7 ms·

Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

88 points by jaza 5y ago

Comevius 5y ago
"It's not projected data, it's actual data. It's not measured, it's observed." It's certainly elegant proof. If those climate change deniers could read they would be very upset.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  I’m a climate change denier. A lot of us keep our opinions to ourselves, mostly because we know we don’t know enough about it. Articles like these help change my mind. Well, partly. The question I keep coming to is “how do you know any of this matters, for a definition of ‘matter’ that includes widespread upheaval of human societies?” But at this point I go meh, not worth the risk. Point is, condescending remarks only push people away from your cause. Why would you want to do that?
  - monktastic1 5y ago
    I'm not sure I understand. Why deny something that you claim not to know enough about?
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      Heh. Well, since you asked... There's a distressing pattern: the idea that "man made climate change exists, therefore disaster." The "disaster" part is the part I've never truly been able to convince myself of. I don't deny it -- you're right, it's more along the lines of agnosticism. But I think it's really easy to convince yourself of doom. However, striving to be something resembling a scientist, I recognize that being ignorant is no defense. I haven't spent enough time researching the data, looking at the implications, and listening to the arguments. But every time I see a piece like this pop up, I feel this reflexive urge to question people and chase down the logic: Ok, climate change exists. How do you know we need to care? I'm not saying we don't. I just wish people would admit "We don't really know, but it would be a good idea to take a few precautionary steps" rather than take the stance of "you're something close to Satan if you dare believe otherwise."
      - RaketenStadt 5y ago
        > I’m a climate change denier > I don't deny it So, you're not a climate change denier
        mrfusion 5y ago
        To be fair, everyone gets put in the denier bucket if they question any part of the narrative. (Disclaimer: I’m not a denier)
      - pavlov 5y ago
        > "I just wish people would admit 'We don't really know, but it would be a good idea to take a few precautionary steps'" That was a reasonable stance in the 1970s. We have a ton more evidence now.
      - monktastic1 5y ago
        I'm still having a hard time with this. You say you don't know, and from that you conclude that nobody else does either? > I just wish people would admit "We don't really know" Surely somebody has spent time "researching the data, looking at the implications, and listening to the arguments"? Why are you so sure they should "admit" that they don't really know? Especially when so many have come out and said that they do?
      - deleted 5y ago
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      - anonAndOn 5y ago
        You might be too young to know, but there were some famous holdouts living around Mt. St Helens in 1980.[0] They didn't believe any of the "stupid scientists" knew if the volcano was going to erupt. The holdouts are only famous because they are dead. [0]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/05/17/mount-st-helens-people-stayed/27311467/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/05/17/mo...
      - ajnin 5y ago
        > How do you know we need to care? The temperature difference between now and the last ice age, at a time there was 3km of ice over much of the northern hemisphere, and sea level was 120 below current average, was 5°C. Current predictions for the temperature increase in 2100 range from 2°C, if we make a huge effort to quickly and drastically reduce CO2 emissions, to 5°C if we keep going as we are. The reality will be somewhere between, I'll let you decide what you think is likely. We don't know exactly what the consequences are gonna be, but we know they're going to be dramatic, and if you think they won't affect you personally, you're probably wrong.
    - warent 5y ago
      Isn't that the default stance in philosophy? Assume something is false until evidence proven true. You cannot begin with the assumption that something is true, otherwise we're back to the mystical dark ages of magic monsters and alchemy
      - vkou 5y ago
        > Assume something is false until evidence proven true. This cuts both ways, depending how your phrase the assumption. Which of these statements should we assume false, until proven true: "Doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 will not cause meaningful negative impacts on human civilization." "Doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 will cause meaningful negative impacts on human civilization." Philosophy isn't going to rescue us from this. Climate science will.
      - anotherman554 5y ago
        I don't think this is correct. Philosophies vary but philosophy of knowledge deals with how you can know something. The opposite of knowing something isn't assuming it is false.
      - monktastic1 5y ago
        Assuming that something is false isn't the same as denying it.
      - genericuser314 5y ago
        Maybe you're thinking of Russell's teapot, which is the idea that the burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims? That's specifically for unfalsifiable claims. Or maybe you're thinking of the burden of proof concept from jurisprudence? That is a high standard because it keeps innocent people from having their lives destroyed. The IPCC reports [0], predicated upon the anthropogenic theory of climate change, predict a lot of people will have their lives destroyed, and the theory specifies the mechanism which will determine the magnitude. You and I as agents in democracies (I'm guessing) can help determine that magnitude - maybe whether it's millions of families displaced and destroyed or hundreds of millions. I think the philosophical stance we should apply is the precautionary principle. If we're unsure of whether or not it is harmful that our activities are changing the composition of our atmosphere, of our oceans, and of our soil, we should at least, as a precaution, reduce the rate at which we're changing our environment. [0] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
  - orf 5y ago
    Let me guess, you’re American?
    - deleted 5y ago
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  - diffset 5y ago
    If you want evidence of widespread upheaval, just look at California's weather data over the past few decades. It's consistently gotten hotter and dryer, causing more and more fires that are killing hundreds of people per year and destroying entire towns. It's not about believing in climate change, it's about *understanding* it. It's very real. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Wildfires-and-Climate-Change-California’s-Energy-Future.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Wildfires-...
    - ipsum2 5y ago
      Blaming climate change for California wildfires is a neat way to deflect the real cause: forest mismanagement. See https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-led-choked-forests-now-it-s-time-clear-n1243599 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l... From 2018: > During its review, the Commission found that California’s forests suffer from neglect and mismanagement, resulting in overcrowding that leaves them susceptible to disease, insects and wildfire. https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-management-sierra-nevada https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-ma...
      - kevinpet 5y ago
        Yep, and when I read those kinds of claims I think "this is what advocates for specific interventions around climate change believe is causation, therefore, they don't know what they're talking about"
    - krona 5y ago
      I took the time to read the PDF you linked to and in terms of actual evidence all I found was a some hand-wavy article by a German reinsurance company. Surely there is some better evidence than this?
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    What I think is really weird is the high level of correlation between the presence of the beliefs that it's not happening and that it doesn't matter if it is. Those are two separate questions that are almost completely distinct in terms of what facts lead to them, and they overlap only at the point where they both recommend no action against climate change. Yet, it is very common for people who believe the first to end up believing the second after the first is shown not to be true. I think this might be because some cultural leaders start from "don't do anything" and work backwards, creating a correlation in their followers and indirect followers between all otherwise unrelated beliefs that imply nothing should be done.
    - jjj123 5y ago
      From what I’ve seen you’re right, but I think it’s a case of incentives distorting people’s beliefs. I would assume there’s also a correlation between the “don’t do anything about climate change” folks and limited government/capitalist beliefs. All of those beliefs seem distinct but they all have aligned incentives to keep the economic status quo. I’m not trying to be condescending towards that side either, I know it’s true for myself too. I generally support change that shifts power away from the powerful, so I was always going to support something like the green new deal over a privatized solution. Edited for clarity
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      "It's happening" and the effects attributable to humans burning fossil fuels is a scale though. There's very little doubt C02 does increase the holding of heat. There's also very little doubt the earth has gotten slightly warmer over the past century. Where I become skeptical is in the modeling and predictions. More heat means more evaporation means more cloud cover means less heat but clouds hold heat held in. The earth tilts slightly on it's axis. Energy output from the sun varies. There are so many interacting factors. "Butterfly effect" and all. Then you throw politics and redistribution-ism and media sensationalism on top of it all and wow what a stinky mess. Suffice it to say I personally don't think global catastrophe is imminent from C02. Not convinced at all. I lived through the ice age scare (here's Leonard Nimoy talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0) and the start of the global warming alarm in the late 80's (which just didn't pan out as many expected 30+ years later). So I don't trust the ability to model long term climate changes and present it in an objective and non political fashion. But I do believe humans are affecting the climate and from caution we should reduce C02 as we reasonably can without starving millions to death. It's cleaner anyway and fossil fuels are just nasty in other respects and they are limited. Am I an illiterate unscientific "denier"? An oil company shill? Nope. Just a guy who has seen nonsense hype cycles which this certainly resembles come and go.
  - mousepilot 5y ago
    I listen to experts then try to judge the experts credibility. This goes to listening to the sources of climate change believers and unbelievers. What sort of people believe climate change is real? What sort of people don't believe it? Also, what evidence does each side present, and how credible is this evidence? Just relating what I do.
    - clifdweller 5y ago
      This is one of the worst things about climate science as it currently stands. In General new theories are often looked about with skepticism until an experiment exists to satisfy the majority. Chemists in the early 1800s theorized matter was made of atoms but it wasn't until experiments were developed early 1900s and math worked on by Einstein got the whole community on board. Similarly we are still in a undecided state of what follows Newtonian-> relativism-> quantum mechanics. None are fully right but which is "more" right. each has their set of experiments that have been proven true or false. Climate science has very little proof because in the short time we have studied it most results cannot yet be proven to be correlation or causation. Unfortunately proof may not come for hundreds of years. The current route has been to take hypothesis and spin them as proof. I think the better route would be to split the theoretical and practical of climate change. we may not know for a long time if it is CO2 vs deforestation vs urbanization if we need to fix one or all to stop our impact/ if it will be enough at that point but that is separate from here are the impacts we see and best guess of what we will see in next 40-100 years and what can we possibly do about it. What if einstein chose not to release relativity because he knew it wasn't perfect or we ignored quantum mechanics because of it holes that are just now starting to be understood.
      - mousepilot 5y ago
        Climate change is one of those problems that you can't solve with experiments and controls, we'd have to have a test planet earth and run 200 year experiments or something lol
  - AutumnCurtain 5y ago
    The question of the impact of climate change on humans seems to me a separate one from the observable reality of climate change and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, which is a more tangible data question. It seems odd to describe yourself as a "denier" unless you mean you reject the actual science itself. And if you do, the question of whether it "matters" seems not at all important given that you reject it is happening at all. Or am I misunderstanding you? I guess I'm not sure what you're denying, observable reality or your perception of the projections made from that reality.
    - swader999 5y ago
      For me, I'm sure the climate is changing, partly because of human activity. Where I differ is that I think the impacts of the changing climate will be so small and gradual and so easy to adapt to that it doesn't warrant the massive upheaval to economies that are being prescribed.
      - AutumnCurtain 5y ago
        Would you say that you believe Samoa or the Maldives, for example, should anticipate a small and gradual change in climate that doesn't warrant a massive upheaval in their economy?
        swader999 5y ago
        I honestly think they'll be fine too.
      - ajnin 5y ago
        I'm curious: current trends predict that the temperature increase from the pre-industrial age to 2100 might be as much as it was from the last ice age (look it up, it was a very different time). And this will happen roughly within 200 years, not 20 000. What makes you think this will be small and easy to adapt to ?
        swader999 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - clircle 5y ago
    I'm not a climate change denier, but I'm not sure if climate change is man-made. I believe the climate invariable changes, my issue is that we cannot determine the fraction of this variation that is due to human interference.
    - clifdweller 5y ago
      It's true there really isn't any proof we have done all of it or how much is from cO2 as to more general urbanization/deforestation; but that should be left to theoretical science and could take hundreds of years to figure out. In meantime does it hurt to make the assumption we are the factor pushing climate over edge and start to prepare methods to deal with it?
      - clircle 5y ago
        I have no idea. That requires policy, economics, decision analysis, and (probably) more convincing evidence that we are near an edge. Again, I think the climate is changing. And I think it will continue to change in ways that adversely affect humanity.
  - _jal 5y ago
    > Point is, condescending remarks only push people away from your cause. Thanks for the honesty. Here's some more. Some of us don't care about your feelings at this point. It is past time for talking. There are always people with perverse incentives, or deeply held beliefs or grudges, who are unreachable. Screw 'em, it is time for action. If they want to argue, they can argue with each other.
    - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
      "Screw 'em" sounds like an end unto itself, especially when climate justice demands the least influential people to embrace poverty.
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      You can care about other's opinions and feelings or not but you only damage yourself in the end if you don't because they don't go away with "well I'm right!". Good luck on your "action". Isn't going to be much in the end I'd wager and the experiment will play out. Fortunately for all of us the end effects on humanity are probably well over stated.
  - throwaway413 5y ago
    Just want to stop and say that I’m so happy to have stumbled across sillysaurus today. You helped me through a very hard time in my life a few years back, and I have thought about you often since then. Thank you. Glad to see you back here!
  - brummm 5y ago
    I think condescending really is the wrong approach to people that have crazy beliefs like climate change deniers, holocaust deniers and anti-vaxxers. These are people that choose to believe in something dogmatic that is absolutely not covered by facts and no rational discussion will be able to convince them otherwise. In my opinion, people should be less accepting of stupidity like this. There are opinions that should not be accepted so condescension is the wrong approach, rejection and ostracization are the ones that are right in my opinion.
  - ashayh 5y ago
    What if there is no climate emergency .. and we reduced fossil fuel pollution & improved air quality for all, stopped destroying forests, rivers, lakes and oceans, stopped the massive decline in fish & animal species, reduced drought by restoring the water tables, reduced drinking water pollution etc etc .. all for nothing? https://medium.com/thoughts-economics-politics-sustainability/what-if-its-a-big-hoax-and-we-create-a-better-world-for-nothing-5ef4a30cca48 https://medium.com/thoughts-economics-politics-sustainabilit...
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      Capping CO2 released may reduce air pollution due to burning, but it won't do very much about the water tables, except by improving the climate.
    - lovecg 5y ago
      That’s cute but it should also list “what if we kept developing countries in poverty (by denying quick and dirty industrialization that we ourselves enjoyed) for nothing”. The problem is hard because there are hard decisions to make.
    - loopz 5y ago
      What was lost then? What didn't we lose? Do you require water to function? How about food?
  - nikhilsimha 5y ago
    I contend that you are not a denier. If you are convinced that there is an abnormal trend, caused by human activity, but are not too concerned with the trend - you are simply not an alarmist. I too, wouldn't be concerned if cherry blossoms missed a season. The problem IMHO is, the climate science community doesn't connect the dots between warming -> unstable weather -> widespread upheaval.
- deleted 5y ago
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xrd 5y ago
It's a great article. The real problem with evidence like this is that the "believer" must strive for 100% accuracy; that is really hard. The "skeptic" only needs to have one single piece of data turn out to be inaccurate, and then can doubt the entire thing; that is really easy. And, we can hold both things in our heads. I just went to the Newport Aquarium in Oregon. There is a terrific exhibit which shows a paleobotanist discovering fossilized palm fronds in Alaska. The climate has changed radically over time. And, it is still very possible that we are altering it for the worse. And, we should all know we will be impacted whether or not we can find the "right people" to blame for it. Let's not waste time arguing over that, but I suspect the real conspiracy is that we are arguing over that, rather than arguing over how to solve what is inevitable.
- umvi 5y ago
  It's a classic red vs. blue attack/defense problem that affects lots of fields. To make a perfectly secure piece of software it must be flawless. An attacker on the other hand only needs to find a single exploit, a single oversight, to break it. Defending something is orders of magnitude more difficult than attacking something for that reason.
  - McDyver 5y ago
    Like defending your privacy from apps constantly asking for access to your contacts. Once you're a bit distracted and press "allow" by mistake, it's gone
  - manquer 5y ago
    The counterpoint is, good defense (and software) comes from good principles and hard work. Good attack (or hack) on the other hand also requires brilliance and luck to find the exploit. Over time defense will keep improving , attack on the other hand will become more difficult when common issues are no longer a problem ( say memory safety or SQL injection) when best practices become the norm.
    - bitexploder 5y ago
djabatt 5y ago
Sinking feeling sets in. I am assuming the modern economic systems will change once the significantly wealthy class start to loose real material wealth and opportunity. Unfortunately that will not be a good thing for billions of people over the next fifty years. I am also assuming really interesting technologies will make climate change livable for many, but no all and perhaps that's the way the game Earth is played.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Mitigation has always been the preferable solution because it doesn't suffer from the public goods problem. In other words, the people that incur the costs of mitigation directly enjoy the benefits it provides (such as building a sea wall). Prevention is just one giant worldwide geo-engineering problem with no mechanism to ensure long term global coordination. More to your comment, I think you'll find that the wealthiest nations are the nations that are doing the most to aggressively reduce pollution while the poorest ones are emitting the most on a GDP basis. This effect is called the Kuznets Curve.
Tycho 5y ago
Confounding factors?
quietbritishjim 5y ago
Devil's advocate response: As I read it, the values here are the date that cherry blossom are first witnessed in the year. There's probably a bell-shaped distribution of when blossom appears on a given tree i.e. there will be a very small number of trees that bloom really early. If you have more people looking for it, then there's a greater chance that someone will spot a really exceptionally early tree. So an alternative explanation for the trend is just an increase in the Japanese population. (Counter argument: when the population gets high enough that essentially all trees are witnessed, further population increases would have no further effect.)
- genericuser314 5y ago
  I don't think its "first witnessed", I think its 80% of blossoms are open. https://twitter.com/sayakasofiamori/status/1373956577607131141 https://twitter.com/sayakasofiamori/status/13739565776071311...
  - quietbritishjim 5y ago
    Ah you're right, I'm not sure how I got that impression
- RaketenStadt 5y ago
  No, the values are the "full-flowering date" not the "first"
- pavlov 5y ago
  Japan's population has declined since 2010, so somehow this explanation would have to account for why fewer people see blossoms earlier.
- brokencode 5y ago
  I haven’t dug into the data set, but the title of the graph says “peak bloom”, not first bloom, implying that outliers don’t significantly affect the results.
  - deleted 5y ago
tzs 5y ago
It looks like from around 1700-1900 the earliest peak bloom day got later, while the latest peak bloom day stayed about the same. After that, the latest peak bloom day started getting earlier and the earliest peak bloom day also started getting earlier. So right now peak blooms can occur about as earlier as their historically could, but seem much more unlikely to occur as late as they historically did. In other words, they now occur in a range that starts about the same as it did historically but ends quite a bit earlier. So what happened around 1900?
- sosuke 5y ago
  I always assumed our blight on the world started with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
- kbutler 5y ago
  Cars, asphalt, heating/cooling, industry, and population density increase? "According to the EPA, many U.S. cities have air temperatures up to 10°F (5.6°C) warmer than the surrounding natural land cover." https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/urban-heat-islands https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/... This "urban heat island" warming has progressed at the same time as CO2-driven global warming, and its measured magnitude (5.6°C) is larger than the estimated effect of CO2 so far (up to 1.5°C). I'm startled to read an article that claims to be "putting myself in the shoes of a climate change sceptic" without even mentioning this basic confounding factor of any urban data set. Even CNN and MSN (those bastions of climate change skepticism) call out the urban heat island effect when talking about early blooming cherry blossoms: "There are two sources of increased heat, which is the main factor making the flowers bloom earlier: urbanization and climate change. With increased urbanization, cities tend to get warmer than the surrounding rural area, in what is called the heat island effect. But a bigger reason is climate change, which has caused rising temperatures across the region and the world." https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/japan-just-recorded-its-earliest-cherry-blossom-bloom-in-1200-years-scientists-warn-its-a-symptom-of-the-larger-climate-crisis/ar-BB1fj17B https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/japan-just-reco... (note that this link is msn, but the authors are cited as CNN)
deleted 5y ago
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mikaeluman 5y ago
Certainly evidence of climate change. The man-made part is of course not demonstrated in this piece though. I rather don’t like the condescending attitude but will at least applaud the use of the word “skeptic” rather than “denier”; the latter being a more religious phrasing. Disclaimer: I do think man-made climate change is happening and something very much worth addressing. The interesting part is simply what to do about it; on which people will disagree vehemently.
- kriops 5y ago
  The man-made part is one thing, but it's also important to distinguish evidence from proof. While this is absolutely an interesting, cool and curious observation, it is also circumstantial and should be treated as such. (Edit: As presented in the blog. I did not check out the actual paper referenced by the author.) In my personal opinion the definite argument for any given position on climate change (the same standard would also apply for the 'sceptics'), like any other physical domain, would be a mathematical model with decent (and not retroactive) predictive accuracy. Of course the climate is an incredibly complex system, which makes creating accurate models incredibly difficult – do we even have a quantitative model for marginal changes in the mean global temperature with respect to e.g. co2 concentration in the atmosphere at the present time? I have not paid attention in several years, but when I was reading up on this several years ago the scientists had severe problems reeling in the uncertainty in said models. Something about the sun, oceans and many different kinds of fairly local feedback systems. Anyways, you can't argue with predictive experiments! Disclaimer: I also think man-made climate change is happening and something very much worth addressing, and I can confirm I disagree vehemently with many well intended strategies.
- fomine3 5y ago
  So possibly is it cherry-pick? :)
walrus01 5y ago
We want graphs? How about atmospheric co2 yearly trends as measured at the peak of Mauna Loa, exposed to cross-pacific high altitude winds. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/
- mrfusion 5y ago
  Flowers aren’t good enough for you?
- lovecg 5y ago
  Meh. The denier response is “yeah CO2 is increasing, but the evidence that it’s leading to other stuff is suspect”.
- swader999 5y ago
  Sea level rise doesn't look that concerning: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1506 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1506
  - walrus01 5y ago
    The near term charts there seem to be operating on a ten to twenty thousand year time scale. On that scale, of course we're on the far opposite end away from what would be called the last glacial maximum, when a bunch of global water was locked up in ice sheets across North America and Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum
    - swader999 5y ago
      It's currently rising at 1-3 mm per year which of course is a rate that isn't concerning at all.
chromaton 5y ago
I hate to do this but... cherry trees only live about 15-40 years. They're cultivated and bred for their blossoms, among other things. How can we be sure that we haven't selected trees for earlier blooms?
- atoav 5y ago
  How can we be sure we have not selected them for later blooms and things are even worse than we thought? : )
  - chromaton 5y ago
    Yeah, I get that this article shows evidence, but it's not the slam dunk that the author is making it out to be.
    - atoav 5y ago
      Given the evidence slam dunks are not needed. The situation is so clear only delusional (or highly uninformed) people convince themselves there is still soubt about it
  - clifdweller 5y ago
    Being that it is a huge tourism driver in Japan I would assume if it was being done they would go both routes to get 2 separate bloomings. An alternate theory would be to choose tress that all bloom same time and this could if early bloomers have less variability lead to average early blooming. Then would that make up 1% of the increase in data or 10 or 90
- montebicyclelo 5y ago
  The author’s post is based on meticulously collected data, compiled with great care. It would have taken a lot of time and effort. This rebuttal is a half baked idea that likely took mere seconds to put together. Great example of the asymmetry of skeptics vs evidence gatherers. Evidence gathering takes a vast amount of work and effort. Whereas skeptics can throw out vaguely plausible hypotheses, to easily sow doubt. You could at least support your argument by offering some explanation (and evidence) for why selective breeding could lead to that particular curve. Why is it not a straight line - did we only recently learn how to selectively breed? Why does it go up then down? Did fashions change? Did people originally lean towards breeding for late blossoms, but then change their mind? Why does the curve fit with the changes in climate, is that pure coincidence? Are cherry trees not impacted by the climate, but only by selective breeding? Etc.
swader999 5y ago
To be honest if you cut the graph in half, there's a noticeable dip there too.
yongjik 5y ago
It's nice data, but I think the article is overselling it. It's an indisputable evidence of climate change at Japan. However, we do know from historical records that a regional climate can change in its own way. (E.g., the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age of Europe.) The good(??) news, of course, is that we have global coverage of the current climate, plus thousands of regional records going back to prehistory - taken together, they are truly indisputable. Basically, no serious researcher in 2021 is trying to "prove" (or disprove) AGW, any more than trying to prove the theory of germs. It's proven. What's left is details.
- jaza 5y ago
  (author here) As I said in the article, I was hoping to find more data sets from around the world (five different ones would have been nice), but I really couldn't find anything else comparable to the Japanese cherry blossom records. Yes, of course, we have plenty more evidence of a different variety: paleohistorical records, temperature models, and very comprehensive modern-era measurements. But nothing else "that has been consistently recorded, in writing, more-or-less annually, for the past 1,000+ years". I'm not trying to prove or disprove global warming either, think of my article as just the icing on the cake.
Kaytaro 5y ago
I "believe" in climate change, but this article does a pretty poor job of examining even the most basic of questions a skeptic would ask. Such as, what determines when the blossoms are peak bloom? How accurate were the ancient Japanese at recording days? I mean, just looking at the graph you can see it narrows near modern times which suggests we simply got better at recording accurate data.
- jaza 5y ago
  (author here) If you look into the academic papers published by Aono, you'll see that he goes into a fair bit of detail regarding both of those points: how he determined consistent historical peak bloom dates, and how he calculated consistent Gregorian dates from the ancient Japanese dates. Not being an expert in these things myself, I consciously chose not to try and explore them myself in much detail.
kevinpet 5y ago
Climate change denier and climate change skeptic focus on whether climate change is happening, from the progressive technocrat view that from these facts there must naturally follow certain policies. If anyone actually wants to persuade the other side, they need to focus on showing that the policies are likely to accomplish their goals and the least intrusive means of accomplishing those goals. But the "we must do something" crowd can't even seem to accept nuclear energy, which people can interpret as a sign that preventing climate change is just an excuse for policy goals already desired for other reasons.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  > But the "we must do something" crowd can't even seem to accept nuclear energy, which people can interpret as a sign that preventing climate change is just an excuse for policy goals already desired for other reasons. I mean… I’m finding that difficult to argue with. The rest of ”We must do something” is usually “even if it’s the wrong thing”. To which some people could say is nuclear, but I agree it’s an obvious future if it really was all about science. Now I’m struggling to think of examples where the proposed solution isn’t a tax plan or an outright re-envisioning of society. I’d like to find an example to see if the deniers still oppose it. I guess there are carbon scrubbers and planting trees. Are those things opposed more than they are pushed for?
  - kevinpet 5y ago
    Maybe they are just invisible. I can't recall ever hearing opposition to putting up solar panels (except maybe some details on net metering, subsidies, etc).
mikl 5y ago
While this is certainly evidence of something changing, simple urbanization is one thing you’d have to correct for when evaluating this data. The urban heat island phenomenon is well documented, and since all Japanese cities have parks with cherry trees in them, UHI alone could cause a significant shift in how early said trees bloom. You’d have to do a careful study to disentangle the UHI effect from the climate effect in this case. So if anything, this article is a great demonstration why real science is hard, but sensationalism is easy.
me_again 5y ago
"As far as I can tell, there's no other record of any other natural phenomenon on this Earth (climate change related or otherwise), that has been consistently recorded, in writing, more-or-less annually, for the past 1,000+ years. " We don't need humans to record something in writing. Evidence from physical processes can be used to infer historical climate and temperature, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleothermometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleothermometer as a starting point.
- jaza 5y ago
  (author here) No, we don't need humans to record something in writing. But the point I was trying to make, is that maybe there are climate change sceptics out there who will discard any and all evidence that wasn't recorded in writing by humans, as "unreliable scientific mumbo jumbo". But they can't discard this particular evidence for having that particular fault (although such folk will no doubt still end up denying this particular evidence, on account of its other faults, of which I admit there are a number).
radford-neal 5y ago
This is not actually "indisputable" evidence. First, do we know that the date cherry trees blossom is controlled by temperature? This question isn't addressed in the linked post, or in the document it links to with the data. They seem to just assume it must be the case. However, the fact that the dates show very little change until the late 19th century is reason to doubt that temperature controls the date, since there is other evidence that temperatures (globally, at least) varied significantly over that time. An alternative is that the date is primarily controlled by amount of sunlight, whose seasonal variation has of course not changed over the last thousand years. Presumably, one could resolve this question by looking at actual temperatures in Kyoto versus flowering date, in recent years. Second, the variability in the date seems to decrease quite markedly in the late 19th century. That happens to be when the Meiji restoration occurred, accompanied by huge changes in Japanese society, including industrialization. It's also when the source of the dates starts to be mostly newspaper reports. The initial change in the late 19th century is a narrowing of the spread in dates, with no change in mean. Then the mean date starts to get earlier, declining about linearly starting around 1900. One should note that it is generally accepted that CO2 didn't start to have a substantial effect on climate until about 1950, so a decline starting in 1900 is not obviously attributable to global climate change. Alternative explanations for the decline include local climate change (unrelated to CO2 levels, but perhaps due to industrialization), changes in reporting, and changes in which cherry trees are being looked at.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  It disappoints me to see this kind of article so uncritically received here. This is on par with, say, a "scientific" article claiming that the lack of a changing trend in the date of the Canadian wheat crop harvest is indisputable evidence that climate change does not exist. As well as the possible influences you list there are many more - changes in local water or air chemical content, changes in cultivation techniques, planting arrangements, chemical treatments (fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, etc), changes in the biology of the plant due to natural or artificial selection, changes in pests or other influences of introduced or changing balances of plants/animals/fungi/bacteria. And surely many more I haven't listed. Come on HN, I've seen you fiercely argue the finer points of computer science, rocketry, quantum mechanics and pounce on any slight inconsistency or omission! You don't need to throw rational thinking out the window when you read something that seems like it is "on your side". There exists far stronger evidence of climate change than this.
RickJWagner 5y ago
Interesting. The final downward slope seems to begin about 1800. I suppose some of that is 'return to the mean', as it looks to have drifted upward slightly before then. But I'm surprised the trend seems to have started that early.
fallingfrog 5y ago
That trend line looks hand drawn, or else smoothed out over a 50 year time span at least. I wonder what a trend line drawing from just the last 10 years data points would look like?

88 points by jaza 5y ago

"It's not projected data, it's actual data. It's not measured, it's observed." It's certainly elegant proof. If those climate change deniers could read they would be very upset.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
I’m a climate change denier. A lot of us keep our opinions to ourselves, mostly because we know we don’t know enough about it. Articles like these help change my mind. Well, partly. The question I keep coming to is “how do you know any of this matters, for a definition of ‘matter’ that includes widespread upheaval of human societies?” But at this point I go meh, not worth the risk. Point is, condescending remarks only push people away from your cause. Why would you want to do that?
- monktastic1 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. Why deny something that you claim not to know enough about?
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Heh. Well, since you asked... There's a distressing pattern: the idea that "man made climate change exists, therefore disaster." The "disaster" part is the part I've never truly been able to convince myself of. I don't deny it -- you're right, it's more along the lines of agnosticism. But I think it's really easy to convince yourself of doom. However, striving to be something resembling a scientist, I recognize that being ignorant is no defense. I haven't spent enough time researching the data, looking at the implications, and listening to the arguments. But every time I see a piece like this pop up, I feel this reflexive urge to question people and chase down the logic: Ok, climate change exists. How do you know we need to care? I'm not saying we don't. I just wish people would admit "We don't really know, but it would be a good idea to take a few precautionary steps" rather than take the stance of "you're something close to Satan if you dare believe otherwise."
    - RaketenStadt 5y ago
      > I’m a climate change denier > I don't deny it So, you're not a climate change denier
      - mrfusion 5y ago
        To be fair, everyone gets put in the denier bucket if they question any part of the narrative. (Disclaimer: I’m not a denier)
    - pavlov 5y ago
      > "I just wish people would admit 'We don't really know, but it would be a good idea to take a few precautionary steps'" That was a reasonable stance in the 1970s. We have a ton more evidence now.
    - monktastic1 5y ago
      I'm still having a hard time with this. You say you don't know, and from that you conclude that nobody else does either? > I just wish people would admit "We don't really know" Surely somebody has spent time "researching the data, looking at the implications, and listening to the arguments"? Why are you so sure they should "admit" that they don't really know? Especially when so many have come out and said that they do?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - anonAndOn 5y ago
      You might be too young to know, but there were some famous holdouts living around Mt. St Helens in 1980.[0] They didn't believe any of the "stupid scientists" knew if the volcano was going to erupt. The holdouts are only famous because they are dead. [0]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/05/17/mount-st-helens-people-stayed/27311467/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/05/17/mo...
    - ajnin 5y ago
      > How do you know we need to care? The temperature difference between now and the last ice age, at a time there was 3km of ice over much of the northern hemisphere, and sea level was 120 below current average, was 5°C. Current predictions for the temperature increase in 2100 range from 2°C, if we make a huge effort to quickly and drastically reduce CO2 emissions, to 5°C if we keep going as we are. The reality will be somewhere between, I'll let you decide what you think is likely. We don't know exactly what the consequences are gonna be, but we know they're going to be dramatic, and if you think they won't affect you personally, you're probably wrong.
  - warent 5y ago
    Isn't that the default stance in philosophy? Assume something is false until evidence proven true. You cannot begin with the assumption that something is true, otherwise we're back to the mystical dark ages of magic monsters and alchemy
    - vkou 5y ago
      > Assume something is false until evidence proven true. This cuts both ways, depending how your phrase the assumption. Which of these statements should we assume false, until proven true: "Doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 will not cause meaningful negative impacts on human civilization." "Doubling the concentration of atmospheric CO2 will cause meaningful negative impacts on human civilization." Philosophy isn't going to rescue us from this. Climate science will.
    - anotherman554 5y ago
      I don't think this is correct. Philosophies vary but philosophy of knowledge deals with how you can know something. The opposite of knowing something isn't assuming it is false.
    - monktastic1 5y ago
      Assuming that something is false isn't the same as denying it.
    - genericuser314 5y ago
      Maybe you're thinking of Russell's teapot, which is the idea that the burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims? That's specifically for unfalsifiable claims. Or maybe you're thinking of the burden of proof concept from jurisprudence? That is a high standard because it keeps innocent people from having their lives destroyed. The IPCC reports [0], predicated upon the anthropogenic theory of climate change, predict a lot of people will have their lives destroyed, and the theory specifies the mechanism which will determine the magnitude. You and I as agents in democracies (I'm guessing) can help determine that magnitude - maybe whether it's millions of families displaced and destroyed or hundreds of millions. I think the philosophical stance we should apply is the precautionary principle. If we're unsure of whether or not it is harmful that our activities are changing the composition of our atmosphere, of our oceans, and of our soil, we should at least, as a precaution, reduce the rate at which we're changing our environment. [0] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/
- orf 5y ago
  Let me guess, you’re American?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- diffset 5y ago
  If you want evidence of widespread upheaval, just look at California's weather data over the past few decades. It's consistently gotten hotter and dryer, causing more and more fires that are killing hundreds of people per year and destroying entire towns. It's not about believing in climate change, it's about *understanding* it. It's very real. https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Wildfires-and-Climate-Change-California’s-Energy-Future.pdf https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Wildfires-...
  - ipsum2 5y ago
    Blaming climate change for California wildfires is a neat way to deflect the real cause: forest mismanagement. See https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-led-choked-forests-now-it-s-time-clear-n1243599 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l... From 2018: > During its review, the Commission found that California’s forests suffer from neglect and mismanagement, resulting in overcrowding that leaves them susceptible to disease, insects and wildfire. https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-management-sierra-nevada https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-ma...
    - kevinpet 5y ago
      Yep, and when I read those kinds of claims I think "this is what advocates for specific interventions around climate change believe is causation, therefore, they don't know what they're talking about"
  - krona 5y ago
    I took the time to read the PDF you linked to and in terms of actual evidence all I found was a some hand-wavy article by a German reinsurance company. Surely there is some better evidence than this?
- whatshisface 5y ago
  What I think is really weird is the high level of correlation between the presence of the beliefs that it's not happening and that it doesn't matter if it is. Those are two separate questions that are almost completely distinct in terms of what facts lead to them, and they overlap only at the point where they both recommend no action against climate change. Yet, it is very common for people who believe the first to end up believing the second after the first is shown not to be true. I think this might be because some cultural leaders start from "don't do anything" and work backwards, creating a correlation in their followers and indirect followers between all otherwise unrelated beliefs that imply nothing should be done.
  - jjj123 5y ago
    From what I’ve seen you’re right, but I think it’s a case of incentives distorting people’s beliefs. I would assume there’s also a correlation between the “don’t do anything about climate change” folks and limited government/capitalist beliefs. All of those beliefs seem distinct but they all have aligned incentives to keep the economic status quo. I’m not trying to be condescending towards that side either, I know it’s true for myself too. I generally support change that shifts power away from the powerful, so I was always going to support something like the green new deal over a privatized solution. Edited for clarity
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    "It's happening" and the effects attributable to humans burning fossil fuels is a scale though. There's very little doubt C02 does increase the holding of heat. There's also very little doubt the earth has gotten slightly warmer over the past century. Where I become skeptical is in the modeling and predictions. More heat means more evaporation means more cloud cover means less heat but clouds hold heat held in. The earth tilts slightly on it's axis. Energy output from the sun varies. There are so many interacting factors. "Butterfly effect" and all. Then you throw politics and redistribution-ism and media sensationalism on top of it all and wow what a stinky mess. Suffice it to say I personally don't think global catastrophe is imminent from C02. Not convinced at all. I lived through the ice age scare (here's Leonard Nimoy talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tAYXQPWdC0) and the start of the global warming alarm in the late 80's (which just didn't pan out as many expected 30+ years later). So I don't trust the ability to model long term climate changes and present it in an objective and non political fashion. But I do believe humans are affecting the climate and from caution we should reduce C02 as we reasonably can without starving millions to death. It's cleaner anyway and fossil fuels are just nasty in other respects and they are limited. Am I an illiterate unscientific "denier"? An oil company shill? Nope. Just a guy who has seen nonsense hype cycles which this certainly resembles come and go.
- mousepilot 5y ago
  I listen to experts then try to judge the experts credibility. This goes to listening to the sources of climate change believers and unbelievers. What sort of people believe climate change is real? What sort of people don't believe it? Also, what evidence does each side present, and how credible is this evidence? Just relating what I do.
  - clifdweller 5y ago
    This is one of the worst things about climate science as it currently stands. In General new theories are often looked about with skepticism until an experiment exists to satisfy the majority. Chemists in the early 1800s theorized matter was made of atoms but it wasn't until experiments were developed early 1900s and math worked on by Einstein got the whole community on board. Similarly we are still in a undecided state of what follows Newtonian-> relativism-> quantum mechanics. None are fully right but which is "more" right. each has their set of experiments that have been proven true or false. Climate science has very little proof because in the short time we have studied it most results cannot yet be proven to be correlation or causation. Unfortunately proof may not come for hundreds of years. The current route has been to take hypothesis and spin them as proof. I think the better route would be to split the theoretical and practical of climate change. we may not know for a long time if it is CO2 vs deforestation vs urbanization if we need to fix one or all to stop our impact/ if it will be enough at that point but that is separate from here are the impacts we see and best guess of what we will see in next 40-100 years and what can we possibly do about it. What if einstein chose not to release relativity because he knew it wasn't perfect or we ignored quantum mechanics because of it holes that are just now starting to be understood.
    - mousepilot 5y ago
      Climate change is one of those problems that you can't solve with experiments and controls, we'd have to have a test planet earth and run 200 year experiments or something lol
- AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  The question of the impact of climate change on humans seems to me a separate one from the observable reality of climate change and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, which is a more tangible data question. It seems odd to describe yourself as a "denier" unless you mean you reject the actual science itself. And if you do, the question of whether it "matters" seems not at all important given that you reject it is happening at all. Or am I misunderstanding you? I guess I'm not sure what you're denying, observable reality or your perception of the projections made from that reality.
  - swader999 5y ago
    For me, I'm sure the climate is changing, partly because of human activity. Where I differ is that I think the impacts of the changing climate will be so small and gradual and so easy to adapt to that it doesn't warrant the massive upheaval to economies that are being prescribed.
    - AutumnCurtain 5y ago
      Would you say that you believe Samoa or the Maldives, for example, should anticipate a small and gradual change in climate that doesn't warrant a massive upheaval in their economy?
      - swader999 5y ago
        I honestly think they'll be fine too.
    - ajnin 5y ago
      I'm curious: current trends predict that the temperature increase from the pre-industrial age to 2100 might be as much as it was from the last ice age (look it up, it was a very different time). And this will happen roughly within 200 years, not 20 000. What makes you think this will be small and easy to adapt to ?
      - swader999 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
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- clircle 5y ago
  I'm not a climate change denier, but I'm not sure if climate change is man-made. I believe the climate invariable changes, my issue is that we cannot determine the fraction of this variation that is due to human interference.
  - clifdweller 5y ago
    It's true there really isn't any proof we have done all of it or how much is from cO2 as to more general urbanization/deforestation; but that should be left to theoretical science and could take hundreds of years to figure out. In meantime does it hurt to make the assumption we are the factor pushing climate over edge and start to prepare methods to deal with it?
    - clircle 5y ago
      I have no idea. That requires policy, economics, decision analysis, and (probably) more convincing evidence that we are near an edge. Again, I think the climate is changing. And I think it will continue to change in ways that adversely affect humanity.
- _jal 5y ago
  > Point is, condescending remarks only push people away from your cause. Thanks for the honesty. Here's some more. Some of us don't care about your feelings at this point. It is past time for talking. There are always people with perverse incentives, or deeply held beliefs or grudges, who are unreachable. Screw 'em, it is time for action. If they want to argue, they can argue with each other.
  - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
    "Screw 'em" sounds like an end unto itself, especially when climate justice demands the least influential people to embrace poverty.
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    You can care about other's opinions and feelings or not but you only damage yourself in the end if you don't because they don't go away with "well I'm right!". Good luck on your "action". Isn't going to be much in the end I'd wager and the experiment will play out. Fortunately for all of us the end effects on humanity are probably well over stated.
- throwaway413 5y ago
  Just want to stop and say that I’m so happy to have stumbled across sillysaurus today. You helped me through a very hard time in my life a few years back, and I have thought about you often since then. Thank you. Glad to see you back here!
- brummm 5y ago
  I think condescending really is the wrong approach to people that have crazy beliefs like climate change deniers, holocaust deniers and anti-vaxxers. These are people that choose to believe in something dogmatic that is absolutely not covered by facts and no rational discussion will be able to convince them otherwise. In my opinion, people should be less accepting of stupidity like this. There are opinions that should not be accepted so condescension is the wrong approach, rejection and ostracization are the ones that are right in my opinion.
- ashayh 5y ago
  What if there is no climate emergency .. and we reduced fossil fuel pollution & improved air quality for all, stopped destroying forests, rivers, lakes and oceans, stopped the massive decline in fish & animal species, reduced drought by restoring the water tables, reduced drinking water pollution etc etc .. all for nothing? https://medium.com/thoughts-economics-politics-sustainability/what-if-its-a-big-hoax-and-we-create-a-better-world-for-nothing-5ef4a30cca48 https://medium.com/thoughts-economics-politics-sustainabilit...
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Capping CO2 released may reduce air pollution due to burning, but it won't do very much about the water tables, except by improving the climate.
  - lovecg 5y ago
    That’s cute but it should also list “what if we kept developing countries in poverty (by denying quick and dirty industrialization that we ourselves enjoyed) for nothing”. The problem is hard because there are hard decisions to make.
  - loopz 5y ago
    What was lost then? What didn't we lose? Do you require water to function? How about food?
- nikhilsimha 5y ago
  I contend that you are not a denier. If you are convinced that there is an abnormal trend, caused by human activity, but are not too concerned with the trend - you are simply not an alarmist. I too, wouldn't be concerned if cherry blossoms missed a season. The problem IMHO is, the climate science community doesn't connect the dots between warming -> unstable weather -> widespread upheaval.
deleted 5y ago
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xrd 5y ago

It's a great article. The real problem with evidence like this is that the "believer" must strive for 100% accuracy; that is really hard. The "skeptic" only needs to have one single piece of data turn out to be inaccurate, and then can doubt the entire thing; that is really easy. And, we can hold both things in our heads. I just went to the Newport Aquarium in Oregon. There is a terrific exhibit which shows a paleobotanist discovering fossilized palm fronds in Alaska. The climate has changed radically over time. And, it is still very possible that we are altering it for the worse. And, we should all know we will be impacted whether or not we can find the "right people" to blame for it. Let's not waste time arguing over that, but I suspect the real conspiracy is that we are arguing over that, rather than arguing over how to solve what is inevitable.

umvi 5y ago
It's a classic red vs. blue attack/defense problem that affects lots of fields. To make a perfectly secure piece of software it must be flawless. An attacker on the other hand only needs to find a single exploit, a single oversight, to break it. Defending something is orders of magnitude more difficult than attacking something for that reason.
- McDyver 5y ago
  Like defending your privacy from apps constantly asking for access to your contacts. Once you're a bit distracted and press "allow" by mistake, it's gone
- manquer 5y ago
  The counterpoint is, good defense (and software) comes from good principles and hard work. Good attack (or hack) on the other hand also requires brilliance and luck to find the exploit. Over time defense will keep improving , attack on the other hand will become more difficult when common issues are no longer a problem ( say memory safety or SQL injection) when best practices become the norm.
  - bitexploder 5y ago

djabatt 5y ago

Sinking feeling sets in. I am assuming the modern economic systems will change once the significantly wealthy class start to loose real material wealth and opportunity. Unfortunately that will not be a good thing for billions of people over the next fifty years. I am also assuming really interesting technologies will make climate change livable for many, but no all and perhaps that's the way the game Earth is played.

missedthecue 5y ago
Mitigation has always been the preferable solution because it doesn't suffer from the public goods problem. In other words, the people that incur the costs of mitigation directly enjoy the benefits it provides (such as building a sea wall). Prevention is just one giant worldwide geo-engineering problem with no mechanism to ensure long term global coordination. More to your comment, I think you'll find that the wealthiest nations are the nations that are doing the most to aggressively reduce pollution while the poorest ones are emitting the most on a GDP basis. This effect is called the Kuznets Curve.

Tycho 5y ago

Confounding factors?

quietbritishjim 5y ago

Devil's advocate response: As I read it, the values here are the date that cherry blossom are first witnessed in the year. There's probably a bell-shaped distribution of when blossom appears on a given tree i.e. there will be a very small number of trees that bloom really early. If you have more people looking for it, then there's a greater chance that someone will spot a really exceptionally early tree. So an alternative explanation for the trend is just an increase in the Japanese population. (Counter argument: when the population gets high enough that essentially all trees are witnessed, further population increases would have no further effect.)

genericuser314 5y ago
I don't think its "first witnessed", I think its 80% of blossoms are open. https://twitter.com/sayakasofiamori/status/1373956577607131141 https://twitter.com/sayakasofiamori/status/13739565776071311...
- quietbritishjim 5y ago
  Ah you're right, I'm not sure how I got that impression
RaketenStadt 5y ago
No, the values are the "full-flowering date" not the "first"
pavlov 5y ago
Japan's population has declined since 2010, so somehow this explanation would have to account for why fewer people see blossoms earlier.
brokencode 5y ago
I haven’t dug into the data set, but the title of the graph says “peak bloom”, not first bloom, implying that outliers don’t significantly affect the results.
- deleted 5y ago

tzs 5y ago

It looks like from around 1700-1900 the earliest peak bloom day got later, while the latest peak bloom day stayed about the same. After that, the latest peak bloom day started getting earlier and the earliest peak bloom day also started getting earlier. So right now peak blooms can occur about as earlier as their historically could, but seem much more unlikely to occur as late as they historically did. In other words, they now occur in a range that starts about the same as it did historically but ends quite a bit earlier. So what happened around 1900?

sosuke 5y ago
I always assumed our blight on the world started with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
kbutler 5y ago
Cars, asphalt, heating/cooling, industry, and population density increase? "According to the EPA, many U.S. cities have air temperatures up to 10°F (5.6°C) warmer than the surrounding natural land cover." https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/urban-heat-islands https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/... This "urban heat island" warming has progressed at the same time as CO2-driven global warming, and its measured magnitude (5.6°C) is larger than the estimated effect of CO2 so far (up to 1.5°C). I'm startled to read an article that claims to be "putting myself in the shoes of a climate change sceptic" without even mentioning this basic confounding factor of any urban data set. Even CNN and MSN (those bastions of climate change skepticism) call out the urban heat island effect when talking about early blooming cherry blossoms: "There are two sources of increased heat, which is the main factor making the flowers bloom earlier: urbanization and climate change. With increased urbanization, cities tend to get warmer than the surrounding rural area, in what is called the heat island effect. But a bigger reason is climate change, which has caused rising temperatures across the region and the world." https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/japan-just-recorded-its-earliest-cherry-blossom-bloom-in-1200-years-scientists-warn-its-a-symptom-of-the-larger-climate-crisis/ar-BB1fj17B https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/japan-just-reco... (note that this link is msn, but the authors are cited as CNN)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mikaeluman 5y ago

Certainly evidence of climate change. The man-made part is of course not demonstrated in this piece though. I rather don’t like the condescending attitude but will at least applaud the use of the word “skeptic” rather than “denier”; the latter being a more religious phrasing. Disclaimer: I do think man-made climate change is happening and something very much worth addressing. The interesting part is simply what to do about it; on which people will disagree vehemently.

kriops 5y ago
The man-made part is one thing, but it's also important to distinguish evidence from proof. While this is absolutely an interesting, cool and curious observation, it is also circumstantial and should be treated as such. (Edit: As presented in the blog. I did not check out the actual paper referenced by the author.) In my personal opinion the definite argument for any given position on climate change (the same standard would also apply for the 'sceptics'), like any other physical domain, would be a mathematical model with decent (and not retroactive) predictive accuracy. Of course the climate is an incredibly complex system, which makes creating accurate models incredibly difficult – do we even have a quantitative model for marginal changes in the mean global temperature with respect to e.g. co2 concentration in the atmosphere at the present time? I have not paid attention in several years, but when I was reading up on this several years ago the scientists had severe problems reeling in the uncertainty in said models. Something about the sun, oceans and many different kinds of fairly local feedback systems. Anyways, you can't argue with predictive experiments! Disclaimer: I also think man-made climate change is happening and something very much worth addressing, and I can confirm I disagree vehemently with many well intended strategies.
fomine3 5y ago
So possibly is it cherry-pick? :)

walrus01 5y ago

We want graphs? How about atmospheric co2 yearly trends as measured at the peak of Mauna Loa, exposed to cross-pacific high altitude winds. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

mrfusion 5y ago
Flowers aren’t good enough for you?
lovecg 5y ago
Meh. The denier response is “yeah CO2 is increasing, but the evidence that it’s leading to other stuff is suspect”.
swader999 5y ago
Sea level rise doesn't look that concerning: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1506 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1506
- walrus01 5y ago
  The near term charts there seem to be operating on a ten to twenty thousand year time scale. On that scale, of course we're on the far opposite end away from what would be called the last glacial maximum, when a bunch of global water was locked up in ice sheets across North America and Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Maximum
  - swader999 5y ago
    It's currently rising at 1-3 mm per year which of course is a rate that isn't concerning at all.

chromaton 5y ago

I hate to do this but... cherry trees only live about 15-40 years. They're cultivated and bred for their blossoms, among other things. How can we be sure that we haven't selected trees for earlier blooms?

atoav 5y ago
How can we be sure we have not selected them for later blooms and things are even worse than we thought? : )
- chromaton 5y ago
  Yeah, I get that this article shows evidence, but it's not the slam dunk that the author is making it out to be.
  - atoav 5y ago
    Given the evidence slam dunks are not needed. The situation is so clear only delusional (or highly uninformed) people convince themselves there is still soubt about it
- clifdweller 5y ago
  Being that it is a huge tourism driver in Japan I would assume if it was being done they would go both routes to get 2 separate bloomings. An alternate theory would be to choose tress that all bloom same time and this could if early bloomers have less variability lead to average early blooming. Then would that make up 1% of the increase in data or 10 or 90
montebicyclelo 5y ago
The author’s post is based on meticulously collected data, compiled with great care. It would have taken a lot of time and effort. This rebuttal is a half baked idea that likely took mere seconds to put together. Great example of the asymmetry of skeptics vs evidence gatherers. Evidence gathering takes a vast amount of work and effort. Whereas skeptics can throw out vaguely plausible hypotheses, to easily sow doubt. You could at least support your argument by offering some explanation (and evidence) for why selective breeding could lead to that particular curve. Why is it not a straight line - did we only recently learn how to selectively breed? Why does it go up then down? Did fashions change? Did people originally lean towards breeding for late blossoms, but then change their mind? Why does the curve fit with the changes in climate, is that pure coincidence? Are cherry trees not impacted by the climate, but only by selective breeding? Etc.

swader999 5y ago

To be honest if you cut the graph in half, there's a noticeable dip there too.

yongjik 5y ago

It's nice data, but I think the article is overselling it. It's an indisputable evidence of climate change at Japan. However, we do know from historical records that a regional climate can change in its own way. (E.g., the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age of Europe.) The good(??) news, of course, is that we have global coverage of the current climate, plus thousands of regional records going back to prehistory - taken together, they are truly indisputable. Basically, no serious researcher in 2021 is trying to "prove" (or disprove) AGW, any more than trying to prove the theory of germs. It's proven. What's left is details.

jaza 5y ago
(author here) As I said in the article, I was hoping to find more data sets from around the world (five different ones would have been nice), but I really couldn't find anything else comparable to the Japanese cherry blossom records. Yes, of course, we have plenty more evidence of a different variety: paleohistorical records, temperature models, and very comprehensive modern-era measurements. But nothing else "that has been consistently recorded, in writing, more-or-less annually, for the past 1,000+ years". I'm not trying to prove or disprove global warming either, think of my article as just the icing on the cake.

Kaytaro 5y ago

I "believe" in climate change, but this article does a pretty poor job of examining even the most basic of questions a skeptic would ask. Such as, what determines when the blossoms are peak bloom? How accurate were the ancient Japanese at recording days? I mean, just looking at the graph you can see it narrows near modern times which suggests we simply got better at recording accurate data.

jaza 5y ago
(author here) If you look into the academic papers published by Aono, you'll see that he goes into a fair bit of detail regarding both of those points: how he determined consistent historical peak bloom dates, and how he calculated consistent Gregorian dates from the ancient Japanese dates. Not being an expert in these things myself, I consciously chose not to try and explore them myself in much detail.

kevinpet 5y ago

Climate change denier and climate change skeptic focus on whether climate change is happening, from the progressive technocrat view that from these facts there must naturally follow certain policies. If anyone actually wants to persuade the other side, they need to focus on showing that the policies are likely to accomplish their goals and the least intrusive means of accomplishing those goals. But the "we must do something" crowd can't even seem to accept nuclear energy, which people can interpret as a sign that preventing climate change is just an excuse for policy goals already desired for other reasons.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
> But the "we must do something" crowd can't even seem to accept nuclear energy, which people can interpret as a sign that preventing climate change is just an excuse for policy goals already desired for other reasons. I mean… I’m finding that difficult to argue with. The rest of ”We must do something” is usually “even if it’s the wrong thing”. To which some people could say is nuclear, but I agree it’s an obvious future if it really was all about science. Now I’m struggling to think of examples where the proposed solution isn’t a tax plan or an outright re-envisioning of society. I’d like to find an example to see if the deniers still oppose it. I guess there are carbon scrubbers and planting trees. Are those things opposed more than they are pushed for?
- kevinpet 5y ago
  Maybe they are just invisible. I can't recall ever hearing opposition to putting up solar panels (except maybe some details on net metering, subsidies, etc).

mikl 5y ago

While this is certainly evidence of something changing, simple urbanization is one thing you’d have to correct for when evaluating this data. The urban heat island phenomenon is well documented, and since all Japanese cities have parks with cherry trees in them, UHI alone could cause a significant shift in how early said trees bloom. You’d have to do a careful study to disentangle the UHI effect from the climate effect in this case. So if anything, this article is a great demonstration why real science is hard, but sensationalism is easy.

me_again 5y ago

"As far as I can tell, there's no other record of any other natural phenomenon on this Earth (climate change related or otherwise), that has been consistently recorded, in writing, more-or-less annually, for the past 1,000+ years. " We don't need humans to record something in writing. Evidence from physical processes can be used to infer historical climate and temperature, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleothermometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleothermometer as a starting point.

jaza 5y ago
(author here) No, we don't need humans to record something in writing. But the point I was trying to make, is that maybe there are climate change sceptics out there who will discard any and all evidence that wasn't recorded in writing by humans, as "unreliable scientific mumbo jumbo". But they can't discard this particular evidence for having that particular fault (although such folk will no doubt still end up denying this particular evidence, on account of its other faults, of which I admit there are a number).

radford-neal 5y ago

This is not actually "indisputable" evidence. First, do we know that the date cherry trees blossom is controlled by temperature? This question isn't addressed in the linked post, or in the document it links to with the data. They seem to just assume it must be the case. However, the fact that the dates show very little change until the late 19th century is reason to doubt that temperature controls the date, since there is other evidence that temperatures (globally, at least) varied significantly over that time. An alternative is that the date is primarily controlled by amount of sunlight, whose seasonal variation has of course not changed over the last thousand years. Presumably, one could resolve this question by looking at actual temperatures in Kyoto versus flowering date, in recent years. Second, the variability in the date seems to decrease quite markedly in the late 19th century. That happens to be when the Meiji restoration occurred, accompanied by huge changes in Japanese society, including industrialization. It's also when the source of the dates starts to be mostly newspaper reports. The initial change in the late 19th century is a narrowing of the spread in dates, with no change in mean. Then the mean date starts to get earlier, declining about linearly starting around 1900. One should note that it is generally accepted that CO2 didn't start to have a substantial effect on climate until about 1950, so a decline starting in 1900 is not obviously attributable to global climate change. Alternative explanations for the decline include local climate change (unrelated to CO2 levels, but perhaps due to industrialization), changes in reporting, and changes in which cherry trees are being looked at.

throwawaylinux 5y ago
It disappoints me to see this kind of article so uncritically received here. This is on par with, say, a "scientific" article claiming that the lack of a changing trend in the date of the Canadian wheat crop harvest is indisputable evidence that climate change does not exist. As well as the possible influences you list there are many more - changes in local water or air chemical content, changes in cultivation techniques, planting arrangements, chemical treatments (fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, etc), changes in the biology of the plant due to natural or artificial selection, changes in pests or other influences of introduced or changing balances of plants/animals/fungi/bacteria. And surely many more I haven't listed. Come on HN, I've seen you fiercely argue the finer points of computer science, rocketry, quantum mechanics and pounce on any slight inconsistency or omission! You don't need to throw rational thinking out the window when you read something that seems like it is "on your side". There exists far stronger evidence of climate change than this.

RickJWagner 5y ago

Interesting. The final downward slope seems to begin about 1800. I suppose some of that is 'return to the mean', as it looks to have drifted upward slightly before then. But I'm surprised the trend seems to have started that early.

fallingfrog 5y ago

That trend line looks hand drawn, or else smoothed out over a 50 year time span at least. I wonder what a trend line drawing from just the last 10 years data points would look like?