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Isn't it strange how we keep breaking records, not just in hot but also cold, and in sports as well. I wonder what records will truly be unbroken. Perhaps the t

Isn't it strange how we keep breaking records, not just in hot but also cold, and in sports as well. I wonder what records will truly be unbroken. Perhaps the tallest person as we are able to stop the error that causes unchecked growth.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
Isn't it strange how we keep breaking records Nope. We tend to report on the records that get broken. With only one exception, the news generally doesn't go around saying "And another day of the status quo. Here are all the records that stood today without being broken. Here is everything that went unchanged." That one exception that I'm aware of was when some reporter decided he didn't want a hostage situation forgotten and he began starting all of his reports with "Day xxx of the Iran Hostage crisis..." in order to have something "new" to say about it every single day and not let the public forget there were American hostages still in captivity. I have heard this annoyed the fool out of the American government and forced them to actually deal with it and not let it get quietly forgotten as such things tend to get.
- rgbrenner 5y ago
  That's really the only explanation for hattmall's perception of cold records being broken... because winters are actually getting warmer, and the number of record cold temperatures is lower than it has typically been in the past: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/warming-winters-across-united-states https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/warm... I would add also that we now read news from all over. Instead of counting the number of local temperature events... we now count the number of temperature events from all over (the entire country, if not the world) because that's what the news presents to us. So we might perceive an increase in events, while in reality it has decreased. As such is the case in cold temperature records.
  - DoreenMichele 5y ago
    I think climate change is real and that human activities contribute. I think climate change is a more accurate term than global warming. I also liked what one of my professor's said: "We are like fleas on the butt of a dog trying to figure out which way the dog is going." I've enjoyed some fictional stuff, like episodes of the various Star Trek series, that had stories about planets experiencing catastrophe caused by increasing levels of asteroid activity or similar events out in space. I liked the detail that the plot for the movie Pitch Black hinged on a long period of darkness caused by an eclipse on an alien planet. The earth is a living, evolving world and the layer of human-friendly biosphere is impacted by many long-term processes that we little understand and are ill equipped to accurately predict. Change is real. The need to adapt is real. This is actually stressful and all for humans across the globe. That doesn't mean we are doomed and it doesn't mean we really know what comes next.
    - stOneskull 5y ago
      i've stopped cutting down rainforest.
buu700 5y ago
It's interesting, but I don't think strange in the sense of being inexplicable. Hot is an obvious side effect of global warming. Cold may be counterintuitive, but "global" warming (as opposed to local warming) refers only to the global average, and in Earth's case exacerbates both extremes. With sports, as with any human endeavor, athletes are standing on the shoulders of giants; advancements in things like nutritional/medical science, food availability, fitness/training techniques, technology of gear/clothing/accessories, tactics and strategies in particular sports, and financial investments in sports should all contribute to continued broken records approaching the asymptote imposed by human genetics.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Isn't it strange how we keep breaking records Nope. We tend to report on the records that get broken. With only one exception, the news generally doesn't go around saying "And another day of the status quo. Here are all the records that stood today without being broken. Here is everything that went unchanged." That one exception that I'm aware of was when some reporter decided he didn't want a hostage situation forgotten and he began starting all of his reports with "Day xxx of the Iran Hostage crisis..." in order to have something "new" to say about it every single day and not let the public forget there were American hostages still in captivity. I have heard this annoyed the fool out of the American government and forced them to actually deal with it and not let it get quietly forgotten as such things tend to get.

rgbrenner 5y ago
That's really the only explanation for hattmall's perception of cold records being broken... because winters are actually getting warmer, and the number of record cold temperatures is lower than it has typically been in the past: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/warming-winters-across-united-states https://www.climate.gov/news-features/blogs/beyond-data/warm... I would add also that we now read news from all over. Instead of counting the number of local temperature events... we now count the number of temperature events from all over (the entire country, if not the world) because that's what the news presents to us. So we might perceive an increase in events, while in reality it has decreased. As such is the case in cold temperature records.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I think climate change is real and that human activities contribute. I think climate change is a more accurate term than global warming. I also liked what one of my professor's said: "We are like fleas on the butt of a dog trying to figure out which way the dog is going." I've enjoyed some fictional stuff, like episodes of the various Star Trek series, that had stories about planets experiencing catastrophe caused by increasing levels of asteroid activity or similar events out in space. I liked the detail that the plot for the movie Pitch Black hinged on a long period of darkness caused by an eclipse on an alien planet. The earth is a living, evolving world and the layer of human-friendly biosphere is impacted by many long-term processes that we little understand and are ill equipped to accurately predict. Change is real. The need to adapt is real. This is actually stressful and all for humans across the globe. That doesn't mean we are doomed and it doesn't mean we really know what comes next.
  - stOneskull 5y ago
    i've stopped cutting down rainforest.

buu700 5y ago

It's interesting, but I don't think strange in the sense of being inexplicable. Hot is an obvious side effect of global warming. Cold may be counterintuitive, but "global" warming (as opposed to local warming) refers only to the global average, and in Earth's case exacerbates both extremes. With sports, as with any human endeavor, athletes are standing on the shoulders of giants; advancements in things like nutritional/medical science, food availability, fitness/training techniques, technology of gear/clothing/accessories, tactics and strategies in particular sports, and financial investments in sports should all contribute to continued broken records approaching the asymptote imposed by human genetics.