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That seems like a (probably inadvertently) awful example. Chicago is right smack in the middle of the 'tongue' of the Laurentide ice sheet that sticks out way t

by glurgh 13y ago

That seems like a (probably inadvertently) awful example. Chicago is right smack in the middle of the 'tongue' of the Laurentide ice sheet that sticks out way to the south - even today, without miles of ice the climate of NYC and Barcelona are quite unalike while being at the same latitude. At the point of maximum extent global mean temperatures were already rising, there were great big gobs of the Pleistocene in which they were far lower. 'Mean surface temperature' is something that can be directly measured or estimated from paleometeorologic proxies but without models for the underlying mechanisms, it's pretty uninformative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WhereIsTheHeatOfGlobalWarming.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WhereIsTheHeatOfGlobalWarm... And the linked references give some idea of how very misleading, taken at face value, mean global temperatures can be. Even just doing a bit of napkin physics - if one applied the energy needed to heat the top meter of ocean by one degree to the first meter of air, it would be like taking a blowtorch to the layer of air in question. Examples like that are pithy but they're almost like walking up to a denialist and saying 'I want you to hit me in the face, as hard as you can'.

rayiner 13y ago
The point is that a relatively small change to the average can mean major changes locally. It's irrelevant what the ice coverage in New York was. We weren't in New York.
- glurgh 13y ago
  The 'change to the average' is not small. Local changes exceed that all the time, though. I never mentioned the ice coverage of New York. It's an ass of an example. It's not like I'm calling you an ass for using it but come on. It might have convinced you but it's bad. Many people with a secondary education have airplane lift taught to them in terms of the Bernoulli principle, even if, at the end of the day, it doesn't actually explain lift.

by glurgh 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

The point is that a relatively small change to the average can mean major changes locally. It's irrelevant what the ice coverage in New York was. We weren't in New York.

glurgh 13y ago
The 'change to the average' is not small. Local changes exceed that all the time, though. I never mentioned the ice coverage of New York. It's an ass of an example. It's not like I'm calling you an ass for using it but come on. It might have convinced you but it's bad. Many people with a secondary education have airplane lift taught to them in terms of the Bernoulli principle, even if, at the end of the day, it doesn't actually explain lift.