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2016 was third consecutive year of record global warmth
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- oh_sigh 9y agoRegardless of CO2, does anyone have a sense of how much heat we are putting into the earth system by burning non-renewables? edit: I did the math, and it seems our total yearly oil production in 2016, if used to directly boil the oceans, would raise the temperature of them by .0001 degrees. It's really incredible the multiplier effect CO2 can have.
- CaptainXMoonman 9y agoRegardless of CO2, does anyone have a sense of how much heat we are putting into the earth system by burning non-renewables?
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- philipkglass 9y agoFossil combustion is directly heating the Earth by ~16 terawatts. Radiative forcing from human emitted CO2 (primarily fossil combustion) is ~1 watt/m^2: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-climate-forcing https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... Multiplied by the surface area of the planet, 510,000,000 km^2, that's 510 terawatts heating from CO2 in the atmosphere. As time goes by the relative importance of radiative forcing continues to increase, because fuel produces heat for just a short time as it burns but the combustion emissions amplify the effects of sunlight for years to come.
- bpodgursky 9y agoThe earth is always radiating heat, balanced against new heat from the sun. Absent the heat-trapping effects of CO2, the generated heat would quickly dissipate to equilibrium.
- muninn_ 9y agoOh but hey guys no global warming!
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- mentat 9y agoTitle doesn't match article and is clearly hyperbolic.
- pmarreck 9y ago"International report confirms 2016 was third consecutive year of record global warmth" EDIT: Title was actually JUST changed.
- sctb 9y agoWe've updated the title from “2016 confirmed as planet's hottest year”. Submitters, the guidelines ask us not to editorialize titles like this.
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- calafrax 9y ago"Last year’s record heat resulted from the combined influence of long-term global warming and a strong El Niño early in the year." "One of the strongest El Niño events since at least 1950"
- jesperlang 9y agoMore details about the situation in the arctic: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
- pmarreck 9y agoI'm dismayed that the very environment we all share somehow got politicized to death. I wonder what would have happened to the Ozone Hole if it too got politicized at the time, or the link between smoking and cancer if it got politicized. We trust our doctors; we trust our tech leaders; why don't we trust our scientists and climatologists? (Is this, sort of, Gore's fault, combined with a highly-polarizing media? I have to wonder.) At this point I have almost no faith that until things get dire enough to cause even the most ignorant layperson to realize there's a serious problem going on, that anything impactful will be done to stop it, and by then it may be too late due to runaway multiplicative effects (such as the thawing of permafrost methane in the Arctic, or the absence of snow cover resulting in less planet-surface reflectivity)
- dragonwriter 9y ago> I wonder what would have happened to the Ozone Hole if it too got politicized at the time, It did, and a large number of people on the Right took attitudes exactly like the Right takes on climate change today. That faction was somewhat weaker within the Right at the time, and the Right somewhat weaker overall, so the political resistance to the science wasn't as successful in preventing federal policy action as it has been in the US on climate change, but the same overall shape of political dispute occurred.
- ckinnan 9y agoAny evidence for your claim? That's not my recollection of the issue. The Reagan Administration implemented the Montreal Protocol to address ozone depletion. It was immediately ratified by the U.S. Senate by a unanimous vote. It's probably the most successful global environmental agreement in history.
- mikeash 9y agoHere's one: https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2005/08/10/professor_limbaugh_debunks_junk_earth_science2/ https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2005/08/10/professor_limb... And another: http://www.newsweek.com/ozone-hole-our-heads-194308 http://www.newsweek.com/ozone-hole-our-heads-194308 It precisely matches my recollection, as someone who spent far too long listening to Mr. Limbaugh at the time.
- dzaragozar 9y agoNext year: "International report confirms 2017 was fourth consecutive year of record global warmth" Not exactly shocking news :)
- melling 9y agoIt might not be because El Niño years are a little warmer. So, if the next couple of years aren’t warmer, we don’t have a hiatus.
- malchow 9y ago". . . in 137 years of recordkeeping."
- jefurii 9y agoClimate information is also written in the rings of trees, which in the case of giant sequoias goes back several thousand years. It's also there in the geological record in the form of layers in sedimentary rocks.
- rednerrus 9y agoAre the records from trees included in this article?
- triangleman 9y ago1) It's not clear how to derive a signal from that evidence. Is a thicker tree ring evidence of a hotter, wetter climate, or a "happy medium" temperature? 2) Such a record of tree rings, if it could produce any temperature signal whatsoever, would be a relative signal: Each year would be calculated in relation to other years on the same timeline for the same tree. How you could map that signal to modern temperature observations in any meaningful way? Personally if you're talking about a global temperature estimate, I would only trust the gold standard: Satellite observations starting in 1978.
- Daishiman 9y agoIf you're going to say this idiotic line, at the very least take 5 minutes to read Wikipedia on the topic.
- dmix 9y ago> the combined influence of long-term global warming and a strong El Niño early in the year I'm curious how strong this El Nino was vs others in recent years? Was it particularly bad this time?
- bostik 9y agoThis is a tricky question. (Hell, it could well be a trick question.) El Niño takes place 2-3 times per generation. A stronger than usual phenomenon is a single data point, and we all know how much validity one should give to an outlier. In order to quantify the strength of consecutive events, and especially to rule out freak outliers in both directions you will need a few distinct data points. Let's say 6-8 data points at a minimum. So the timescales for measurements will be in the range of 40-50 years. By the time you can reliably use El Niño as a yardstick to say that it's getting late to act, it will have been too late for quite some time.
- tryingagainbro 9y agoAfter a while we might just see a trend (I mean even the skeptical crowd)
- yahna 9y agoNope. You still have people in this thread posting about how "oh the left is just too mean so I became a client skeptic" "oh well the scientists get paid and they don't have 100% of the answers so I'm a client skeptic now"
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- 11235813213455 9y agoIt's exasperating, people around me over-consume, drive too much, own pets (which are completely useless, cost energy too (healthcare, food, ..), cats damage seriously the ecosystem when they are outside, ..), we are talking of something close to a billion of pets, 20% of people still smoke cigarettes as a bonus It's not just those simple acts, but when you consume 1L of gas with your car, you have to consider the amount of energy to extract it, transport it, stock it... It can't go well with those attitudes, where residential pollution is about 40%-45% of overall pollution. This alone can be divided by 10, when I see my environmental fingerprint, with my bike and laptop
- triangleman 9y agoThat is actually part of the plan. Everyone believes in a manufactured environmental doomsday scenario, and can blame it on nameless "others" who "pollute" the Earth with their trace gases. Soon there will be a carbon indulgence available for everyone to pay in order to secure your salvation. Then you can continue your patterns of actual pollution with a clear consience: littering, not picking up after your dog, not conserving resources, starting flamewars online, using too much water, ignoring the real environment around you.
- 11235813213455 9y agoand people downvoting me just prove that the majority of those people overconsuming is not going to change soon
- MadSax 9y agoHow to virtually guarantee funding: Create a research project that attempts to better understand a cause or a potential effect of some aspect of Climate Change. How to be ostracized from the University zeitgeist and receive little/no funding: Create a research project that attempts to disprove any major assumptions or pillars of modern Climate Change science. Welcome to politics.
- scarmig 9y agoI guess the new line is that we can't trust the scientists, because they're all corrupt. Which I guess is pretty similar to the old line. But at least back then the know-nothingism had the pretense of caring about the science with screams of "1998!" and "sunspots!"
- LARGEGALAXY 9y agoI am skeptic of everything "climate change" not because the theory lacks soundness (on the contrary it is a reasonable theory) but by the manner it has been espoused to the public over the past 10 years. The Earth has many, many problems just as dangerous; why has this one tiny topic been magnified to degrees of mass-hysteria above all else? That is why I am a skeptic. It has the annotations of a ploy with ulterior motives, a very successful ploy at that seeing the breeds of millions of pseudo-intellectual climate change advocates created out of thin-air thanks to mainstream media. History is ripe with such hoaxes.
- patrickg_zill 9y agoThings that climate change discussions rarely talk about: 1. We have a climate that is greatly affected by the sun. The sun varies in the amount of light we get from it. We have truly, absolutely zero ability to modify anything about the sun. We couldn't even place a probe or device within 10,000 miles of the surface of the sun, if our survival depended on it. 2. Even if the USA cuts their emissions in half tomorrow, with China and India increasing their use of autos and other emissions producing devices, would that be enough? And how exactly is it that USA spends more on reducing emissions while others spend zero? How much of a hit to the economy does this entail, for essentially zero world wide benefit? How many remember Canada's 180 degree turnaround a few years ago, when they realized that conforming to the Kyoto protocol meant a 10% GDP hit?
- SamPhillips 9y ago1. 100% of the problem that climatologists discuss is heat from the sun, trapped, by greenhouse gasses that we release. As you rightly point out, we can't control the sun, so we must control how much insulating gas we put in the atmosphere. 2. Even it China cuts is emissions, with the USA outputting more than 4 times per person, would that be enough? How exactly is it that China spends more on reducing emissions while USA spends zero? This is a collective action problem (much like CFC's were in the 1980s, or not peeing in the lake you depend on for drinking water), it requires grown-up behavior from all nations now so as to no despoil the inheritance we might leave to our children.
- patrickg_zill 9y ago1. Very few talk about how the sun changes its levels of radiance and how this affects climate on Earth. The sun is not a "constant". 2. Maybe I phrased that part of my statement rather lumpily. I meant, if USA spends to reduce emissions and China and India do not spend.
- SamPhillips 9y ago1. They don't talk about it because it is not the primary cause of the warming we see. [0] 2. China and India have agreed to reduce emissions, as part of the Paris agreement. 45% of all solar installed worldwide in 2016 was installed in China. Every country needs to do its part. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country
- SamPhillips 9y agoIf you're (rightly) concerned about climate change there is a lot you can do. Here are three good resources. Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change" is wonderful tech overview [0]. "Drawdown", a recent book which enumerates and stack-ranks the wide array of techniques we have which return the atmosphere to a safe composition. [1] Finally, a self-pitch, we just launched our new site, ClimateAction.tech [2] with a guide for technology employees who are interested in making their companies more sustainable (feedback welcome, @samp or the email on the site) [0] http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ [1] https://smile.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Reverse-Warming/dp/0143130447 https://smile.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Rev... [2] ClimateAction.tech
- kisstheblade 9y agoWhere I live (Finland) it has been a shockingly cold summer. All the denialists of course scream about "no global warming, don't tax me bro!". Weird that the denialism-engine works all the way here (from the US). Of course we have our fair share of different co2 taxes etc so when people don't like them of course it's somehow easier to deny global warming (a logic I don't quite understand... I myself are against any co2 taxes etc but still "believe" in AGW).