21 ms·

What's Really Warming the World?

• upofadown 11y ago
  Unrelated, but this part amused me in that it was probably intended to be an argument for the quality of the model: >ModelE2 contains something on the order of 500,000 lines of code, ...
• Sapient 11y ago
  It would be a really nice visualisation of the factors if it worked properly. It was impossible to read and navigate for me.
  • elorant 11y ago
    Same here. I can't seem to get it to scroll and show headers at the same time. I tried scrolling really slowly and it still stops showing headers after third graph. For a venue as big as Bloomberg you'd expect them to test it thoroughly before publishing.
    • kevindication 11y ago
      Does it work better if you click the black arrow at the bottom of each slide?
      • elorant 11y ago
        Sure, that works.
      • imh 11y ago
        not for me
  • mikeash 11y ago
    On my MacBook Pro using Chrome, it was even worse. Impossible to read at least tells me that something is wrong, but using the trackpad to scroll through the options in a natural flicking way actually skips over multiple entries at a time with only the barest flicker to indicate that it happened. I got almost to the end before I realized I had only seen about one third of the information they were trying to present. I have nothing against clever visualizations like this, but god damn it web designers, stop co-opting standard UI interactions to make it happen. There is no reason to hijack window scrolling here. None. All you accomplished by doing this was make it harder to figure out how to read the thing, and break it badly for a lot of people. What's wrong with buttons? You can even look for swipes on touchscreen devices. That's pretty standard! But quit stealing the scrollers!
    • CountSessine 11y ago
      Eccch. This is the second Bloomberg article in as many days (the first was on Paul Krugman) to co-opt scrolling. I read a BBC article yesterday that did the same thing. Jesus, webdevs. Stop this shit now.
• jasonkester 11y ago
  Cool visualization. It's worth keeping in mind that the modeled data lines up with reality because it's supposed to. That's how you calibrate your model, by making sure it fits reality. The real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future. As in, if you feed it data up to, say, 1990, will it correctly spit out 2015 temperatures that fit the reality of 2015, or will it spit out crazy 2015 predictions like the models that were built in 1990 did. And, the bigger question: How will its predictions for 2040 (given 2015 data) match up to the reality over the next 25 years. We seem to be getting a lot better at the modeling side. That's a good thing, since the first couple decades of watching people panicking and fighting each other over whatever scary results came out of the first generation climate models wasn't any fun to watch.
  • tosseraccount 11y ago
    Is there a scorecard for which models have performed well?
    • natermer 11y ago
      None of the models have performed very well. You probably won't find a scorecard because it's embarrassing.
      • ThisIBereave 11y ago
        Citation needed.
        • cholantesh 11y ago
          Probably a long list of ExxonMobil shill sites.
        • jasonkester 11y ago
          Here's a good one: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/ http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-... 44 Climate Models all fighting to out-panic one another, not a single one guessing low enough to predict the actual values for 2012 (when it seems the dataset in question ended) ... and a seemingly more reputable one showing roughly the same thing: http://phys.org/news/2015-01-peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-exposes-errors.html http://phys.org/news/2015-01-peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator...
• moubarak 11y ago
  i read an article a while back on the economist which suggested that if you look at a longer span (much longer than 1880) you will find that this is a natural cycle that the Earth/Sun go through. We just happen to be at that point in the cycle. i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way. An interactive colourful plot doesn't convince me.
  • rimunroe 11y ago
    Fortunately, it turns out that climate scientists have actually thought about the history the system they study. They've probably even collectively thought about it more than a person writing an article for the Economist!
    • moubarak 11y ago
      Scientists make mistakes as often as Economist writers do. I don't revere scientists i'm sorry.
      • yequalsx 11y ago
        You don't need to revere them. However, you should expect that an expert in a given field has almost certainly considered and answered any question a non-expert can think up within 10 minutes of contemplation on the said field. If you can come up with a question that starts with, "Have they considered the possibility that .....?" the answer is almost certainly going to be yes. This is more so when talking about a large collection of experts. For instance, with the collections of all experts in climate science.
        • nice1 11y ago
          The problem is that these experts tend to follow the money. They get grants to show warming, so they cook the data to show warming. This would be much more difficult in a hard science, but "climate science" is not chemistry or physics.
      • mikeash 11y ago
• de_Selby 11y ago
  The deforestation graph only seems to account for the difference in emissivity between forest and grassland. Surely the CO2 absorption and the effects of forestation on cloud cover would have a non-negligible effect.
• beshrkayali 11y ago
  Real question: how did they observe land-ocean temperature in 1880? Edit: and how does it compare to how it's observed now?
  • merpnderp 11y ago
    I'm pretty sure a British office in the Navy kept records from water pulled up from buckets.
  • jcarreiro 11y ago
    "The period for which reasonably reliable instrumental records of near-surface temperature exist with quasi-global coverage is generally considered to begin around 1850. Earlier records exist, but with sparser coverage and less standardized instrumentation. The temperature data for the record come from measurements from land stations and ships. On land, temperature sensors are kept in a Stevenson screen or a maximum minimum temperature system (MMTS). The sea record consists of surface ships taking sea temperature measurements from engine inlets or buckets. The land and marine records can be compared.[13] Land and sea measurement and instrument calibration is the responsibility of national meteorological services. Standardization of methods is organized through the World Meteorological Organization and its predecessor, the International Meteorological Organization.[14]" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record#Global_record_from_1850 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_recor...
  • kaybe 11y ago
    With a thermometer, I guess.. the oldest record is this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_England_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_England_temperature Ocean temperatures were also measured during the research voyages around that time. However, it is also possible to deduce temperatures from closed-off water bodies such as ground water or water inclusions in rock (such as stalagmites). While radioactive decay can give you the time since last exposure to open air (different elements have to be used depending on the expected age range), ratios of other things such as noble gases can give you the temperature at that exposure. (Different gases have different solubility curves in dependence of temperature.) Ground water bodies can be over 1000 years old, so 1880 is definitely within the timeframe. At the same time, the techniques are also used on ice cores. The time resolution can be quite different between the techniques, though. Similar techniques can also be used for ocean temperature, I presume. Now, we also use thermometers. There are distributed networks of weather stations. You could argue that newer thermometers have a higher accuracy, but at the same time it is very hard to create an environment where you measure air temperature only, and are not influenced by parameters such as irradiation. Thus, as the page mentions, normally only deviations are given. Plus, of course, satellites give a much better spatial resolution. (Have fun with atmospheric layers then.. with of course different temperatures. https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Satellite_temperature_measurements https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Satellite_temperature_measur...) Here is a very detailed publication on the topic of isotopes in water, just in case you are bored: http://www-naweb.iaea.org/napc/ih/IHS_resources_publication_hydroCycle_en.html http://www-naweb.iaea.org/napc/ih/IHS_resources_publication_...
• nixy 11y ago
  In climate 130 years is not a long time. I wish these articles showed graphs with historical data that go back thousands of years so that I could see how, in a historical context, greenhouse emissions are affecting the world. I've only ever seen data from the 1900's, and it looks pretty hockey stick, but would be interesting to see fluctuations with the ice age(s) and local highs included. Edit: historical data is of course not available, but approximations must exist?
  • flavor8 11y ago
    http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/ghg/ghg-concentrations.html http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/ghg/ghg-... http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      • merpnderp 11y ago
        That's the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 compared to geological time scales.
        • fexl 11y ago
          Sorry I deleted my comment out from under your feet. He was responding to my exclamation about the large spike upward in CO2 levels on that first graph on the EPA site. After posting it, I deleted it because I answered my own question.
    • fexl 11y ago
      Are there any data on water vapor concentrations? I ask that because I have read that the contribution of water vapor to the greenhouse effect is perhaps two to four times greater than CO2.
• zdw 11y ago
  It's impressive to see the size of the spikes that volcanic activity causes in this graph, as an event that has no correlation with human activity.
• Shivetya 11y ago
  CO2 is not strictly human emissions and to imply so is so dishonest is ridiculous. of course any gross simplification of the environment as done in this presentation is explicitly to deliver a message decided before the numbers were assembled. the primary co2 process is ocean to atmosphere exchange, the earth to atmosphere, and then to mammals respiratory activity. So then you get down to how much CO2 is man pumping into the atmosphere beyond that point and which sources are direct versus indirect. finally since their numbers only are observable to 1880, how accurate can we assume them to be? If were are extrapolating we could do it further back than 1880 to periods where man was present in significant numbers and thew world was warmer There is climate change, never has been a period of time where it hasn't, but junk presentations are just that. Take numbers out of context, put in easily to dismiss arguments along side, and it appears to make your point beyond reproach (its like say, the sky is blue and you agree, don't you? the going off to explain why something indirectly related is bad or good)
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • tocf 11y ago
    > CO2 is not strictly human emissions and to imply so is so dishonest is ridiculous. That was never implied. In fact, they made a point of comparing human driven emissions (which includes things like transportation and agriculture) to natural sources (eg volcanoes). > the primary co2 process is ocean to atmosphere exchange, the earth to atmosphere, and then to mammals respiratory activity Well, you're missing some stuff in there. Like plants n stuff. > finally since their numbers only are observable to 1880, how accurate can we assume them to be? This chart has data back to 1880. Ice core samples, tree rings, whole hosts of other parts of science go back much farther than 1880. All of it seems to corroborate each other. > If were are extrapolating we could do it further back than 1880 to periods where man was present in significant numbers and thew world was warmer > Take numbers out of context, put in easily to dismiss arguments along side, and it appears to make your point beyond reproach Hm, sort of like simplifying the CO2 cycle to a few words, missing a bunch of it, and then somehow pretending to think that that explains things much better than hundreds of scientists who have given us the science that shows that this is mainly due to human causes. Head up to the Arctic. Talk to people whose families have lived there forever and see for yourself. I think that's the only way to convince people like yourself.
• warcode 11y ago
  So what they are saying is that we should be pumping large amounts of Aerosols into the atmosphere? I think we need less confirmations that there is a problem and more solutions to the problem.
• carsongross 11y ago
  And, since we are allowed to use graphs rhetorically rather than discuss complicated topics like adults... what's really causing the murder rate to decline? http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-will-be-your-favorite-chart-today http://gizmodo.com/5977989/internet-explorer-vs-murder-rate-...
  • coldpie 11y ago
    Are you really going to suggest that data suggesting causation that has been contributed by hundreds and reviewed by literally thousands of scientists shares equal validity as an obviously facetious graph created to make a point about not suggesting causal relationships lightly?
• crimsonalucard 11y ago
  This article only serves to stroke the ego of people who already believe that CO2 emissions cause global warming. It does nothing for people who already deny it. Evidence, no matter how strong doesn't serve to change the nature of a man. People would rather bend the logic and the evidence to fit their convenient perception of reality. Which brings me to the question: "What can change a nature of a man?" Imminent danger? If an assailant had a gun pointed at your head, it'd be impossible to deny. How can this evidence about global warming be presented so that it can't be denied?
  • nice1 11y ago
    There is no actual evidence, that is the problem.
  • jimhefferon 11y ago
    FWIW, my parents were rabid climate deniers, after they got cable and foolishly started watching Fox, porn for the ancient (but I digress..). Then Super Storm Sandy. Now when it is being discussed they sit silently. Personally, it doesn't seem to me that one storm is all that persuasive, from a statistical standpoint. But we are not talking about reason here.
    • mcv 11y ago
      A single storm isn't, but if it's part of a trend, something might be up.
      • crimsonalucard 11y ago
        The interesting point here, I think is that statistical evidence aka a trend, didn't serve to convince them. I don't know their exact circumstance surrounding the storm but I would venture a guess that "great loss" was the motivating factor in this case.
      • dnautics 11y ago
        2013 had no hurricanes, and 2014 was a very mild season. 2012 was a 'very active' season, but most of the hurricanes stayed out in the atlantic ocean.
• mseebach 11y ago
  > "No, it really is greenhouse gasses." .. "See for yourself." Being patronising has such a great track record in turning hearts and minds, I'm glad they didn't stoop to such decadent clap track as "engaging with opposing arguments".
  • matthewmacleod 11y ago
    With the greatest respect, there are no opposing arguments with which to engage at this point. The issue is political, and not scientific.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
• lordnacho 11y ago
  Reading (audio book) Nate Silver's book on prediction, he looks at the predictions made by James Hansen in 1988 and IPCC a few years later. He says the predictions were generally pretty good, maybe IPCC was a bit on the high side compared to what happened.
• dnautics 11y ago
  What about agricultural water output?? Inverse of the deforestation curve already shown is also potentially convincing. If you want to go spurious, you could also run a correlation between wind power generation.
• Pxtl 11y ago
  Scroll-to-page for this vis is horribly broken on Firefox - there's a very narrow gap in the scrolling where the header paragraphs are visible.
  • ubercow13 11y ago
    Agreed, I can't actually read this article at all using my mouse scroll wheel. There's no way to get some of the text on the screen.
• macinjosh 11y ago
  Please don't take this as a denial of climate change, it is an honest question. How do scientists learn the levels of ozone, aerosols, green house gases, and the other data points going so far back at a global scale? Is the data from before the latter half of the 20th century spotty? If so, why is it considered good enough to use in a context of scientific research where quality and correctness of data is paramount?
  • ahallock 11y ago
    The fact that you have to have a disclaimer up front makes me sad.
    • reitanqild 11y ago
      Me to. Way too many people, on both sides, will attack anyone who comes across as unsupportive. Especially when it happens on HN and other sites that I come to to learn and discuss.
    • talmand 11y ago
      It's a serious problem in multiple areas in society these days; the inability to ask simple questions that may go against the "accepted" narrative without being personally attacked. Science, religion, politics, sports, it's everywhere. It's a seriously sad state of affairs, but nothing new really, if you think about it. The reach of modern communications has inflated the problem in my opinion.
      • npsimons 11y ago
        Here's the thing: honest enquiry is something that should be encouraged. Sea-lioning[1], JAQing off[2] and Gish gallops[3] should not. When you are buried to your eyeballs in bullshit, it's hard to see who is really someone willing learn, and who is just shoveling on more. [1] - http://simplikation.com/why-sealioning-is-bad/ http://simplikation.com/why-sealioning-is-bad/ [2] - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions [3] - http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
• beastman82 11y ago
  So CO2 it is. Can we use nuclear power now? Surely its problems are easier to solve.
• cdoelling 11y ago
  This is a great simple UX to have the conversation.
• istvan__ 11y ago
  Well correlation is not causation. is it y=f(x) or y=x(f)? aka is is warmer because of the higher greenhouse gases or is there more greenhouse gases because of the warmer climate (that could have been caused by things like leaving an ice age and approaching a warm period in Earth's life) Just to clarify, i support green technology and I think this is definitely the way to go but I don't like the unjustified crusade using proofs that can be ripped apart in minutes.
  • vlasev 11y ago
    So, where would you think the greenhouse gases came from?
    • istvan__ 11y ago
      Which one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gase...
      • snowwrestler 11y ago
        Ironically this page very clearly answers the questions of where these gases come from, a bit farther down.
      • istvan__ 11y ago
        There is nothing ironic here, humans add more CO2 sources and kill the most CO2 sinks (forests) these activities would put any system off balance. People like to talk about how CO2 production is bad but they forget to mention that killing rainforest is equally bad.
    • istvan__ 11y ago
      If you are talking about the CO2 portion of it and focusing on the artificial sources than here is the chart you are looking for: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources.html http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/sources.html Obviously you are missing out on natural sources for CO2, and the rest of the gases as well: Water vapor (H2O) Carbon dioxide (CO2) Methane (CH4) Nitrous oxide (N2O) Ozone (O3) Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
• Plough_Jogger 11y ago
  It would be helpful to know more specifically what the final green line is actually representing; 'shows the influence of greenhouse gases' is a pretty major divergence from the specific quantitative measurements used in every other line.
• gmarx 11y ago
  Wasn't the start of this timeline the end of the little ice age?
• curiousgeorgio 11y ago
  Not trying to argue against manmade climate change here, but the conclusion is inconsistent with the stated point/headline. The main question is whether or not humans are the primary driving factor in the changes observed. Graphs show lack of correlation with various manmade causes and some natural causes, but then the conclusion is reached with the graph of "the influence of greenhouse gas emissions." In other words, the "nail in the coffin" evidence is simply showing the effects of the problem graphed against the problem itself; it doesn't prove one way or another whether the cause of the rise in greenhouse gasses is manmade. Downvote as you will, but that doesn't seem like science to me; it feels like proving a point by simply restating the point.
  • Brakenshire 11y ago
    > it doesn't prove one way or another whether the cause of the rise in greenhouse gasses is manmade. Does anyone seriously doubt that rises in CO2 are not principally driven by human activity? I have never even seen that as a talking point.
    • curiousgeorgio 11y ago
      Does the popularity of a doubt or idea even matter here when we're supposed to be discussing science?
      • 7Z7 11y ago
        Brakenshire didn't question the popularity of the topic, rather whether it had been convincingly postulated by anyone worth mentioning.
    • jonknee 11y ago
      Sure. Michelle Bachmann believes lots of crazy things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAaDVOd2sRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAaDVOd2sRQ > And yet were being told that we have to reduce this natural substance and reduce the American standard of living to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the earth. Well were told the crux of this problem is human activity. Its humans that are creating more carbon dioxide! > What part of human activity creates carbon dioxide? If carbon dioxide is a negligible gas and its only three percent of Earths atmosphere, what part is human activity?
• mangeletti 11y ago
  The chart at http://d1vn86fw4xmcz1.cloudfront.net/content/royptb/363/1501/2299/F11.large.jpg http://d1vn86fw4xmcz1.cloudfront.net/content/royptb/363/1501... (put together by The Royal Society) shows that most deforestation in Eastern Canada occurred over 400 years ago. This one http://mongabay-images.s3.amazonaws.com/12/1203all-time-deforestation.jpg http://mongabay-images.s3.amazonaws.com/12/1203all-time-defo... shows a shift starting about 300 years ago from temperate forest removal to tropical forest removal. Together, they start to paint a picture of massive deforestation, hundreds of years ago. It's important to note that history didn't begin in 1880, and that some effects lag their cause. Forests, along with oceanic flora, normally sequester Carbon from CO2 and return O2 to the atmosphere. However, this effect only takes place when the forests are actually there. I don't have any religion, one way or another, about climate change and its causes, but I think we won't learn anything from media propaganda like this. It doesn't even bring up the possibility of albedo playing a role in climate change?
  • bharath28 11y ago
    I didn't read the whole paper (where that graph came from), so my apologies if i am misstating anything. It appears that the paper is focused mostly on the forests in Eastern Canada. At first glance, I'd find the slope on that graph (last 500 years) very hard to believe if it were for all of planet earth.
    • mangeletti 11y ago
      I've updated my comment to add another chart. The chart was intended to reflect the relative rate of deforestation, but the second one does a better job, and is even more alarming.
      • bharath28 11y ago
        Thanks! And alarming indeed.
  • snowwrestler 11y ago
    While forests represent a sizable reservoir of fixed carbon, the amount of carbon they fix in any given year is actually not huge (trees grow slowly). It would not nearly be enough to offset our current rate of burning of fossil fuels, for instance.
• mathattack 11y ago
  Slightly off-topic - can anyone explain the tool utilized for these graphics?
• hackuser 11y ago
  This repeats some buried comments but I think it's worthwhile: I'm not a climate scientist, but in my experience the absolute most reliable, most time-efficient way to learn about climate change is the IPCC reports. I wonder if there is anything written in any other field that compares: http://www.ipcc.ch/ http://www.ipcc.ch/ Specifically, if you are short on time, read the 'Summaries for Policymakers', written at the level and attention spans of non-technical politicians. They are quite readable and as I wrote in another post, if they can understand it, so can you. :) (The longer reports are fascinating, if you have an interest in science and want to get lost in something.) As I understand it the reports are prepared by a global team of hundreds of scientists, and reviewed by thousands more.[1] (Seriously, has anything like that existed in any other field?) They are meant to cover the breath of climate science and the reports also are meticulous about the language of probabilities. Spend a little time reading them and it will save you the time of reading 99% of what's written elsewhere, and you'll be much better informed. --- EDIT: [1] Review process: http://www.ipcc.ch/activities/activities.shtml http://www.ipcc.ch/activities/activities.shtml (scroll down to "The AR5 Writing and Review Process") -- for example, one report had over 50,000 comments on two drafts from >600 experts. --- EDIT 2: Website interface help. Can you believe this needs to be written, and for HN readers? I had JavaScript off which makes the site usable (if not pretty). With JavaScript on, apparantly the UX concept is 'Easter eggs': There are 4 images arranged horizontally at the top; these are report covers (with text too small to read even if you knew they were clickable). If you click a report cover then the section beneath it changes to display a description of and links to that report. All that work making the reports accessible to the world, hamstrung by web design.
  • narrator 11y ago
    A couple years back I read the IPCC reports trying to find out if global warming was real or not. I noticed the Vostok ice core data in the earlier reports showed the temperature rose first and then the CO2 rose. Likewise, the temperature fell first and then the CO2 fell later on. They fixed this little inconvenient data problem in the later reports.
    • hackuser 11y ago
• savanaly 11y ago
  I don't deny man made climate change, but this argument seems to be weak. Just because two factors go up at the same time doesn't mean one caused the other. See http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations. It is necessary but not sufficient to show that greenhouse gases went up in concert with global temperatures. Not that one expects them to lay our a sweeping, thorough case for man made climate change in such an article, which would be an unfair expectation. It seems more like a showcase for the bit of javascript razzle dazzle than anything else, as other commenters pointed out, surely no one involved with this article expected it to change anyone's mind one way or the other.
  • drjesusphd 11y ago
    The fact that trace amounts of greenhouse gases can heat the atmosphere is physics. With numbers and everything.
• random28345 11y ago
  That's one way for NASA to lose funding.
• cletus 11y ago
  There are three things that bother me about climate science. 1. Certainly in years past, anyone who even dared question that global warming wasn't real or wasn't man made was lambasted. That's not science. That's religion. Even just asking questions gets you labelled a denier. These, to me, have been and are reasonable questions to ask: - On what basis are we saying the earth is warming? Datasets for the last 1-2 centuries are still pretty narrow compared to how old the earth is and how hot and cold it has been at various points; - Is that warming, if proven, man-made? It's reasonable to investigate other possible factors that may well add to the effect caused by man; - Can we even do anything about it if it is? How expensive will it be? - What, if any, are the good effects of climate change? It can't be all bad but it just bothers me when I see things talking about how it will hurt, say, North America. But will it makes other parts of the world, currently largely uninhabitable, more hospitable? I'm actually genuinely curious about these and other questions and it bothers me that even asking them is a problem. 2. The lack of transparency. This goes beyond climate science actually but any published thesis or study on the subject should make data sets publicly available and--this one is really important--make any code for any computer models open source. Transparency and reproducibility are at the heart of scientific method are they not? There have been incidents (eg climategate) where no scientific misconduct was found but the text of certain emails really leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it reads very much like "here's the conclusion, now let's prove it". 3. The history of climate predictions has been pretty terrible and each time we're told "no trust us, this time it's totally different". It's not that I don't believe in man-made climate change. I actually think whether or not it's true it's probably largely irrelevant. There are simply too many of us and we're running out of too many things in the coming centuries that this will be corrected one way or another in such a way that climate change--true or not--will be the least of our problems. One of the interesting and depressing explanations for the Fermi Paradox is that the sphere of influence of life is ultimately capped by the speed of light, which is geometric, and life expands exponentially. Life always catches up eventually. You see this in nature where algae blooms for example will explode in rivers killing all other life until they themselves can't survive and they all die. In more balanced ecosystems there are other factors to keep any one species in check. It really seems like nothing is keeping up in check now so are we just another algae bloom?
  • 11y ago
• jgrowl 11y ago
  What exactly are they measuring for the sun's data? Observed temperature? Is the frequency/intensity of CME's included?
  • hisabness 11y ago
    my question too. a small change in the measure for solar could be more impactful than a large change in greenhouse gases.
• gtrubetskoy 11y ago
  What's always been puzzling me is why the relationship between man-produced emissions and climate is considered important in the fossil fuel debate. As if it's not enough that the air in major cities and vast parts of entire countries is literally toxic.
  • triangleman 11y ago
    Because it's not a debate about science, it's a debate about policy. Imagine you are a Los Angeles politician looking to promote one of two policies: 1) Clean up the air in Los Angeles at a measurable cost of X, most of which will be paid by Los Angeles taxpayers (including said politician). 2) Reduce CO2 emissions worldwide at an unmeasurable cost of Y, most of which will be paid via the inflation of consumer prices. The air in Los Angeles will probably remain just as dirty, but the politician gets to say that he "did something". Which of these policies would the hypothetical politician be more likely to support?
    • npsimons 11y ago
      > Because it's not a debate about science, it's a debate about policy. Bingo! The science is settled, as much as any science ever can be. The problem comes in with people "just asking questions", the same questions, over and over again, that have been answered so many times, but people don't want to change their beliefs. Reminds me a lot of tactics used by certain other groups with deeply held beliefs. I have to commend people like hackuser, whose patience is not only commendable, but astounding! I truly hope the sealions don't wear him down.
  • merpnderp 11y ago
    No kidding. Coal releases trace amounts of uranium into the atmosphere, not to mention the mercury.
• phkahler 11y ago
  Deforestation? They reject this because we replace forest with light reflecting materials which they claim causes slight cooling. Last time I checked, it's way cooler in a forest than standing in a parking lot. Nature uses the energy from sunlight to create biomass. Anything else either reflects it or turns it to heat.
  • asgard1024 11y ago
    > Last time I checked, it's way cooler in a forest than standing in a parking lot. Perhaps you forgot to account for the shade and humidity? (As an aside, I believe forests generate heat, just like any biological system. The best it can be seen during spring, the snow patches around plants will melt sooner.)
    • phkahler 11y ago
      Nope. From a thermodynamic analysis, the energy is either reflected, turned into heat, or used to do work. Forests use more for work than any static object. The only open question in my mind is how much so. You do raise the point of emitting water vapor which adds a lot to the complexity. Also the rotting biomass will produce a lot of heat. But the production of dirt is probably still a net use of the energy. Remember, coal is old biomass and contains a lot of energy that came from the sun. >> As an aside, I believe forests generate heat, just like any biological system. You would be wrong in that. All chemical processes in the forest are ultimately powered by sunlight. Your body produces heat, but that's due to chemical reactions that primarily amount to burning fuel (fats are essentially hydrocarbons and the primary products of their "burning" is CO2 and H20 which exit through the lungs). Animals turn chemical energy into heat, but plants turn energy from light into chemical energy.
      • asgard1024 11y ago
        > Animals turn chemical energy into heat, but plants turn energy from light into chemical energy. They do, but the heat is byproduct of that conversion. From the 2nd law of thermodynamics there will always be some residual heat (probably quite a lot, efficiency is given by the ratio of absolute temperatures between the heater and cooler, which is quite low in plants). And don't forget that plants also burn sugars to feed their processes. As I said, you can see for yourself in early spring that plants do indeed generate more heat than surrounding dead objects, such as rocks. In any case, forests have, I believe, lower albedo than deforested landscape, so deforestation should cool the planet if anything. And one of the big arguments for global warming is that we observe more warming during the night, during the winter, towards poles and stratospheric cooling, which is again indicative that the problem is outgoing radiation being recaptured rather than more incoming radiation being reflected.
• phkahler 11y ago
  Notably absent is con-trails. The jury is still out, but there is strong evidence that they can have a significant effect. The rise of jet travel has also coincided with hydrocarbon use. Water vapor is also a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.
  • IanDrake 11y ago
    Con-trail data would match the CO2 and temperature line. It would show another correlation that might call into question the validity of the absolute undeniable fact that CO2's correlation is causation. There are people with simple minds that would then question CO2's role in Global Warming. We can't give those deniers anything else to hang their hat on. It's the same reason we need to use the "Land Use" data instead of deforestation data. It would just confuse the non-believers. It's better to keep it simple and stay on message.
    • spdustin 11y ago
      I recall reading an article, but can't seem to find it, that studied changes in the atmosphere after the post-9/11 grounding of US flights. Granted, it was only free of condensation trails for a short period, but it was an unprecedented opportunity to test hypotheses related to their effect on the atmosphere. The three or so days without US air traffic showed warmer days (because of lowered albedo, and thus less reflected sunlight) and cooler nights (because less of the earth's radiative heat energy was trapped). The thought, because of the efficiency differences of the albedo-vs-"heat blanket" effect that clouds bring, was that it was a net-warming effect that contrails cause. Scientists continued studied that, IIRC, and found that its contribution is indeed measurable, but accounts for an increase of something like 0.02° Fahrenheit. The primary concern with commercial air traffic is their conversion of matter millions of years in the making to energy and waste products that have a more measurable effect on climate. The physical contribution of their condensation trails, via their reflective and absorptive properties, is a minor player. A player, certainly. I suspect air traffic won't decrease until we see other modes of transportation compete economically, which isn't happening any time soon.
      • 11y ago
• darkstar999 11y ago
  At this point, any rational person understands the problem. Ok. We get it. So how do we fix it? It seems like everyone is focusing on proving that it is caused by humans, but where is the solution?
  • buckbova 11y ago
    With taxes of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading
    • darkstar999 11y ago
      Ok, so they collect a massive amount of taxes. Then what?
      • joeclark77 11y ago
        Enact the rest of the left's policy goals, of course. Don't ask why. IT'S THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS you denier.
        • darkstar999 11y ago
          Oh come on. I'm trying to have a legitimate conversation here.
      • surprisetalk 11y ago
        This strategy is popular because it uses negative incentives to discourage pollution. Collecting money is just a bonus.
      • asgard1024 11y ago
        That's pretty much it. If someone wants to avoid said taxes, they should build a solar power plant. It is certainly better than subsidies (because it lets market, not government, to decide on the best solution), although of course for politicians it's easier to create subsidies than taxes. As for what to do with the collected money, I would suggest lowering other taxes, or just give it to everybody in the same amount.
• fasteo 11y ago
  I am not negating the global warming issue here, but what I see is just a correlation of two time series, much like the correlation between "US Spending on science, space and technology" and "Suicides by hanging, strangulation or suffocation" [1] [1] http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
  • knowaveragejoe 11y ago
    The difference here is that the Y axis looks to be the same for both datasets being compared.
  • talideon 11y ago
    Except unlike those, we actually know the effect that the likes of methane and carbon dioxide have on the atmosphere, and thus demonstrates more than just a spurious correlation.
  • drjesusphd 11y ago
    There exists a physical mechanism by which relatively small amounts of greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere. Do you question this?
    • fasteo 11y ago
      Of course not. What I question is that the increase in the average land-ocean temperature has a causal and unique relationship with the increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And I question this based only in the charts and information presented here. >>> The computer model that generated the results for this graphic is called "ModelE2," and was created by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which has been a leader in climate projections for a generation. - Is ModelE2 completely foolproof ? >>> ModelE2 contains something on the order of 500,000 lines of code, and is run on a supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation in Greenbelt, Maryland. - How many bugs could you find in 500.000 lines of code ? The "Excel depression" article came to my mind after seeing this [1] Again, I am not negating the global warning issue, but I am for critical thinking for these fundamental problems. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-depression.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-...
• deleted 11y ago
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• galois198 11y ago
  Re the past proxy data, and possibly the recent data, why is the assumption that causation follows gas->temp and not temp(unknown_var)->gas?
• posnet 11y ago
  Does it bother anyone else that only the Global temperate has its axis labelled? What is the orbital wobble measuring? What is the volcano line measuring? Is that decreased forests or decreased land use? Should be be using more aerosols? Is that meant to be suns temperature or sun activity, or sun colour? I realise that the actual data is from reliable carefully measured models but it makes this illustration so pointless.
  • jlebar 11y ago
    > What is the orbital wobble measuring? What is the volcano line measuring? Read the bottom of the page; it explains that the colored lines measure the modeled expected impact from orbital wobble/whatever on climate. That is, all of the lines measure global temperature.
    • triangleman 11y ago
      All of the lines model global temperature. Except the temperature line... right?
  • comboy 11y ago
    Yes! "The colored temperature lines are the modeled estimates that each climate factor contributes to the overall temperature." This is so bad that it makes me angry. They are showing these lines to convince you what influences climate change. And those lines represent how much they think different factors influence climate change. Sigh.
• thadd 11y ago
  My only problem is that the planet is over 4 billion years old and as this shows, we've been collecting climate data for a little over 100 years. The natural skeptic in me isn't ok with establishing a trend based on 1/40,000,000 of the available data, the sample size is simply too small. Am I completely off-base with this?
  • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Its actually irrelevant whether this has happened before. Its happening now, impacting us, and maybe we can do something about it. The Pollyanna approach "Its natural" doesn't help us when cities are going underwater.
    • DougWebb 11y ago
      Maybe we can do something, but what? Do we build walls around the cities so they don't flood, or do we set up a scheme where developing countries pay a ransom to rich countries so they can continue to pollute, while rich countries starve their poor citizens of affordable energy while funnelling tax money into companies owned by rich citizens to do R&D work on energy sources that won't be viable on a large scale for decades, if ever? I'm all for the walls, but the money that drives governments don't seem to agree.
      • Aloha 11y ago
        The issue that I have with the folks who advocate anthropogenic climate change is that near as I can tell there is no way to preserve the standard of living on the planet (feed, clothe, power, etc) and end climate change soon enough, the only way to get even a 50% cut of emissions within a decade is effectively managing to reduce the population of the planet by a similar number. I think we'd be better off figuring out how to cope with climate change and generally reduce our consumption of natural resources, rather than focusing to tightly on one evil (carbon).
        • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
          ...and just let it continue. How convenient. Pretend nobody's responsible, and its inevitable, and just insulate your house and hunker down I guess.
• stillsut 11y ago
  GHG seems to match Temperature quite well. But GHG is cut-off at the year 2000. I wonder if the closeness of the fit continues? Also, what's up with the error bars around GHG's? Is there really that much uncertainty surrounding CO2 concentration in the atmosphere? I thought readings were accurate to ~1ppm where the trend is currently +3ppm/year so why are the observations (in the modern sensor era) uuncertain by about ~45ppm?
• deleted 11y ago
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• justsaying1 11y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/NZbqqEl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/NZbqqEl.jpg
• Geee 11y ago
  Note that these graphs explain the factors of the simulation model, and is not comparing data to data. From the FAQ: "The colored temperature lines are the modeled estimates that each climate factor contributes to the overall temperature."
• themgt 11y ago
  Helpful when reading this thread to keep in mind Michael Mann's six stages of climate change denial: 1. CO2 is not actually increasing. 2. Even if it is, the increase has no impact on the climate since there is no convincing evidence of warming. 3. Even if there is warming, it is due to natural causes. 4. Even if the warming cannot be explained by natural causes, the human impact is small, and the impact of continued greenhouse gas emissions will be minor. 5. Even if the current and future projected human effects on Earth's climate are not negligible, the changes are generally going to be good for us. 6. Whether or not the changes are going to be good for us, humans are very adept at adapting to changes; besides, it’s too late to do anything about it, and/or a technological fix is bound to come along when we really need it.
  • TillE 11y ago
    The first four stages have always baffled me. Anyone who knows basic chemistry understands how carbon dioxide interacts with infrared radiation. Combine that with the fact that human activity is releasing tens of billions of tons of CO2 every year, which does not magically disappear. In fact, it's quite measurable. The climate is complex, but the basic facts of the situation are incredibly simple and unavoidable. And yet, people have still tried.
    • suprfnk 11y ago
      > The first four stages have always baffled me. Anyone who knows basic chemistry Well, there you go. A lot of people don't.
      • JimmaDaRustla 11y ago
        The baffling part about it is how someone can ignorantly argue correlations of basic chemistry when they don't know basic chemistry.
        • Panoramix 11y ago
          Well, a lot of people argue that the moon landing was a hoax (without knowing basic engineering) and that the holocaust didn't happen (without knowing basic history). I find it more depressing than baffling.
• songshu 11y ago
  Agreeing on the provenance of the warming seems to be a red herring when we urgently need to figure out how climate change affects us. Which areas will be flooded, which areas will become inhabitable, will we be able to grow more food or less, how many more people can we expect to starve, how many jobs will be created and lost, how will it affect life expectancy? I realize such research is going on -- I'd like it to be promoted better. The world is already an inhospitable place for many people and we already don't respond well enough. Currently I don't see why we would respond any better if things get worse.
• bcheung 11y ago
  Very cool visualization and great way to display it. As someone who refuses to trust authority and wants to understand things for myself before making a decision, global warming is very frustrating because nobody will answer my questions without personal attacks or appeals to authority. I don't have an agenda either way, I just have a very inquisitive mind. Have any of you felt the same? Some of the questions I have that never seem to get an adequate answer: 1) How are the models validated? Is it like backtesting a trading strategy? Come up with a hypothesis that seems to fit historical data, then let it run with actual data, and see how accurate it is? If so, how have the models held up? 2) How do they account for confounding factors and how do they separate causal correlations from mere correlations? For example, at 95% of fires firemen were present. Firemen and fires are strongly correlated. But nobody would say firemen are the cause of fires. Cholesterol was thought to be a causal factor for heart problems because it is strongly correlated but they later found it is not a causal factor. Something else causes the heart disease and cholesterol raises when heart disease is present. They can use it as a predictor of heart disease but it is now understood that cholesterol doesn't actually cause the problem. 3) It seems to me that for a model to be trusted it must have predictive capability, and it must fit a physical model of our current understanding. How do the various models hold up with these criteria? It seems like climate is still a very complex field that we don't fully understand.
• lerpa 11y ago
  So, a graph and no units. Wonderful. As far as I know we're talking squirrels per cubic meter equivalent production of CO2 lol
• csentropy 11y ago
  After reading these comments, it is clear that the ones who have their mind made up and are not open to debate are the warmists. The fact that merely asking questions incites such aggression suggests only one thing. They just don't know and are scared to admit it to themselves. This is the exact same behavior seen among religious cultists. They have not read all the evidence or most of it themselves, but follow the high priests unquestioningly because 1) It makes them feel better and morally superior and 2) The burden of proof is not on them. They can always evade and say "all the experts/high priests agree" or "read the IPCC" etc
  • moultano 11y ago
    Have you read the IPCC report? There's nothing I can write in an HN comment that would make a better argument than that.
    • csentropy 11y ago
      Which draft of which assessment? Be more specific.
      • moultano 11y ago
        Any of them? I'm certainly not going to give you flak for being a year or two out of date. If you want an argument, that's the canonical one.
• alecco 11y ago
  The documentary Merchants of Doubt (2014) provides a great look into paid shills on US media. They aim for confusion and they've been doing this kind of work for a long time.
• drjesusphd 11y ago
  Since I seem to be repeating myself all over this thread: It is basic physics (the optics of IR and visible light and thermodynamics) that trace amounts of CO2 and methane can significantly warm the atmosphere. We know physics pretty damn well, and if you do not accept this, there is no conversation. Sure, one should look at the data to see to what extent this is happening and there are all kinds of questions one can ask. But all this talk of "correlation is not causation" is nonsense.
  • scarmig 11y ago
    The science around climate change is well established--it's happening, it's man-made, and it will continue--but it's a bit more complicated than that. The physics suggests a relatively small increase in temperature (<1C); it's the positive feedbacks, particularly water vapor vapor feedbacks, that make climate change so potentially costly.
    • contravariant 11y ago
      It doesn't help that estimates of the climate sensitivity seem to be all over the place.
      • webXL 11y ago
        I think being "all over the place" is what skeptics and "denialists" have a problem with. Let's get more data before making drastic changes to our regulations that may hurt hard-working people.
• beatpanda 11y ago
  It's really depression to see such a large aggregation of smart people applying their abilities to nitpicking details of global warming instead of coming up with solutions.
• nlake44 11y ago
  How can mankind, overnight stop exponential (that famous hockey stick everyone likes to see) oxygen growth? Very suspicious. There are some pretty bad sources of information out there about oxygen over time. Here is one I trust: http://dk6qunh1hkthr.cloudfront.net/content/nips/25/5/272/F1.medium.gif http://dk6qunh1hkthr.cloudfront.net/content/nips/25/5/272/F1...
• rza 11y ago
  This graphic really just plays into the hands of climate change deniers. No labelled axis, a timeline of only 100 years (you could also argue the dinosaurs caused global warming), and the quite proud declaration at the end the argument is really "no contest" under the assumption that correlation == causation. I could also make a graph that shows the increase in global temperature correlating with the rise in the Latino population, could I then declare it a "no contest"?
  • IvyMike 11y ago
    > under the assumption that correlation == causation Except we do have a pretty good understanding of the chemisty/physics of the greenhouse effect, too. So there's a prediction ("increased CO2 will lead to warming") and a validation. What more do they want?
    • npsimons 11y ago
      > What more do they want? They won't tell you, because then they wouldn't be able to move the goalposts, by "just asking questions".
    • sergiosgc 11y ago
      Obviously, an explanation for the break in the causation link that was observed between '96 until '10. CO2 production rose faster than modeled while warming took a break.
    • pc2g4d 11y ago
      It's just that the presentation overreached. They should at least mention the other inputs to a comprehensive model that were tried but just didn't have a big impact, otherwise it feels like they just decided in advance that CO2 was the answer.
    • rza 11y ago
      Is this increase in CO2 a significant amount on the scale of Earth's history? How much of it was caused by humans vs natural cycles? A cursory search informed me C02 levels and average temperature was much higher during the dinosaur ages[0], what was the cause then? Note I'm playing devil's advocate here and I haven't studied climate much, but my point is the graphic wouldn't persuade someone who is already biased against human-driven climate change, and only encourages equally primitive arguments from their side. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesozoic#Climate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesozoic#Climate
• wdr1 11y ago
  Honest question: This data is correlational, and I always thought it was important to distinguish between correlation & causation?
  • Faint 11y ago
    Generally causation and correlation can only be distinguished by running experiments. Given that we only have 1 earth climate, long time needed to gather reliable results, and the quite apparent correlation, which experiment would you like to run for next 50 years, slow down co2 output to see if climate warming slows down, or continue increasing co2 output, and see where that leads? Infact, increasing co2 output would be kind of boring experiment, we've tried that already.
• donatj 11y ago
  I am not a scientist but I've always had a sneaking suspicion that blacktop converting light from the sun into heat had something to do with it. I'd actually LOVE to hear what a scientist thought of this hypothesis. I also wonder if all the coal we material we burned for heat (coal and such) didn't have a cooling effect - particularly in the cities where a lot of the accurate temperature measures were taken. Again, not a scientist - truly curiously.
• graycat 11y ago
  From all the credible data I've been able to find, the main global warming is just from the coolest times of The Little Ice Age. For the past 100 years, I see little credible evidence of any significant warming, and what there is may just be that we are still pulling out of The Little Ice Age, e.g., slowly warming the oceans from the cooling they got in The Little Ice Age. The best data I found is in Committee on Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, National Research Council, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years, ISBN 0-309-66264-8, 196 pages, National Academies Press, 2006, available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html There as I read the graphs, as of 2006, the temperature was essentially the same as in the year 1000, and the increase in temperature over the past 100 years was much like that from year 900 to year 1000. For the climate model predictions, all the data I've seen have the predictions very significantly different and all significantly higher than the actual temperatures. For the title here "What's Really Warming the World?", from all I can tell from credible sources, so far, to any significant extent, nothing.
• williesleg 11y ago
  I'm just so utterly amazed that they could measure temperature with such precision for so many years. I'd imagine rooms full of temperature calculator people crunching numbers from their precise temperature measuring instruments. Bravo!
• Benjamin_Dobell 11y ago
  By no means suggesting CO2 isn't responsible for global warming - quite frankly I have zero idea, I just try listen to what the experts say. However, this article in particular is pretty offensively stupid. It shows some graphs that indicate a correlation between CO2 and heat increase. That's by no means scientific evidence for a cause. Again, not saying there isn't any evidence CO2 is the cause, it's just this article is incredibly misleading.