5 ms·

For the US, it was only the 34st warmest. To put it in a bit more perspective what the NY Times is saying: http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-b

by drc37 12y ago

For the US, it was only the 34st warmest. To put it in a bit more perspective what the NY Times is saying: http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-balk-at-hottest-year-claims-we-are-arguing-over-the-significance-of-hundredths-of-a-degree-the-pause-continues/ http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-balk-at-ho...

hyperbovine 12y ago
Ahh yes. Climate Depot. Brainchild of Marc Morano, whose previous career highlights include (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Morano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Morano): "He began his career working for Rush Limbaugh from 1992 to 1996, during which time he was known as "Limbaugh's man in Washington".[1] After 1996, he began working for Cybercast News Service, where he was the first to publish the accusations from Swift-Boat veterans that John Kerry ... Beginning in June 2006, Morano served as the director of communications of Senator Jim Inhofe." This is totally the person I trust to get an unbiased perspective on science reporting.
- viggity 12y ago
  Ahh yes. Argumentum ad verecundiam. Let's bash a guy because he hangs out with someone you dislike instead of refuting his centrals points. You're total the person I trust to make logical arguments.
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    We are talking about someone who doxxes scientists he disagrees with as a debating tactic and then justifies it on the basis that he receives hate mail, so why shouldn't they.
  - hyperbovine 12y ago
    Ooh Latin! Fancy. His central points are eminently refutable, but in my experience trying to have a rational, scientific debate with this crowd leads nowhere. And anyways, Guess what! Personal behavior matters. Somebody whose professional history is full of instances of lying and willfully distorting the truth in order to peddle his agenda (http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/12/27/climate-change-misinformer-of-the-year-marc-mor/191878 http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/12/27/climate-change-m...) is not a credible witness.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    I think the swift boat stuff alone puts him firmly in the camp of 'people who have shown themselves not to be trustworthy with the facts'.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
"For the US, it was only the 34st warmest." That has no significance at all though. You are talking about under 2% of the world's surface area.
sxcurry 12y ago
Did you read the article? It was about global warming, not US warming.
- drc37 12y ago
  It was more of poking fun, but I am a skeptic. I believe the government can come up with any data the want to push their agenda. I believe almost any scientist can "prove" almost anything, especially when trying to prove it to people outside their knowledge set(like the general public). Now don't get me wrong. I believe in making the world a better place for my kids. But to get caught up in all the hype that comes from the media (including the article I linked to) is laughable. This argument is about politics and $$$ (both sides of the argument).
  - lotsofmangos 12y ago
    I thought the argument was about the effect on temperature from the various absorption spectra of different chemicals as their ratios are changed within a volume. The basics of it are pretty solid. We know that there is an effect because that is dictated by the physics. You can even test it at home with a few sealed fishtanks.
  - drostie 12y ago
    The government (at least, the US government) does not want to push this agenda. One key data point dating back to G.W. Bush is, NASA/NOAA actually built a satellite to measure one of the most important unknown variables in Earth's climate ("albedo" -- basically how "white" the surface of the Earth is when seen from space) but it has been stuck in a warehouse because the US administrations didn't want to launch it. It is finally getting to launch at the end of this month; but it was completed in 2001. Individual scientists might be able to "prove" arbitrary points in the sense of baffling people with things they don't understand until they accept the scientist as authority. They could perhaps even "prove" in the sense of cooking up statistics to support an arbitrary point. But we're not talking about an individual scientist talking to an individual person. What's instead happened is that a bunch of disparate scientists for disparate reasons have called attention to one central historical question (the trend of global average temperature); and a whole scientific research program has been created to investigate it involving lots of scientists at lots of institutions in lots of countries. That research program has confidently been able to conclude that those early scientists were wrong -- they predicted global cooling precipitating a new impending ice age -- and that instead we are going in precisely the opposite direction, and that the major causal force emerging in the models is a forcing term from CO2-emissions which have spiked dramatically. This research program has also been able to identify several risk factors for runaway warming, which would be just as bad as runaway cooling. Slight warming and slight cooling are also both bad, mostly because the Earth is huge. So, I'm from a physics background and the basic problem is what we'd call "relaxation to equilibrium." If you imagine a massive boulder which is stationary and you dig a hole next to it so that it rolls somewhat to the side, there are a couple of concerns. Only one of those is whether there's an appreciable slope which will cause the boulder to roll uncontrollably downhill -- the "runaway warming" idea. But you can still get injured even if it doesn't roll very far, if you're in its way when it rolls -- and the bigger the boulder, the more momentum it will have to do that damage. That's sort of a two-minute way to understand why slight warming/cooling can enhance tropical storms and send parts of the polar vortex out over the US midwest: the Earth has a new equilibrium point for all sorts of climate variables which were functions of the global temperature, and as things relax to this new equilibrium they will potentially cause large weather upsets simply because the Earth is big.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
danielweber 12y ago
So, your link says that 2014 was in a statistical, er, dead-heat with 2005 and 2010. But the NYT's graph show's 2014 is noticeably above 2005 and 2010, certainly not just a hundredth of a degree higher. What's the resolution?
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Best thing is to go to an actual source. The NOAA has it as 4 hundredths of a degree higher. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ "The year 2014 was the warmest year across global land and ocean surfaces since records began in 1880. The annually-averaged temperature was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), easily breaking the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.04°C (0.07°F). This also marks the 38th consecutive year (since 1977) that the yearly global temperature was above average. Including 2014, 9 of the 10 warmest years in the 135-year period of record have occurred in the 21st century. 1998 currently ranks as the fourth warmest year on record. The 2014 global average ocean temperature was also record high, at 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 16.1°C (60.9°F), breaking the previous records of 1998 and 2003 by 0.05°C (0.09°F). Notably, ENSO-neutral conditions were present during all of 2014. The 2014 global average land surface temperature was 1.00°C (1.80°F) above the 20th century average of 8.5°C (47.3°F), the fourth highest annual value on record."
ikt 12y ago
"But scientists and climate skeptics are countering that the claims of “hottest year” are based on immeasurable temperature differences that are based on hundredths of a degree differences." So they agree it's the hottest year on record, just not as hot as they think the climate change people think it should be, well that's good to know?

by drc37 12y ago

hyperbovine 12y ago

Ahh yes. Climate Depot. Brainchild of Marc Morano, whose previous career highlights include (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Morano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Morano): "He began his career working for Rush Limbaugh from 1992 to 1996, during which time he was known as "Limbaugh's man in Washington".[1] After 1996, he began working for Cybercast News Service, where he was the first to publish the accusations from Swift-Boat veterans that John Kerry ... Beginning in June 2006, Morano served as the director of communications of Senator Jim Inhofe." This is totally the person I trust to get an unbiased perspective on science reporting.

viggity 12y ago
Ahh yes. Argumentum ad verecundiam. Let's bash a guy because he hangs out with someone you dislike instead of refuting his centrals points. You're total the person I trust to make logical arguments.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  We are talking about someone who doxxes scientists he disagrees with as a debating tactic and then justifies it on the basis that he receives hate mail, so why shouldn't they.
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  Ooh Latin! Fancy. His central points are eminently refutable, but in my experience trying to have a rational, scientific debate with this crowd leads nowhere. And anyways, Guess what! Personal behavior matters. Somebody whose professional history is full of instances of lying and willfully distorting the truth in order to peddle his agenda (http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/12/27/climate-change-misinformer-of-the-year-marc-mor/191878 http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/12/27/climate-change-m...) is not a credible witness.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  I think the swift boat stuff alone puts him firmly in the camp of 'people who have shown themselves not to be trustworthy with the facts'.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

"For the US, it was only the 34st warmest." That has no significance at all though. You are talking about under 2% of the world's surface area.

sxcurry 12y ago

Did you read the article? It was about global warming, not US warming.

drc37 12y ago
It was more of poking fun, but I am a skeptic. I believe the government can come up with any data the want to push their agenda. I believe almost any scientist can "prove" almost anything, especially when trying to prove it to people outside their knowledge set(like the general public). Now don't get me wrong. I believe in making the world a better place for my kids. But to get caught up in all the hype that comes from the media (including the article I linked to) is laughable. This argument is about politics and $$$ (both sides of the argument).
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  I thought the argument was about the effect on temperature from the various absorption spectra of different chemicals as their ratios are changed within a volume. The basics of it are pretty solid. We know that there is an effect because that is dictated by the physics. You can even test it at home with a few sealed fishtanks.
- drostie 12y ago
  The government (at least, the US government) does not want to push this agenda. One key data point dating back to G.W. Bush is, NASA/NOAA actually built a satellite to measure one of the most important unknown variables in Earth's climate ("albedo" -- basically how "white" the surface of the Earth is when seen from space) but it has been stuck in a warehouse because the US administrations didn't want to launch it. It is finally getting to launch at the end of this month; but it was completed in 2001. Individual scientists might be able to "prove" arbitrary points in the sense of baffling people with things they don't understand until they accept the scientist as authority. They could perhaps even "prove" in the sense of cooking up statistics to support an arbitrary point. But we're not talking about an individual scientist talking to an individual person. What's instead happened is that a bunch of disparate scientists for disparate reasons have called attention to one central historical question (the trend of global average temperature); and a whole scientific research program has been created to investigate it involving lots of scientists at lots of institutions in lots of countries. That research program has confidently been able to conclude that those early scientists were wrong -- they predicted global cooling precipitating a new impending ice age -- and that instead we are going in precisely the opposite direction, and that the major causal force emerging in the models is a forcing term from CO2-emissions which have spiked dramatically. This research program has also been able to identify several risk factors for runaway warming, which would be just as bad as runaway cooling. Slight warming and slight cooling are also both bad, mostly because the Earth is huge. So, I'm from a physics background and the basic problem is what we'd call "relaxation to equilibrium." If you imagine a massive boulder which is stationary and you dig a hole next to it so that it rolls somewhat to the side, there are a couple of concerns. Only one of those is whether there's an appreciable slope which will cause the boulder to roll uncontrollably downhill -- the "runaway warming" idea. But you can still get injured even if it doesn't roll very far, if you're in its way when it rolls -- and the bigger the boulder, the more momentum it will have to do that damage. That's sort of a two-minute way to understand why slight warming/cooling can enhance tropical storms and send parts of the polar vortex out over the US midwest: the Earth has a new equilibrium point for all sorts of climate variables which were functions of the global temperature, and as things relax to this new equilibrium they will potentially cause large weather upsets simply because the Earth is big.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

danielweber 12y ago

So, your link says that 2014 was in a statistical, er, dead-heat with 2005 and 2010. But the NYT's graph show's 2014 is noticeably above 2005 and 2010, certainly not just a hundredth of a degree higher. What's the resolution?

lotsofmangos 12y ago
Best thing is to go to an actual source. The NOAA has it as 4 hundredths of a degree higher. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ "The year 2014 was the warmest year across global land and ocean surfaces since records began in 1880. The annually-averaged temperature was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), easily breaking the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.04°C (0.07°F). This also marks the 38th consecutive year (since 1977) that the yearly global temperature was above average. Including 2014, 9 of the 10 warmest years in the 135-year period of record have occurred in the 21st century. 1998 currently ranks as the fourth warmest year on record. The 2014 global average ocean temperature was also record high, at 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 16.1°C (60.9°F), breaking the previous records of 1998 and 2003 by 0.05°C (0.09°F). Notably, ENSO-neutral conditions were present during all of 2014. The 2014 global average land surface temperature was 1.00°C (1.80°F) above the 20th century average of 8.5°C (47.3°F), the fourth highest annual value on record."

ikt 12y ago

"But scientists and climate skeptics are countering that the claims of “hottest year” are based on immeasurable temperature differences that are based on hundredths of a degree differences." So they agree it's the hottest year on record, just not as hot as they think the climate change people think it should be, well that's good to know?