2016 Was Second Hottest Year For US In More Than 120 Years of Record Keeping (climatecentral.org) 436
Last year was the second hottest year for the United States in more than 120 years of record keeping, according to the National Climatic Data Center, marking 20 above-average years in a row. While Georgia and Alaska recorded their hottest year, every state had a temperature ranking at least in the top seven. Climate Central reports: The announcement comes a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the U.S. data, and NASA are expected to announce that 2016 set the record for the hottest year globally. Both the global record and the U.S. near-record are largely attributable to greenhouse gas-driven warming of the planet. In addition to the pervasive warmth over the last year, the U.S. also had to deal with 15 weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damage. Together, they totaled more than $46 billion in losses and included several disastrous rain-driven flooding events. These events, along with continued drought, lay bare the challenge for the country to learn how to cope with and prepare for a changing climate, said Deke Arndt, the climate monitoring chief of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. The temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average for 2016, displacing 2015 and ranking only behind 2012, when searing heat waves hit the middle of the country. More notable than the back-to-back second place years, Arndt said, was that 2016 was the 20th consecutive warmer-than-normal year for the U.S. and that the five hottest years for the country have all happened since 1998. Those streaks mirror global trends, with 15 of the 16 hottest years on record occurring in the 21st century and no record cold year globally since 1911.
Stop already with tying every disaster to GW (Score:2, Insightful)
It's absurd to say that ALL of the weather disasters we encountered are attributable to global warming. You could just as easily say that GW has prevented several massive weather disasters we will never know about...
Weather changes, sometimes to extremes. Over time there will be massive droughts and floods and hurricanes and all other things, just as there have been through the entire history of Earth. So stop with the nonsense of trying to tie all that to GW because it just makes you all look like a bunc
Re:Stop already with tying every disaster to GW (Score:5, Insightful)
It's absurd to say that ALL of the weather disasters we encountered are attributable to global warming.
No one says that. Scientists say that climate change is a significant contributing factor.
Weather changes, sometimes to extremes. Over time there will be massive droughts and floods and hurricanes and all other things, just as there have been through the entire history of Earth. So stop with the nonsense of trying to tie all that to GW because it just makes you all look like a bunch of panicked idiots.
That's the same argumentation people used for cigarettes not causing cancer. Yes, cancer occurs even among non-smokers. And no, you cannot point to any individual cancer case and say with certainty that it was caused by smoking. But the statistics are overwhelmingly showing that smoking causes cancer, and even the most die-hard smokers or tobacco manufacturers have long since given up this kind of "reasoning". When pitched against statistics and hard math, it doesn't hold up.
One of us is an idiot, yes. I don't think you have the mental capacity to determine which of us it is.
Re:Stop already with tying every disaster to GW (Score:5, Insightful)
Learn the difference between contribute and attribute. It's significant.
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No single event can be attributed to climate change with 100% certainty.
But we can look at the trend and say "gee, there's 20x more events now than there used to be".
Re: Stop already with tying every disaster to GW (Score:4, Insightful)
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"There is evidence that global warming has caused an increase in very heavy precipitation events--the kind most responsible for major floods"
from near the last paragraph
"Pollution may contribute to higher precipitation - It is possible that increased pollution is partly responsible for the increase in precipitation and in heavy precipitation events in some parts of the world. According to Bell et al. (2008), summertime rainfall over the Southeast U.S. is more intense on weekdays
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Rather than linking to a selectively-quoting blog, just cite the source [www.ipcc.ch] directly (assuming you actually want to hear what it says). I suggest Section 2.6, or at least the Extreme Events executive summary on page 162.
While there is a lack of sufficient data in some areas, the executive summary cites increases in heatwaves and heavy precipitation events, and significant changes in droughts (more in some areas, less in others). Tropical cyclones are stronger in the North Atlantic, though trends elsewhere are n
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"You could just as easily say that GW has prevented several massive weather disasters we will never know about." If that is your argument then I applaud your candor. At least we've moved from denial to salesmanship.
One problem with this sales pitch is that our sense of the norm is based on how things have been in recorded history. We need to remind people that permafrost is not actually permanent (false advertising--SAD); that coral reefs are really just layers upon layers of skeletons (gross--NOT NEAR MY
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Whatever. Let's check in with the fish. They've been leaving the coastal areas on the Eastern Seaboard for points north and west towards cooler water. Fishing management rules haven't been keeping up so seamen further down the Eastern Seaboard find they can no longer catch fish unless they go great distances.
Fish get to vote. They are smarter than you.
Re: Stop already with tying every disaster to GW (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: Stop already with tying every disaster to GW (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not snowing where I am, so you're obviously wrong about everything!
Man that was a convincing argument.
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Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)
We're all gonna die!!!!!
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
We're all going to die except the solipsist, whoever he or she is.
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That's what I thought you'd say.
Seems about right (Score:2)
What with Meryl Streep and all at the Golden Globes. The only year that I can remember that was hotter was Madonna at the 1992 MTV Music Awards.
error bars (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment count (Score:2, Informative)
Count of all top level comments taken from page as I loaded it.
People objecting with the first argument they could think of, regardless of validity: 10
Nuts blaming everything on The Conspiracy: 4
Global warming alarmist copypasta: 2
Worthless spam: 7
People discussing the article: 4
Global warming news sure brings out the crazies.
You know what the whole shit reminds me of? (Score:3, Interesting)
And I mean the whole climate debate.
There's a river running through the town I live in. For centuries, the river banks have been devoid of settlements. Why? Because the river has that nasty tendency to rise past its bed every now and then. Doesn't happen often, only every, say, 30 years or so. The periods are apparently long enough, though, that people don't remember it. And hence people did build houses right inside that flooding zone. Some older people have been warning them, telling them that it's not a good idea and that they're going to regret it. They have been rebuffed, damn luddites, we have the technology to tame the river, no problem there, put it in a fast moving bed and let the flood go downstream.
Guess what: They did the same upstream.
Now, last year it was 30ish years since the last flood and now a few people have a new swimming pool in their basement. And instead of now going "Fuck, we should've known better" the same people that ridiculed those that told them that this is going to happen are now lamenting that nobody could foresee that and how they now want to get disaster aid.
And I have a hunch that exactly the same is going to happen when disaster strikes those that now ignore any warnings, build at the beach front and then suddenly stand in 20 feet of water. Then suddenly they'll lament and complain how nobody could have foreseen that and then those that told them for ages are suddenly expected to aid them.
And it will be my pleasure to just shoot to kill when they try to climb my hill to get out of the water.
Statistically insignificant difference to 1998. (Score:5, Interesting)
Please can we stop the tsunami of bollocks about global warming? It's fucking tiresome.
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You mean the two hottest years on record - like saying there's a statistically insignificant difference in pain the two times in your life you got kicked in the balls.
Have you gone back to giving kids cigarettes and lead painted toys for Christmas? If not, why not?
Re:The earth is (Score:5, Insightful)
the earth is over 4 billion years old and has had icecaps for 20% of the time.
What's the maths on 4 billion vs 120 years?
Well, considering that humans have been on earth for only about the past 200,000 years, I wouldn't want to risk our chances with an earth that has no ice caps. It may be inevitable, but let's slow it down long enough for us to find some other place in the universe to live, m'kay?
And keep in mind that no ice caps means very high temperatures and flooding over most of the coastal areas. Not to mention the loss or migration of other species we depend on to survive.
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That's just the start. One of the worst outcomes is greatly increasing the range of disease carrying insects - meaning things like Zika and Malaria can hit a LOT more people than it does now.
And lets put that in context. Malaria is now basically confined to a single continent - and even there, just 25% of the continent lies within the range of the single mosquito that spreads it.
Even so, that mosquito is the deadliest living creature on the planet- killing millions of people every year.
Imagine what happens
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siberian mosquitoes [youtu.be]
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Well it is a pretty big claim yes, but it's a claim backed up by solid economics. The exact quote from Jared Daimond's citations: "Can entirely account for Africa's negative GDP rates".
The other problems you mention are, at the very least, severely aggravated by the poverty effects of Malaria. I live in Africa, and I've travelled the continent extensively - not just visiting countries but actually living with residents for extended periods, seeing things up close and experiencing other parts of the continen
Re:It is Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
If your conspiracy theory was right- all the scientists would be publishing climate denial papers and a few crazy kooks would be publishing papers saying the theory is right. The exact opposite of what actually happens - because the biggest corporate funders have a massive vested interest in climate change being false.
Weather vs Climate (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if a roulette wheel will pay out on the next spin, but I DO know how fast I'll lose money if I continue to put my money down on black.
That's the difference between weather and climate. You don't need to predict the next 5 day's weather to know that 100 years from now we're fucked if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere... and we may be fucked even if we manage to reduce greenhouse gases dramatically in the near future.
The data HAS been verified. For instance, look at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. This was a project funded by right-wing activists who doubted the climate science. They specifically objected to use of satellite data and felt that terrestrial weather stations were not being vetted correctly. (For instance, showing pictures of temperature stations a few feet away from buildings or barbecues which they said tainted the results.) The Berkeley guys were led in part by Richard Muller, who has been a long-time skeptic. They went and got original raw data, and did a thorough job vetting each data point.
The result is that their data agrees completely with the climate change models. Muller's public summary is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07... [nytimes.com]
There are other contrarian opinions, but very few of them work with large data sets in any honest way. Nearly all the contrarian viewpoints can be linked to right-wing money and other professional gains that their mainstream colleagues do not enjoy.
But mostly, the arguments they make are trash - which is why they aren't published. They're dumb ideas, easily seen through. Science works by honest appraisal of ideas and data, not opinion or groupthink as you seem to believe. It's not perfect - lord knows I disagree with a lot of scientific colleagues' approaches - but by and large good science tends to win out over bad science.
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Now let's hypothetically assume that the warming trend would happen regardless. Why should that be a blank check to exacerbate the problem? Our interest is unambiguously in *not* allowing warming to happen, natural or otherwise.
We know that some things we do can be making things worse, and some things we can do that improve things. Rather than arguing about whether or not the warming is our fault or not, we should be focused on doing what we can to slow or stop it.
It's amazing when I see people say 'but
Re: It is Inevitable (Score:3)
hypocritical alert.
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Stolen? By whom?
You do know that money is not really created or destroyed, right? What is being proposed is to impose friction on fossil fuel use, and remove friction from renewables. (Plus maybe doing carbon reclamation, if we can figure out any good way to do so. Or maybe an L1 Fresnel Lens, which is my preferred solution.) Preliminary evidence shows that money invested in green technologies has good rates of return on creating jobs... whereas long experience shows that fossil fuel industries have hu
Re:It is Inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
If I disagreed with it and was certain (with proof) that I was right, then I would falsify your statement with references, right then and there
Why bother going to all that trouble for someone who made some pretty bold claims without references themselves. The most likely outcome would be that when the next climate-related story comes out the OP will simply ignore any evidence posted to the contrary (since all scientists are corrupt frauds) and repeat the same nonsense again.
A down-mod is my nice, easy, comfortable, anonymous "screw you" that faces no danger of me being personally questioned for choosing it. So there. Ha-ha!
Says the Anonymous Coward. Nice one.
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I rather suspect the poster is referring to the cooling periods associated with periodic solar minima: i.e. the Maunder Minimum [wikipedia.org] or the Dalton Minimum [wikipedia.org]. The Dalton is the most recent, and is often remembered for associated cultural artifacts like Currier and Ives prints of winter, and the book "Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates".
There is much discussion that a new solar minimum is underway, and with it a "mini ice age".
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Likelihood=1.
Re:The earth is (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the Ice Age did NOT end 12K years ago. We're merely between Continental Glacial Advances. The current Ice Age [wikipedia.org] started ~2.58 million years ago. And we're due for another Continental Glacial Advance, "real soon now". . . .in geologic terms.
"real soon now" meaning within the next 10-50 thousand years. . .
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That Ice Age was perpetrated by the Chinese!
Sad!
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Of the 4 billion, how many supported human life? What's the maths on how long your grandkids live when the planet can only support a small percentage of the current human population?
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Of the 4 billion, how many supported human life? What's the maths on how long your grandkids live when the planet can only support a small percentage of the current human population?
I once read someplace that if a great sudden disaster occurred that wiped out 85% or so of the population, well, once they got over the shock, the rest would find themselves relatively well-off. As long as the disaster wasn't all-out nuclear war or something else that would bring long-term devastation. If it was something like an epedemic plague, well then the survivors would find themselves resource-rich with plenty of real estate. Wars of resources would no longer be necessary unless we later overpopul
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Of the 4 billion, how many supported human life? What's the maths on how long your grandkids live when the planet can only support a small percentage of the current human population?
I once read someplace that if a great sudden disaster occurred that wiped out 85% or so of the population, well, once they got over the shock, the rest would find themselves relatively well-off. As long as the disaster wasn't all-out nuclear war or something else that would bring long-term devastation. If it was something like an epedemic plague, well then the survivors would find themselves resource-rich with plenty of real estate. Wars of resources would no longer be necessary unless we later overpopulate again.
The people who would survive would tend to be those who keep emergency supplies of food/water stocked up so they can hold out a while while they try to find new sources. That includes those who understand things like just how fragile the power grid really is (a single "Carrington Event"-style X-flare away from total destruction, not "if" but "when"), or the fact that populous areas like NYC only have 2-3 days of food on hand at any given time. Y'know, the ones who are called "nutters" by the current mainstream, just like those who suspected massive government surveillance until the whole Snowden debacle made it undeniable.
I mean you wear your seatbelt and (presumably) carry insurance, though you have no intention of getting into a severe car crash. Why are other important things treated so differently? Because they imply a world unlike the one you know now? That makes them impossible how, exactly? Ideally, your insurance premiums are wasted money and you never need to file a claim. Ideally the cost of putting away some extra food and water, maybe investing in things like water filters and off-grid power, ideally those things are wasted money too. It's like a weapon - you sure hope you don't need it at all, ever, but if you do need one, you need it RIGHT NOW.
Funny you mention this now. Here on the East Coast, we just had a major snowstorm. The roads were icy and very dangerous, with multiple advisories warning people not to drive unless strictly necessary. Lots of crashed cars, emergency services deployed, injuries, even a few deaths, etc. I asked around about the grocery stores - they were just plain madhouses. It's amazing there wasn't violence and people being trampled. Shelves emptied, long check-out lines formed, people waited for long times to buy g
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One problem with such large scale disasters is that it can throw civilization back quite a bit (and this has happened before). For example, do you think satellite communications would remain? Sure, they work now, but can the tech last? With 85% population gone because of harsh climate, who will maintain them? To keep satellites running you would need to preserve the whole supply chain of space tech, and if the current (advanced) supply chains are disrupted, high tech stuff may become unmaintainable. It migh
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The main problem will be power. Fossil fuel is one of the biggest problems when four out of five people vanish. The main reason we need fewer people today to produce goods than we did 200 years ago is simply that we replaced work force with fuel. A single farmer can feed thousands, but only because his machinery is maintained and fueled.
Are there too many people on the planet? Yes. And I don't even want to doubt the number of 85%. The problem is that you cannot pick and choose who gets to live and who gets
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There's a notion that a reason it is so hard to get rid of ISIS, and survivalists, and well, any kind of "nutter", is that nature keeps her options open. If for some reason life was set back to say, the 14th century, then you'd need the mindset of warlordism, in order to reestablish some kind of organised life, in those earlier harsher conditions.
Which is also why it is a bit sad to see the last of the hunter gatherers disappear -- but then, there's always a few people fascinated with the skills for running
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There's a notion that a reason it is so hard to get rid of ISIS, and survivalists, and well, any kind of "nutter", is that nature keeps her options open.
Nope, nature is a cold-hearted bitch who doesn't give a fuck about anyone or their ideology and kills basically at random.
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For the same reason capitalism works and communism fails: People are selfish bastards and don't give a shit about the "common good".
Seatbelts and insurance? Sure, they benefit ME!
Saving the planet? Nah. Can't someone else do that?
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No, it actually is exactly that.
The communist promise is "work hard today, and one day we'll all be living in paradise where everyone can be living well". In turn that means, though, that if everyone but me is working hard, we'll all be living comfortably, so I don't really have to pull that hard, do I? And if it fails, we're all to blame. In other words, when that fails, "the system" is to blame because, well, what can a single person do?
The capitalist promise is "work hard today and one day YOU will be li
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Those poor unlucky souls didn't have giant Amazon warehouses to pilfer.....
The OP's argument that massive and rapid reversal of human population numbers would lead to a period of peace and prosperity because of all the extra resources laying around is more than a little absurd. Sure, there will be tons of brick and 2x4s to make houses with, lots of old cars to rip sheet metal and thousands of miles of decaying road.
But as numerous sci fi books and movies have chronicled, you would end up with a mostly scav
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Actually the reason we laugh at your lot is because you'd be among the first to die.
The people who ACTUALLY have the best odds of surviving are NOT the ones who stocked up on anything, because it's utterly impossible to predict what you would need in an unpredictable scenario. The most likely to survive are the ones most adaptable, the ones best able to fashion equipment and resources out of whatever is to hand.
Because it doesn't matter WHAT he needs- he has a way of finding it - he can make it. The guys wh
Re:The earth is (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. 120 years is a blink of the eye in the context of life on earth. And that's what makes it such a big problem.
It's the current rate of change that scares scientists. Not the amount. The Earth can handle temperatures raising or dropping over millennia, but over mere decades, it's considered a catastrophe.
Trees, for example, can't migrate towards colder areas quickly enough, and then the ecosystems that depend on the trees die too.
And coastal ecosystems can't migrate as fast as the water is rising, and ocean life can't evolve into more acid resistant species quickly enough as the CO2 levels increase and oceans get acidified.
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Trees, for example, can't migrate towards colder areas quickly enough
Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?!?
Re:The earth is (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?!?
With the aid of swallows.
But take your typical sugar maple tree. The wings they spin off don't make it very far from the parent. They spread slowly, generation by generation. That's good enough when temperatures overall change slowly. Then they die off in one direction and thrive in another, and the forests move, even if the individual trees don't.
But the temperature rise right now happens too quickly for the maple forests to be able to keep up the tempo. With the result that maple forests are dying out, and the species that depend on them can't follow a slow migration, because there is no slow migration.
Or look at pines and firs. After the last ice age, most of Scandinavia was covered largely by pine trees. As temperatures slowly rose, fir trees took over as the dominant species, except at higher altitudes. It happened so slowly that the forests and their habitats could move. Not so now. Neither pine nor fir forests are endangered yet, but the trends say that they soon will be.
Re:The earth is (Score:4, Insightful)
None of that is really relevant. Yes, there will be winners and losers - that is what evolution does. The big problem, as far as humans are concerned is that WE are likely to be one of the losers given our location at the top of the food chain.
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You know the maths. We all do.
Re:The earth is (Score:4, Funny)
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the earth is over 4 billion years old and has had icecaps for 20% of the time.
What's the maths on 4 billion vs 120 years?
How long has the Industrial Age been going on?
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How long has the Industrial Age been going on?
Just shy of 370 years if you want to be conservative about it, if you don't closer to 450 years.
Permian extinction (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're at the "ok, global warming is real, but its not a big deal, honest" stage?? But that's at least semi-positive. You've accepted the basic warming, even if you want to downplay the short time scale its happened over by adding in ancient ice cap melts.
The earth will be fine, its not a living thing in and of itself, it's the stuff on the earth that dies e.g. Dinosaurs, Triassic extinction event, trilobites extinction and the biggest of them all, the Permian extinction (96% of life wiped out), life gets wiped out on it's surface, but the earth chugs on.
It's worth looking at the Permian extinction, the great dying where 96% of species died out. A similar style dyout would wipe humans off the planet. That was a rise of 8 degrees celcius, with 2000 parts per million CO2. We've raised the CO2 from 280ppm to 370ppm to the year 2000 and to 404ppm this year and still accelerating.
So we're looking at as much as 1000ppm by 2100, which is really past a point at which we could stop it.
Permian is believed to be a de-oxygenating event of the ocean, so all marine life died out because it couldn't breath, which in turn released decay gasses into the atmosphere and snuffed out the land animals.
That's potentially Trumps great grandchildren dead, so not really a big deal, he'll never meet them, let alone date them.
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So true. This planet's going to be doing fine, a few species might not make it, but then again, I'm not so sure that certain critters going extinct is such a bad thing. That homo sapiens for example sure is a cancer to the world, and throughout its existence there have been ice caps. One can only hope that their demise also means his.
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The important point is that humans have only been around in their earliest forms from about 7-8 million years. Lucy is about 3.2-3.3 million years old. Homo erectus died out about 1 million years ago. Neanderthals were around from about 700,000 to 35,000 years ago. Modern humans have been around since roughly 150,000 (generously) but more likely 100,000 or 75,000 years.
Now, could you please go back to the dawn of the earth's creation, establish a colony, and live your dream. Get back to us, write soon, we'd
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That's all very well, but here in Britain we know that what really happened in the 6000BC era was "Mainland European is cut off from Britain".
Re:Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Your back of the napkin familiarity on the subject matter in an age of scientific hyper specialization makes any opinion you have on the matter totally moot.
How on earth do you think you could possibly add any line of thinking that hasn't already been thought of, proposed, hashed over, and sorted out by the people who've been studying these lines of science for decades?
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Your back of the napkin familiarity on the subject matter in an age of scientific hyper specialization makes any opinion you have on the matter totally moot.
Strange, I've read scientific papers who argued in favor of phrenology and eugenics, and the detractors using the same language against critics.
Re: Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:2, Insightful)
99% consensus on phrenology eh? Tough to believe, but even so, phrenology wasn't debunked until someone debunked it. Simply stating "nuh uh" is not science, and it definitely is not a refutation worth consideration.
Unfortunately the country is filled with impressionable people who desperately want to believe their way of life never needs to change, and cling to folks like you as a lifeline instead of critically thinking about ways to improve their situation when the inevitable comes. Interestingly this a
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Re:Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to see the papers and the critics. If the critics were some internet randos who are not scientists in the field, then yes, criticism is most likely moot. If the criticism is about some specific aspect of the paper (for example, pointing out problems with statistical methods), then it can be valid so long as the critic understands the aspect he/she is criticizing. If the authors of the research are making policy suggestions, then basically everyone can be a critic (e.g. you if prove that black kids are doing wore in school than white kids, it does not mean that the *right* policy is to concentrate teaching resources on the white kids *or* to attempt to equalize education outcomes).
As for GP case, it is really silly to expect that rather well established field will be overthrown by “that particular thing looks fishy”. Is is like expecting to disprove gravity by pointing to birds.
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I would like to see the papers and the critics. If the critics were some internet randos who are not scientists in the field, then yes, criticism is most likely moot.
Try your local library or university. Most places haven't digitized anything before about 1940, unless they're pertinent to research in an existing field. It's too expensive, and not worth the effort unless someone is working with them in more then once-in-a-decade work. That requires you gaining physical access to either stored or vaulted information. Universities I can suggest in Canada include the University of King's College and University of Laval. Set up appointments beforehand, otherwise they'll
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Riiiight. Because it's all been hashed out and no one can contribute unless they agree with the consensus that's been all worked out with no possibility of dissent.
Now you are just being intentionally obtuse. He did not say no one could contribute. He said no one without decades of hyper specialized research could possibly contribute. I only have a Masters degree, but I did choose a research track instead of a capstone project, and the most important thing I learned was how specialized someone needs to be to make meaningful contributions to scientific knowledge.
At least 99.999% of the population has no business postulating about climate science. The only reasonable op
Re: Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:3, Insightful)
You just proved his point. You believe your opinion is as relevant as someone who has spent a greater part of his life learning about climate science.
If you truly believe what you're saying, YOU need to go through the rigors of education the researcher you're equating yourself with before you can argue against the consensus.
The "smell test" is fine for localized things that don't matter much, but the reason the science fields exist is to perform research and analysis that the average layman cannot.
You can
Re: Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:4, Informative)
By the way, that whole "97% consensus" thing is pure organic fertilizer. So not even your claims of consensus hold up to scrutiny.
Did you even read the articles you quoted? The WSJ article is behind a paywall, but the Politifact article rated the statement "Over 97 percent of the scientific community believe that humans are contributing to climate change." as mostly true. The only reason it wasn't entirely true is that over 97 percent of active researchers in relevant fields of the scientific community agree, not 97 percent of the entire scientific community. Considering those are the only people in the scientific community whose opinions hold much weight, its not a big mistake. There was also another researcher who disagreed with the criteria used to determine if the researcher agreed, and independently came up with a 91% consensus. That same researcher then stated "There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans."
So it seems your own Googling backs up his consensus statements quite well.
Re:Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
But that 99.999% of population has a right to decide whether they want to fund the fight against climate change or not.
That is absolutely true. The climate scientists aren't the ones who should be deciding whether coastal cities are worth saving, for instance. That is the responsibility of the general public. The general public certainly has the right to say they simply don't care, or aren't willing to make sacrifices for future generations. They can even let some amount of uncertainty about the negative effects of climate change enter into their risk management, such as using a predictive model where there is a 10% there are no negative effects.
But the current strategy of claiming the science isn't solid enough to be taken as "fact" by non-experts is indefensible.
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The gall of those heathens, only we the anointed have the right to prophecy, only we know the secret rites, how to shake the beads and rattles! Insolent dogs, You'll anger the Gods, just tender the tithe without question. Pay no attention to the man behind the paywall, the smoke and mirrors are simply for your protection.
It shows deep ignorance to equate higher education with some religious cult. There are hundreds of climate science, earth science, etc. undergraduate and graduate programs in the US alone where you are free to educate yourself if you want to make meaningful contribution to the sciences. There is plenty of room for debate as long as you know what you are talking about first.
If you want to treat any deference to qualified professionals as equal to religious dogma, you are going to lead a very ignorant life fo
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I don't know if you realised, but you just told everyone how little you know about scientific research, at the same time as trying to use your knowledge of scientific research to make a point. It's rather entertaining for everyone else, but I imagine for you it's somewhat embarrassing. Let me help you for future times you insist on chiming in:
1) Yes, and? Oncologists research cancer, climatologists research the climate. Or should they swap every once in a while to keep you happy? Or is it this particu
Re:Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Individual measurements being inaccurate does not change the validity of the trend. Yes, better calibration helps getting more accurate results with less uncertainties, but it's highly unlikely that all calibration errors were in the same direction and skewed over time into the opposite direction.
Climate change deniers get stuck on individual errors or error margins, and believe they invalidate the entire research. They need to talk to some statisticians. The trends are still perfectly valid and beyond any reasonable doubt and even unreasonable doubt.
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It is entirely reasonable that calibration errors tended to one direction over the other if the same methods of calibration were used.
Re:Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
It is entirely reasonable that calibration errors tended to one direction over the other if the same methods of calibration were used.
But that doesn't matter. What matters are the trends. If all slashdotters buy crappy thermometers from the same manufacturer and they all show 1-3 degrees less than they should, and our average is lower this year than next, we can still say with fairly high certainty that the temperature has increased.
And if we then all buy crappy thermometers from another manufacturer and they all show 1-3 degrees more than they should, and our average continues to increase, we can still say that our average has increased.
What is measured is the same thermometers against the same thermometers. If recalibrating or swapping out the equipment, measuring starts again. If a measuring station shows 15C one year, 16C the next, and then swap thermometers and show 13C that year and 14C the next, the data doesn't show that the temperature has dropped from 15C to 14C - it shows a 2 degree increase. Combined with other measurements that show a similar increase, it becomes significant and gives high certainty for a trend.
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And yet... well, take a look for yourself at the adjustments [amazonaws.com] made to the temperature data. Clearly someone thinks "that all of the calibration errors were in the same direction and then skewed over time into the opposite direction".
Re:Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, better calibration helps getting more accurate results with less uncertainties, but it's highly unlikely that all calibration errors were in the same direction and skewed over time into the opposite direction.
Good lord folks -- I'm tired of this discussion coming up periodically and people talking out of their asses.
Look: thermometers dating back the mid-1800s were highly precise and did not need frequent calibration. They had perfected glass tubes of mercury and could make very even marks on them by that point. A late 19th-century thermometer had precision that was easily within +/-0.1 degree. (For specialized applications and laboratory thermometers, there were plenty that were manufactured by the late 1800s to be read down to 0.01 degree.)
And a sealed glass tube doesn't need repeated calibration if it's not disturbed or damaged. The issue here is simply how good the (somewhat permanent) calibration was. By the first couple decades of the 1900s, there were standards organizations which existed that would do standardized calibrations (i.e., where you could get a standard calibrated thermometer or send one away to be checked for calibration). We have actual logbooks when many thermometers were checked for accuracy. We have actual logbooks where thermometers were replaced and the old thermometers were compared with the new ones in terms of their scales and calibration. Etc., etc.
Just because you cannot fathom that people 100 years ago could read a thermometer or manufacture an even glass tube doesn't mean they didn't. They did. We still have many of these thermometers today to prove it. A 1900-era thermometers is about as accurate as a 1900-era RULER.
In fact, in terms of precision AND accuracy, what you should be questioning instead is MODERN electronic thermometers, which DO need frequent calibration and are frequently only accurate to maybe +/- 1 degree even when calibrated properly. But they're used for convenience because they no longer need a human to go look at it and write it down. Ask any meteorologist who knows anything about temperature measurement, and he'll likely tell you that stuff they were using decades and even over a century ago (often accurate to +/-0.1 degree) is more accurate than the stuff weather records are generated with now. (And regardless, that +/-1 degree or whatever is plenty to generate an average over several years to compare temperature records.)
No -- the real issue in dealing with old records is questions of siting and distribution. Historical thermometers weren't always located in the best of places, but again, most were, and we generally have records of those that were. The biggest statistical issue is that we didn't have such even distribution for samples all over the globe, so there's some sampling bias. Again, there's a lot of work statisticians do to take this into account when looking at long-term global averages.
Anyhow, I personally have complete confidence that those statistical analyses are good and reflect the overall trend. But people who are arguing that old thermometers were bad and needed frequent calibration simply have ABSOLUTELY no clue what they're talking about.
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Also, calibration is pretty trivial. I mean, we have boiling water and that mixture of whatever that came out to 0F... some endothermic reaction. I suppose you may hav eto adjust for atmospheric pressure where it was calibrated, but that seems easy enough.
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I have a thermometer that cost $1.29 and I'm a betting man, so I'd go with the odds that it's simply wrong.
However, when the heating system kicks in, that bastard goes up.
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I have a thermometer that cost $1.29 and I'm a betting man, so I'd go with the odds that it's simply wrong.
I've got one of those too. It was made in 1803, and I'll bet that $1.29 it's more accurate then most have been made in the last 30 years. Those olde mercury-in-glass thermometers were and are still considered the gold standard for measurements.
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Crikey, dogs and cats sleeping together! I agree with you on something!
Not sure about as long ago as 1803 1803, but certainly at some point in the 1800s they got really good at making mercury thermometers. You can get better thermometers these days---for a price---but as another poster pointed out, a 1800s thermometer was pretty much as good as an 1800s ruler, which is to say, good.
And being of less general interest, they were generally well made scientific instruments then, there doesn't appear to have bee
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Then why do they keep adjusting old values in the records?
For reasons you've demonstrated that you're not bright enough to understand. I saw some of your other posts in the thread. You're either too dim or too emotionally invested in believing lies to absorb the answers. So, I shall not waste my time.
By the way, being contrarian doesn't make you smart. It's only clever to disagree with the experts if you actually have very good reasons to and are right.
Re: Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Breadth & Accuracy 120 years ago (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you reconcile between eras so far apart in both the breadth of measurements and accuracies and methodology between now and then?
By comparing datasets from multiple sources that overlap in the time domain.
I don't think it is possible to any close "degree." Look, people didn't calibrate their thermometers all the time back then, nor did they have the scientific rigor in measurement technique to make sure they had an acceptable "averaging" setup for the measurement on a specific time and circumstance each day.
First of all, people did calibrate thermometers "all the time back then." It wasn't hard. The freezing and boiling points of water at sea level are convenient standard fiduciary marks.
As for "scientifc rigor" -- what I think you really mean is the care taken in measurements. Consider for example, Tyco Brahe. He gathered enormous amounts of data that informed Kepler to create his laws of planetary motion. And he didn't have a telescope. He took extraordinary care to use his measuring instruments to the best of his ability. My point is that data that is "old" is not necessarily lacking in "rigor."
Finally, regarding data quoted to a fraction of a degree -- you need to understand that individual measurements can have a moderate errors, but their average can be highly accurate. Google on "standard error of the mean" for details.
Re:Le Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what your daddy said when people wanted to put cancer warnings on cigarette packages, and when the big librul gubbmit came for your grandaddies asbestos insulation.
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Nice ad-homonym, BTW. I see your grasp of logic is as rock solid as your reading comprehension
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1 year has no meaning.
You don't just need strict averages though. If the climate was steady, you'd expect extrema (e.g. hottest X on record) to decrease exponentially in frequency since the start of measuring for a quite wide variety of realistic distributions, and the extrema to be in both directions. What we're getting is repeated hot extrema or close and no cold extrema. That itself shows that a warming trend is overwhelmingly likely.
It's easy to get an intuitive feel by dicking around in something li
Re:Be carefull with short term averages (Score:5, Informative)
Once again you entirely miss the point.
Statistically it proves a rising trend. If there were no trend, we'd expect a 50% chance of getting an above-average year. Now work out the odds of flipping a coin and getting 20 heads in a row (about 1 in 2^20). But with a rising trend, the probability of eventually getting 20 in a row approaches 1.0.
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even when facts clearly show the opposite
Still waiting for that to be the case.
You haven't cited any facts. So far, all you've done is deny the existing facts - hand-waving them away as "adjusted" without any evidence that this makes them less accurate, and without any challenge to the methodology. Your only justification is that the corrections are "large", and give results you don't like. In what way do these claims constitute "facts"? Sounds like textbook denial to me.
Perhaps take some time to at least learn [giss.nasa.gov] why [giss.nasa.gov] the corrections were needed, so
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Ever wonder why people are skeptical of claims like this?
Do you ever wonder why we are skeptical of your claims? I'll demonstrate:
Keep in mind that these data are subject to large adjustments instead of basing these claims on anything resembling the raw data.
Where is the proof of this claim?
Sure, it's necessary to perform quality control, but the adjustments go far beyond that.
Where is the proof of this claim?
In fact, if you plot the quality controlled data prior to the adjustments, the temperature record is mostly flat.
Where is the proof of this claim? What does mostly mean? mostly doesn't sound like it has a scientific definition.
However, the adjustments to the data set look like a hockey stick.
So what? Why would we care?
When you need to adjust the data in order to get a signal, you end up making ridiculous claims like vaccines causing autism. Global warming is about as credible, except that scientists have decided it's true. To their credit, organizations like the National Climatic Data Center are transparent about their adjustments, so we can actually determine that the adjustments are the source of the warming signal.
Where is the proof of this claim?
I respect the scientists at NCDC, though I think their research is very flawed. The problem is that, when someone points out these facts, people show up and aggressively attack anyone who raises these problems.
We ask you for proof, and you treat our request like an attack. It's your job to prove your assertions
Re: This is why most people are skeptical (Score:5, Interesting)
All of that is based on the premise that the economy will tank if do anything to address global warming. But that is the same argument that has been leveled at every attempt to fix an environmental or social problem, like banning CFCs to stop destroying the ozone layer, or stopping the dumping harmful chemicals in any old place without a care for the health effects, or improving safety in factories to prevent workers dying from the chemicals they use, or the abolition of slavery, etc.
And yet here were are after all those changes. The economy wasn't destroyed, and scientific research is still being funded. That is because the economy adapted, as it always does. In this case we might have some short-term pain with the cost of converting to cleaner energy sources and technologies, but that will get forgotten once we find that we can save money by being smart about taking the energy from the air and sunlight around us. While coal miners won't be happy about the reduction of coal use, solar panel manufacturers will delight as their industry booms. While some things might cost us more as we have to find environmentally friendly ways of manufacturing goods, the work we do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will have the effect of lowering levels of all pollutions. This will lead to a reduction in pollution-related diseases lowering the health care costs.
We will soon forget about what we had to do to fix climate change just as we have with all the other changes that I mentioned above. Eventually, some other problem will occur and nay-sayers will predict the ruin of the economy yet again.
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"Not the hottest we have seen in the tiny span of time we have been keeping records compared to geologic and astronomical time frames."
At the start of the solar system the Earth was incansescent with heat and at some point the entire thing was very likely covered with ice. Pointing out conditions from billions of years ago does nothing except muddy the waters, intentionally, I feel.
Call me when it is 5C hotter globally and I might actually care (
Unless you're part of the relatively small population that li
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy [wikipedia.org]