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Earth Temperature Timeline
- dogwhistle 7y agoHug of death . Alternate links please?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 0-_-0 7y agoUnfortunately, this is deceptive. The point of it seems to be to show how the recent sudden increase in temperature is unprecedented in the last 22000 years. The problem is that the data for different intervals comes from different sources. The last part showing the rapid rise comes from very accurate, yearly measurements. Historical data comes from reconstructions with much lower resolution. In a signal processing sense that means that the historical data is "low pass filtered". In other words, it lacks high frequency variation. You could say that the information you need to decide whether the recent rapid temperature rise is unprecedented or not is missing from the vast majority of the chart, but it's present in the last segment of the chart. Authors of the Marcott et. al. (2013) [1] paper that the XKCD chart uses state: Q: "Is the rate of global temperature rise over the last 100 years faster than at any time during the past 11,300 years?" A: "Our study did not directly address this question because the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of ~120 years on average, which precludes us from examining variations in rates of change occurring within a century. Other factors also contribute to smoothing the proxy temperature signals contained in many of the records we used, such as organisms burrowing through deep-sea mud, and chronological uncertainties in the proxy records that tend to smooth the signals when compositing them into a globally averaged reconstruction. We showed that no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2000-year periods and longer. Our Monte-Carlo analysis accounts for these sources of uncertainty to yield a robust (albeit smoothed) global record. Any small “upticks” or “downticks” in temperature that last less than several hundred years in our compilation of paleoclimate data are probably not robust, as stated in the paper." [1]: https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/fresh-thoughts-from-authors-of-a-paper-on-11300-years-of-global-temperature-changes/?_r=0 https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/fresh-thoughts...
- rinchik 7y agoshhh.. Don't question statements that humans are entirely responsible for the global warming or Greta Thunberg will come to your house and yell at you loudly. Jokes aside, this chart does feel deceptive. Why start with the most recent ice age? To amplify the attempt at scaremongering? What about those beautiful times when dinosaurs roamed the Earth?
- majewsky 7y agoBecause the image file would be too large to render properly?
- rinchik 7y agoWell, not necessarily. It will show a bigger picture, it will be an abstraction, abstraction that doesn’t fit the political narrative. And we don’t want that, do we?
- anilr 7y agoWe need to compare our current situation with an ice age to put it into perspective? That doesn't that reassure me.
- RickJWagner 7y agoYup. My first thought was "What about the time when a lot of the central US was under water?" Then I realized the timeline isn't nearly long enough.
- happytoexplain 7y agoWhy act like this?
- dang 7y agoWould you please stop posting flamebait and ideological battle comments to HN? It's against the rules and we ban accounts that do it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- toomuchlove 7y agoPlease label 2016