly In Recorded History". The summary says "It was 1.13 C warmer than the global average of 1951-1980". Taken together, that says that recorded history began in 1951.
+1, Funny.
(You were attempting to be funny, yes?)
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+1, Funny.
(You were attempting to be funny, yes?)
I was attempting +1 That's a Really Stupid Headline. Which it was. "In recorded history" means something, and it does not mean what the article submitter thinks it means. It's outrageously alarmist and therefore harmful.
And I see the mods are schizophrenic today. The original post is at score 0, while the restatement of the same thing is at +4. Do you people read?
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Or are you saying history just stopped being recorded in 1980, and we're living in the post-historic era?
Re: So? (Score:3)
You've made a logical flaw. I don't know how to explain it because, well, your combining of the two sentences is wrong on a logical basis and also wrong on an "intuitively that's what it obviously means" basis and I don't know how or why you tried to combine them.
The average 1951-1980 just provides a baseline for comparison. Maybe 1635 was 2 degrees warmer than that baseline. Maybe 1856 was 2.5 degrees colder than that baseline. Maybe 2015 was 1.15 degrees warmer.
The baseline is just the "tare" or "zero cal
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If 1951 - 1980 are the baseline with zero anomaly level ... why are there so many wild swings in that range? Just a 2-year span has nearly half a degree of fluctuation from one August to the next. Almost every month had at least a quarter-degree swing from one year to the next. That's not the stability upon which you should build your baseline.
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
1963 -03 +18 -15 -05 -10 +02 +09 +23 +19 +14 +15 -01
1964 -06 -11 -24
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But sure, we're heading into an Ice Age. Just wait two or three years. And meanwhile feel free to burn as much gasoline as you can - it'll help to prevent Ice Age!
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It's just weather.
I say that with a maximum of snark, but it truly is just weather. El Niño weather, to be precise. And the inflammatory headline is the usual nonsense, contradicted by its own summary. It says recorded history began in 1951. My parents might have something to say about that.
Why do we have to put up with such bullshit reporting? Does Slashdot really make that much money off of the page views driven by irate commenters?
It's a big outlier, but that outlier is at least partly driven by a change in the mean and variance.
As for the broader point it's not so much that the warm January is evidence itself of global warming but the warm January gives people something tangible to associate with global warming.
It doesn't matter how good the science is, people don't even plan for their retirement, do you think they're going to care about the predicted climate 50 years from now? They need to see climate change doing something today.
Y
Re: (Score:3)
Just remember, when your multimillion dollar beach front apartment's ground floor is underwater and no one can drive there any more, remember it's just water, so big deal, you drink it by the glass full every day, get used to it. No difference to when the worlds ports become unusable and new ones need to be built. There are also a whole bunch of low lying coastal airports that need to be rebuilt. Roads and rail lines also and no one can really tell how destructive that period of a massive surge of suspende
Re:So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Seems pointless to expect anything else from someone who puts his circular logic on display in his sig for all to admire.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Many of the environmentalists worried about the climate do, in fact, advocate nuclear power.
James Hansen, for example, is probably the most well known person warning about climate change. He is strongly in favor of nuclear power. He stated:
citation: http://grist.org/news/more-nuk... [grist.org]
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.... [nytimes.com]
Or, check out this one:
http://www.takepart.com/articl... [takepart.com]
Re: (Score:2)
We can choose living it up in a nuclear powered world, or suffer. If you think we have any other choice I say... bite me.
I agree with you. The biggest problem with nuclear power is that we aren't building new plants fast enough. The vast majority of nuclear power plants are old, really old, and past their original lifetimes.
The one technology that I think can compete with nuclear going forward is tidal energy.
It's the trend. (Score:3)
When we have a cold snap the global warming types say "it's just weather"
The last time we had a "coldest month in recorded history" was 1893.
so when we have a warm month here and there I believe I can rightfully say that "it's just weather".
Our global temperature is the sum of a secular warming trend and natural variability. Any new "hottest month" record is going to be the result of both together. Remove the secular warming trend and we would not have had a record. Remove natural variability and every month would be a record.
And yeah, nukes sound great. Let's get building.
Re: (Score:2)
To those that think we should change out our light bulbs for LEDs, take the bus or bike to work, use low flow toilets, turn down the thermostat and wear a sweater, drive electric cars, eat locally grown foods, and so on... I say I'd rather have the global warming.
To those that say that I'll say they are misguided if they believe tiny individual acts will amount to anything, although for sure get rid of the damn car. Without cars we could be living like king on $1K per month (plus free heatthcare). Hell, we shit on a personal sit-down toilet so we're living like kings already, but we don't know it yet.
So, you can't buy a 100 watt bulb, but you can buy a 150 000 watt car? What the hell. As if 15 kilowatt would not be enough to move asses around. Technology like steam
Re: (Score:2)
Why can we buy a 150,000 watt car?
Because most people prefer lame weak little engines. I'd set the minimum at 300,000 watts.
Re: (Score:2)
.... although for sure get rid of the damn car. Without cars we could be living like king on $1K per month (plus free heatthcare). Hell, we shit on a personal sit-down toilet so we're living like kings already, but we don't know it yet.
So, you can't buy a 100 watt bulb, but you can buy a 150 000 watt car? What the hell. As if 15 kilowatt would not be enough to move asses around. Technology like steam and electric give high torque at low power and speed limits could be dropped to somehing like 40 mph...
I am not sure how you think I would be living like a king walking or biking everywhere. It would take days just to get to the doctor to get my free health care. There are no buses here and I doubt there will ever be any. I would go broke taking a taxi everywhere on $1K a month. And no I am not going to move, I live very close to my job.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
There are irate posters on both sides. Scientists, those that continue to review the evidence and not assume they are correct when an association has not satisfied all criteria for proof of causation, would note that California had 200 year long droughts [mercurynews.com] when Heidelberg first started as a university, long before the industrial revolution or little ice age. Then the weather/climate would rapidly shift.
Climate science is far from settled [wsj.com]. Most of the peer-reviewed papers are cautious in their conclusions.
Re: So? (Score:2)
Re:...as Slashdot continues to spiral down the dra (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot is wondering what happened to their old tech/geek audience, while allowing the radical liberal activists and brainwashed "global warming" propagandists to take over the site - the same way Digg was destroyed.
If the new owners want to see a future for slashdot, the first thing to do is kick out these idiot Global Warming activists.
You know what? I'm a radicalised global warming (no scare quotes) activist. You know why? Because I live in a perfect island paradise in the South Pacific.
Only these days, it ain't so perfect. First, we got hit with the most powerful cyclone in the history of this region. Then we got 8 months of extreme drought thanks to the most powerful El Niño event in recorded history.
Neither cyclones nor the ENSO cycle are abnormal here. We are situated just south enough of the equator that we get an average of about 1.5 cyclones in our territorial waters every year. And ENSO has pretty much defined our climatic cycles since before humans ever inhabited here.
But the severity of these events, and the abnormality of weather events in recent years, is indisputably increasing. This year alone, we've seen record high regional temperatures, cyclones crossing the equator—an hitherto unknown event—and just this week, we saw a weak hurricane reverse its path, redouble its strength to Category 3/4, and now we're waiting for it to make landfall in a country that is about 1000 miles from where the storm's typical path would be. We've also seen cyclonic storms forming outside of the tropical belt, and... well, the list goes on.
Have I been brainwashed? Yes. Brainwashed by the evidence. You can cite all the skepticist bullshit you like, because I'm watching my climate change right in front of my eyes. And yes, I know the difference between weather and climate. I also know that virtually all of the climate prediction models call for increasingly wide fluctuations in weather behaviour, and that fits pretty much perfectly with the evidence in front of me.
So respectfully: If I and my ilk have ruined Slashdot for you, then good. Feel free to fuck off out of here and leave the conversation to rational adults.
Re: Raw data? Methods? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is raw data you all ignore... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.surfacestations.org... [surfacestations.org]