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This article is an example of why I find it difficult to intellectually buy into the warming climate theory. It would seem if one is trying to convince the publ

This article is an example of why I find it difficult to intellectually buy into the warming climate theory. It would seem if one is trying to convince the public of "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever the current term is, that scientists would at least publish articles that lay-scientists like myself could read and be convinced. But that's not what we have here, no what we have here is a hyped-up oh my its getting hot article... First off, your observation of the ridiculous x-axis labels. Really, "Extremely Hot" Is that supposed to scare me or something? Second, what does this mean... "...compared actual summer temperatures for each decade since the 1980s to a fixed baseline average." Did you sample at the same location each summer? Did you sample at the same point in the summer? Did you account for any changes in winter/spring/fall temperatures? And finally...did they happen to point out the time periods are not all of the same length?

moultano 9y ago
> This article is an example of why I find it difficult to intellectually buy into the warming climate theory. If your concern is lack of rigor in a pop science article, go to the primary documents instead. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
hartator 9y ago
It's the end justify the means kind of thing. They tend to forget bad science is still bad science.
Oletros 9y ago
> It would seem if one is trying to convince the public of "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever the current term There is no current term, both describe different things https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming/ https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming/
esaym 9y ago
Everything today in "science" is just based off of pretty charts and cartoon graphics. That's their "proof". The hottest I've been in was in Sep. 2006 in Waco Tx [0]. Mainly due to a hurricane in the gulf that pulled the humidity out of the air, but it wasn't so bad. Road my motorcycle to work that day. Summer 2007 was even stranger, rained almost every other day and temps never made it above 100 that year. Now I'm farther south. I was going to replace my A/C unit in 2015 because it couldn't keep up in the 104+ summer that year. But for the last two summers, it hasn't gotten above 101 and the A/C has been working fine, so here I sit. [0]http://i.imgur.com/Cgu3Vuc.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Cgu3Vuc.jpg
- tstactplsignore 9y ago
  This is mindboggling anti-intellectualism. There is absolutely zero substance to your claim. Scientific work is more rigorous and quantitative than ever, especially in climate science, and the fact that you are too lazy to learn the first thing about how modern science works doesn't change that reality. All I can say is I'd really, really wish that you'd educate yourself on how science works. Please start by reading some scientific journals, Nature Geoscience and Geophysical Research Letters are a good place to start.
  - esaym 9y ago
    Why? So I can see more pretty charts and cartoons? I'm am not telling you my option, I am telling you my observation.
    - Oletros 9y ago
      Then the problem is perhaps that you cannot read the data and understand what is behind those charts
    - tstactplsignore 9y ago
      So you can learn something about scientific findings. Their texts are quite thorough, and the data is there- it bewilders me why you're complaining about a figure for every 1000 words of text (normal ratio for a scientific paper). I don't think it's your opinion, or your observation- just some raw emotional feeling born out of a dislike for science and the people who do it. I will try to engage with you. Here is a typical paper from Nature Climate Change this week. Can you explain exactly why you think the text has not enough substance and is overly reliant upon figures? https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3351.html https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/n...
  - kbenson 9y ago
    This isn't an effective way to engage with and change someone's point of view, and there's plenty of science on that. It may be intellectually satisfying to you personally, but that's no better than what you are denigrating here. If you actually care about the cause you profess to be for with your actions, please find a different way to express it, lest you hurt while trying to help.
tstactplsignore 9y ago
Dear lord... it's revealing how little effort you will put into any research or understanding of these results. You come off as proud of your ignorance, and it's not the article's responsibility to cater to your obtuse and idiosyncratic response. These are average summer temperatures for a network of land based temperature sensors across the entire Northern hemisphere. Please read the source link at the bottom of the article before you ask such frivolous questions. Do you think this work was done by some lone guy in his garage? It's the results of a global dataset that dozens of scientists work on and mantain... Conveying scientific research just feels impossible when this is the kind of response you can get even on a more educated place forum like HN. Depressing...
yk 9y ago
There is really no shortage of introduction articles, starting from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming or Nasa: https://climate.nasa.gov/ https://climate.nasa.gov/ or by now, just inspecting the measured global temperature by eye https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ Of course, these are introductory texts, so you should expect that there are some simplifications. You can of course just read the IPCC report, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ however be advised that they are on the cold side of the estimates. (Really if you would read the IPCC report with the same critical eye you are trying to nitpick the NY times, you would see that each and every scenario includes at least a plateau in emissions, they just don't have a scenario were emissions just rise like in the last 100 years.) > First off, your observation of the ridiculous x-axis labels. Really, "Extremely Hot" Is that supposed to scare me or something? You could of course inspect the linked paper, "Extremely hot" refers to summers that were once in thirty years hot in the time period from 1951 to 1980. It is just an accurate label.
- jack9 9y ago
  "Extremely hot" without predicated value is cannot be an accurate label in any context. It's a relative label, alone. In this case it's means "largest positive normalized value". The proposition that it is accurate by existence on a graph, is dishonest. That isn't constructive.
  - yk 9y ago
    Any label needs context, consider the label "3" or even "9 m/s^2," the first can refer to anything the second to an acceleration or to a gravitational field strength. In the case of weather, "extremely hot" is just what one would call a summer that is hotter above the usual variability. I would argue, that the label is rather good for the context of a NYT article in that the reader would refer to that category as "extremely hot."
  - wlesieutre 9y ago
    Yes, they are relative values. The whole point of the article is to make a relative comparison of temperatures now to what they used to be. It's not trying to present absolute measurements. The average reader gets no meaningful understanding from "Global average temperatures are up 0.5 degrees Celsius. But looking at a graph like what's presented here, you can realize that a person in 1950, if asked what the weather was like on one of those red days, would tell you "It's goddamn hot, I can't remember it ever being this hot here." and now we get those temperatures all the time. If you want raw data and absolute comparisons, there are plenty of places to get it. This is an NYT article written to help people understand in concrete terms that things have changed.
anigbrowl 9y ago
You're not a 'lay scientist' if you're just parsing newspaper articles, while ignoring the methodological explanation and cited sources. You're just nitpicking at a short interactive widget, simplified for a general audience, as if it were the core argument of a paper in an academic journal - which it isn't. You're not doing science; you are role-playing a character on the internet, and offering your intellectual laziness or lack of comprehension (idk which) as if it were a counter-argument - which it isn't. It's true that this article solicits your interest in a phenomenon and does not walk through the full detail of everything, but provides only a short summary and a reference to sources. It'd be great if it were a fully-developed explainer that you could navigate through like a science documentary on one particular subject or a deep dive into Wikipedia. Maybe in a few years we';; be able to produce such elaborate tutorials on the fly using AI, and by asking astute questions you'll be able to interactively broaden your education or even make valuable suggestions from left field, and then you will indeed be a lay scientist. But in the meantime, you're LARPing.
UncleMeat 9y ago
Yet your problem with the x-axis goes away once you actually look into the methods. This sort of immediate conclusion that a study is worthless because a quick glance from non-experts reveals something that looks a little odd is just awful. Do you think that no reviewers ever think of these things?

moultano 9y ago

> This article is an example of why I find it difficult to intellectually buy into the warming climate theory. If your concern is lack of rigor in a pop science article, go to the primary documents instead. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/

hartator 9y ago

It's the end justify the means kind of thing. They tend to forget bad science is still bad science.

Oletros 9y ago

> It would seem if one is trying to convince the public of "global warming" or "climate change" or whatever the current term There is no current term, both describe different things https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming/ https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming/

esaym 9y ago

Everything today in "science" is just based off of pretty charts and cartoon graphics. That's their "proof". The hottest I've been in was in Sep. 2006 in Waco Tx [0]. Mainly due to a hurricane in the gulf that pulled the humidity out of the air, but it wasn't so bad. Road my motorcycle to work that day. Summer 2007 was even stranger, rained almost every other day and temps never made it above 100 that year. Now I'm farther south. I was going to replace my A/C unit in 2015 because it couldn't keep up in the 104+ summer that year. But for the last two summers, it hasn't gotten above 101 and the A/C has been working fine, so here I sit. [0]http://i.imgur.com/Cgu3Vuc.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Cgu3Vuc.jpg

tstactplsignore 9y ago
This is mindboggling anti-intellectualism. There is absolutely zero substance to your claim. Scientific work is more rigorous and quantitative than ever, especially in climate science, and the fact that you are too lazy to learn the first thing about how modern science works doesn't change that reality. All I can say is I'd really, really wish that you'd educate yourself on how science works. Please start by reading some scientific journals, Nature Geoscience and Geophysical Research Letters are a good place to start.
- esaym 9y ago
  Why? So I can see more pretty charts and cartoons? I'm am not telling you my option, I am telling you my observation.
  - Oletros 9y ago
    Then the problem is perhaps that you cannot read the data and understand what is behind those charts
  - tstactplsignore 9y ago
    So you can learn something about scientific findings. Their texts are quite thorough, and the data is there- it bewilders me why you're complaining about a figure for every 1000 words of text (normal ratio for a scientific paper). I don't think it's your opinion, or your observation- just some raw emotional feeling born out of a dislike for science and the people who do it. I will try to engage with you. Here is a typical paper from Nature Climate Change this week. Can you explain exactly why you think the text has not enough substance and is overly reliant upon figures? https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3351.html https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/n...
- kbenson 9y ago
  This isn't an effective way to engage with and change someone's point of view, and there's plenty of science on that. It may be intellectually satisfying to you personally, but that's no better than what you are denigrating here. If you actually care about the cause you profess to be for with your actions, please find a different way to express it, lest you hurt while trying to help.

tstactplsignore 9y ago

Dear lord... it's revealing how little effort you will put into any research or understanding of these results. You come off as proud of your ignorance, and it's not the article's responsibility to cater to your obtuse and idiosyncratic response. These are average summer temperatures for a network of land based temperature sensors across the entire Northern hemisphere. Please read the source link at the bottom of the article before you ask such frivolous questions. Do you think this work was done by some lone guy in his garage? It's the results of a global dataset that dozens of scientists work on and mantain... Conveying scientific research just feels impossible when this is the kind of response you can get even on a more educated place forum like HN. Depressing...

yk 9y ago

There is really no shortage of introduction articles, starting from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming or Nasa: https://climate.nasa.gov/ https://climate.nasa.gov/ or by now, just inspecting the measured global temperature by eye https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ Of course, these are introductory texts, so you should expect that there are some simplifications. You can of course just read the IPCC report, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/ however be advised that they are on the cold side of the estimates. (Really if you would read the IPCC report with the same critical eye you are trying to nitpick the NY times, you would see that each and every scenario includes at least a plateau in emissions, they just don't have a scenario were emissions just rise like in the last 100 years.) > First off, your observation of the ridiculous x-axis labels. Really, "Extremely Hot" Is that supposed to scare me or something? You could of course inspect the linked paper, "Extremely hot" refers to summers that were once in thirty years hot in the time period from 1951 to 1980. It is just an accurate label.

jack9 9y ago
"Extremely hot" without predicated value is cannot be an accurate label in any context. It's a relative label, alone. In this case it's means "largest positive normalized value". The proposition that it is accurate by existence on a graph, is dishonest. That isn't constructive.
- yk 9y ago
  Any label needs context, consider the label "3" or even "9 m/s^2," the first can refer to anything the second to an acceleration or to a gravitational field strength. In the case of weather, "extremely hot" is just what one would call a summer that is hotter above the usual variability. I would argue, that the label is rather good for the context of a NYT article in that the reader would refer to that category as "extremely hot."
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Yes, they are relative values. The whole point of the article is to make a relative comparison of temperatures now to what they used to be. It's not trying to present absolute measurements. The average reader gets no meaningful understanding from "Global average temperatures are up 0.5 degrees Celsius. But looking at a graph like what's presented here, you can realize that a person in 1950, if asked what the weather was like on one of those red days, would tell you "It's goddamn hot, I can't remember it ever being this hot here." and now we get those temperatures all the time. If you want raw data and absolute comparisons, there are plenty of places to get it. This is an NYT article written to help people understand in concrete terms that things have changed.

anigbrowl 9y ago

You're not a 'lay scientist' if you're just parsing newspaper articles, while ignoring the methodological explanation and cited sources. You're just nitpicking at a short interactive widget, simplified for a general audience, as if it were the core argument of a paper in an academic journal - which it isn't. You're not doing science; you are role-playing a character on the internet, and offering your intellectual laziness or lack of comprehension (idk which) as if it were a counter-argument - which it isn't. It's true that this article solicits your interest in a phenomenon and does not walk through the full detail of everything, but provides only a short summary and a reference to sources. It'd be great if it were a fully-developed explainer that you could navigate through like a science documentary on one particular subject or a deep dive into Wikipedia. Maybe in a few years we';; be able to produce such elaborate tutorials on the fly using AI, and by asking astute questions you'll be able to interactively broaden your education or even make valuable suggestions from left field, and then you will indeed be a lay scientist. But in the meantime, you're LARPing.

UncleMeat 9y ago

Yet your problem with the x-axis goes away once you actually look into the methods. This sort of immediate conclusion that a study is worthless because a quick glance from non-experts reveals something that looks a little odd is just awful. Do you think that no reviewers ever think of these things?