Every Month This Year Has Been the Hottest In Recorded History (vice.com) 412
Slashdot reader iONiUM quotes an article from Vice that calls attention to the fact that
record-setting temperatures in July are just part of the story: On Wednesday, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that July was the hottest month ever recorded on our planet, since modern record-keeping began in 1880. NASA has reached the same conclusion. July smashed all previous records... "We should be absolutely concerned," [NOAA climatologist] Sanchez-Lugo said. "We need to look at ways to adapt and mitigate. If we don't, temperatures will continue to increase"...
But the truth is that record-breaking temperatures, month after month, year after year, are starting to look less like an exception, more like the norm.
In fact, CityLab reports that the earth has now experienced 14 consecutive months of unprecedented hotness. Although July stands out, Vice notes that "each consecutive month in 2016 has broken its own previous record (May was the hottest May, April the hottest April, etc.)..."
But the truth is that record-breaking temperatures, month after month, year after year, are starting to look less like an exception, more like the norm.
In fact, CityLab reports that the earth has now experienced 14 consecutive months of unprecedented hotness. Although July stands out, Vice notes that "each consecutive month in 2016 has broken its own previous record (May was the hottest May, April the hottest April, etc.)..."
"Ghandi" quote updated (Score:5, Insightful)
First they laugh at the science. Then they ignore the science. Then they actively fund bullshit artists to obfuscate the science. Then they burn.
Re:"Ghandi" quote updated (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know where these figures are coming from but here in SoCal, we've had a pretty mild summer. Not nearly as hot as some years gone by.
For the millionth time - weather is not climate.
If the entire world was Southern California your observation might be relevant to the discussion. OTOH if the entire world was Southern California, global warming would be the least of our problems.
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if it's hot it's climate change and we need a totalitarian state to fix it
Even if the first part were true, there's absolutely no need for a totalitarian state to fix it.
Please don't conflate the problem with an entirely different problem. There are many paths to mitigating climate change, and potential solutions from across the whole political spectrum. Instead of denying the problem exists, why not promote a solution you're comfortable with?
Re: "Ghandi" quote updated (Score:4, Insightful)
Why bother?
The only solutions anyone actually listens to are ones that promote political agendas despite having a negligible affect on climate change.
I don't have a problem with solutions that involve science and technology, but it's rediculous to think that somehow a change in tax codes are going to solve the climate problem. Every time a politician opens their mouth on the subject it polarizes people. Of all the topics to be divisive about this certainly is going to be looked upon as the most rediculous. What we need is everyone behind the brilliant minds that will fix these problems and I really doubt that's going to be some random /. reader.
Re: "Ghandi" quote updated (Score:5, Insightful)
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Changes in tax codes and more importantly, zoning laws are probably required. Trouble is, they are linked in an environmentally-unfriendly way: in the area in which I live, I've seen at least 100 acres of easily observable (i.e. next to a road) land converted from forest to either shopping centers or stupidly expensive residential ("starting from the $800s") in the past year.
There are also at least another 600 acres of mixed farm/forest for sale zoned residential/"big box commercial" within 15 miles of roa
Re: "Ghandi" quote updated (Score:4, Insightful)
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Even if the first part were true, there's absolutely no need for a totalitarian state to fix it.
Please don't conflate the problem with an entirely different problem. There are many paths to mitigating climate change, and potential solutions from across the whole political spectrum. Instead of denying the problem exists, why not promote a solution you're comfortable with?
The deniers aren't a monolithic group. There are deniers who deny because they have a pecuniary interest in protecting the carbon emitters. There are the deniers who have a sort of inertia, a resistance to change. I think this is the majority of Slashdot deniers. There are the deniers who just want to have a different outlook, and enjoy denying things.Contrarians as it were.
Finally, there are the deniers who can't understand why their liberty is being infringed on when they aren't allowed to marry their s
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Since I'm looking for a new job, ca how much are you being paid for this?
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For the millionth time, if it's hot it's climate change and we need a totalitarian state to fix it. If it's cold it's weather.
Silly, hot is weather as well.
It's pretty silly to think that adapting to a problem is somehow totalitarian.
It is a good thing that we discovered that benzene was a dangerous carcinogen or that we shouldn't lick the brushes while using radium paint to form a nice point on them, or that maybe we shouldn't use powerful X rays as a shoe fitting gimmick for our children. All of those caused a problem.
In today's world, that would be an insufferable restriction on people's liberty.
Its all about me! (Score:2)
Last year - in particular the start of July and August - we had the highest temperatures ever recorded here.
This year has been a few degrees cooler, the thunderstorms in May and June stopped the temperatures running away.
Elsewhere? No idea.
I glanced at a forum recently which claimed to have found proof that global warming is really fiction. It was some community site in Oregon. The crazy thing was, the posters to that forum were serious.
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Last year - in particular the start of July and August - we had the highest temperatures ever recorded here. This year has been a few degrees cooler, the thunderstorms in May and June stopped the temperatures running away.
Elsewhere? No idea.
Here in the northeast, It has been a little weird at times. Its been hot, and many places have had tropical sort of weather a friend who works in weather had some interesting info on way upstate New York where there have been several days with a dew point of 80 degrees F.
Closer to home, I don't know that we've set a lot of records for heat this summer, but only a few mornings have seen the night time temps dip below 70. I bought a new spa this spring, and its been too hot to use it most of the time (yeah
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Obviously.
We have an El Nino right now. In case you have not noticed that everyone is talking about it.
The main effect of an El Nino for California usually is lots of relatively cold water in front of its coast. Oooops, that was so easy.
Re: "Ghandi" quote updated (Score:2)
How much worse would you like things to get? A little bit worse, or a lot worse?
CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition (Score:2)
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which is a bit difficult for polar bears living at the north pole.
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Tell that the people living in Alaska or Siberia :D
Giant ice cubes (Score:2)
Just get some ice from an asteroid and drop it in the oceans to solve the problem once and for all. Once and for all!
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Water not raising fast enough?
Ice cubes already here (Score:3)
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Bringing the ice cube safely and unmolten down from orbit might also pose minor problems ....
Besides, the added ice would raise the level of the oceans. Not your intended result. Instead, find a way to make it cloudier overall, raising the albedo of the Earth.
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Bringing the ice cube safely and unmolten down from orbit might also pose minor problems ....
Besides, the added ice would raise the level of the oceans. Not your intended result. Instead, find a way to make it cloudier overall, raising the albedo of the Earth.
The earth is fucked enough already. We don't need to go raising its albedo and make her a real bitch in heat.
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Less sunlight means less primary production which means less food and slower recapture of carbon dioxide. Also, it makes solar panels less effective.
Every Month This Year Has Been the Hottest (Score:2)
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Hotter than last year, colder than next year...
That means we can call it cooling, right?
Re:Every Month This Year Has Been the Hottest (Score:4, Informative)
It's almost as if we're coming out of an ice age, or something.
Re: Every Month This Year Has Been the Hottest (Score:2)
Except since about 8,000 years ago we've been slowly dropping into the next ice age, at least until we started raising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere a couple of hundred years ago.
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Thats bollocks, considering that the last "ice age" just ended shortly before that time.
at least until we started raising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere a couple of hundred years ago.
The point is: started. The first increases in greenhouse gases where neglectible. And the next "ice age" is not "due" for another couple of 100.000 years.
Big Climate Science (Score:5, Funny)
Corrupt thermometers are taking money from KKKilary KKKlinton in an effort to distract the world from the fact that she's murdered thousands of patriotic Americans in Arkansas who were going to expose the fact that she's actually in a wheelchair.
The conspiracy has now gone beyond just climate scientists. It's now built into the actual instrumentation. TRUE! The laws of physics are complicit, too. Nobody with half a brain would believe a liberal thermometer, anyway.
Relevent Quote (Score:5, Funny)
"Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." -- Charles Dudley Warner, 1873
Recorded history (Score:2)
To NOAA recorded history is 137 years of record keeping. In the terms of since earth had been habituated by mammals, 315 million years, that is an extremely short time. It does not compare with what happened hundreds, thousands or millions of years ago.
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The issue is timescale. When temps rise so quickly that every month in a consecutive string of 14 breaks a 120 year old record for the hottest month, that's so unlikely as to be impossible to have happened by chance, by any statistical standard. Given the rarity of consecutive hot months in the known past, this is evidence of rapid change in climate on a global level.
There are no plausible natural mechanisms that could explain such a quick rise in temps, or we'd have seen evidence of comparable runs of he
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Saying "recorded history" to be 137 years is like sticking your hand out the window and saying we are in a record drought because it has not rained in the last 15 seconds. There is nothing to compare with those 137 years.
To use your analogy. if you flip a 120 sided coin 315,000,000 times and the last 15 comes up 120 is is not actually significant.
By the way warming does not equal wide growth rings. They could be narrow due to drought even though the temp is higher.
Re:Recorded history (Score:4, Insightful)
Saying "recorded history" to be 137 years is like sticking your hand out the window and saying we are in a record drought because it has not rained in the last 15 seconds. There is nothing to compare with those 137 years.
A record drought literally means it's one which is a record as in the biggest recorded. Nonetheless, comparing to 315e6 years ago is meaningless since so much was different then, for example the positions of the continents.
To use your analogy. if you flip a 120 sided coin 315,000,000 times and the last 15 comes up 120 is is not actually significant.
120^15/315e6 = 4.8911e+22
I'd say that's pretty significant.
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Do we really care how the climate changed 315 million years ago? We weren't around then.
It's changing now, and that's affecting us directly. And unlike past events, we can see that this time it's us that's causing it. The planet will be fine of course, but in the mean time it will be very expensive for us to adapt - moving our cities and infrastructure away from low-lying areas, dealing with the increased droughts and storm damage. We can save literally trillions of dollars of costs in the longer term by ph
Hmmm, haven't noticed (Score:2)
FWIW, don't remember where I read the original article, but the idea of cows having fart bags to capture their "emissions" seems really ripe for a Gary Larson cartoon. Gary, do you read
2017 (Score:2)
What about next year? Will it be as bad then too? ITS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT :(
"Ever recorded" (Score:2)
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Desperate lies? (Score:2)
Various commenters have pointed out that they have had unremarkable, or even cool temperatures this year. The warmists reliably respond "weather isn't climate". But you know: enough individual weather data points are climate.
Before you make this comment "troll", consider just one little example:
This year, much of western continental Europe had an unusually cold Spring, from April through June. While individual cooler days are not unusual, this is the first year I have ever had to run the heating in June, be
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>> But you know: enough individual weather data points are climate.
No, they add up to a total picture of the overall climate. You can't cherry pick some data points and ignore others.
>> the way historical temperatures have been artificially adjusted downwards.
You're misunderstanding the adjustments. When measuring stations are replaced the offset between the old and new data is taken into account by offsetting the old data to align to the new, rather than the other way around. The trends are
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By the way, if you change the base period at the GISS/nasa.gov site to 2005 to 2015 you'll find that northern Europe does go to white, meaning the difference is within +/-0.2C. Also note that this map is for the full 2016 data set, not just the three months of April to June that you want to cite as being below average. Where January to March also below average, or above? And July? You have to look at what this map is showing and not just make assumptions.
North west passage is ice free (Score:2)
And the north east one was free 2014 and 2012 at least, not sure about right now.
Anyway, I guess no one of the AGW deniers grasps what it means: "the northwest passage is ice free!"
Re:not in my state (Score:5, Insightful)
We have been experiencing well below average temperatures. Hog wash.
That's why they call it "global" warming, instead of, say, "found a place where it isn't" warming.
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I don't think at all that man hasn't affected the climate in a way that tends to disturb equilibrium.
I'm not convinced, however, that a single global average temperature is a meaningful metric. Since climate is varied enough across the globe, that single metric seems to lose too much information. Far too much information averaged together.
For instance - yes the average has increased, but is that more or less important than the change in range of max to min temperatures? How does that vary with geolocation?
Re:not in my state (Score:5, Informative)
If the average is the hottest, show us all the locales where it was the hottest ever. Should be a lot of them.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist... [nasa.gov]
Not a single US state was lower than average. Not one. Small parts of two states are equal, and the remaining parts plus all 49 other states are above average.
Only parts of Russia and Antarctica were below average temperatures on the entire planet.
Except you already said "state" so clearly you don't live in either of those locations.
Conclusion: You're a liar and don't care about proof of anything.
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Antarctica has winter right now, that includes polar night ... in other words, places are dark 24h/7d ... well slowly shifting to a cycle with very long night and short periods of sunlight ofc. (after all it is end of summer, erm end of winter there).
It is astonishing (not you AC) that people believe the coldest place on the planet needs to warm up in winter equally than the warm areas. They don't grasp the fundamental differences between the Artic and Antarctic :-/
I'm still thinking people should need a li
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No. Believe it or not, past episodes of changing climate have had a variety of causes.
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They did. They linked maps of them in the subject.
By contrast, you haven't shown even one locale (given that you haven't identified where "here" is).
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What you're making ear is that you have no idea what "mean" means
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The claim that every month in the last 14 is the HOTTEST EVER is absurd. I know for certain that for very large portions of the Earth that hasn't been at all true.
Doesn't follow, even if your personal knowledge is true.
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You don't care if humanity dies? Why? So you can keep burning gasoline. It's hard sometimes with comments like these to figure out whether people like you are sociopaths or just petulant children.
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I (an only child) have no plans to ever have children.
Good. Convince your fellow believers of that plan. It will help the planet survive.
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"You do know that agriculture depends on fossil fuels, right? "
As do a great number of industrial processes which makes the wasteful burning of such a precious resource so fucking stupid.
Re: i still dont feel anything at all (Score:2)
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And his great great grandson played Dominic Toretto in the Fast and Furious movies.
I guess the '70 Dodge Charger doesn't fall far from the tree, but it doesn't run on peanut oil, unfortunately.
Re:Humans do not cause this! (Score:5, Funny)
Cows do - damn methane burping, farting cows and CO2 producing livestock (=compare livestock numbers with human population)
Damn straight! That's why I eat them. I'm doing my part to help reduce climate change. It's those vegetarians/vegans, the people who are eating the very things that are removing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. They're the villains here!
So when I up end up with heart disease and clogged arteries and the like, remember that I did it to help future generations. No, no, there's no need to thank me...
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"I'm a big skeptic of climate change because humans do not cause this"
If you have already settled on answer, that makes you *not* a skeptic.
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I haven't posted for years, but you got me out of my cave...
Don't know if you will see this, but the guy you are quoting has changed his mind:
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/throwback-thursday-global-warming-for-beginners-63e1a8175dbd
"Now that you know that global warming is real, and now that you understand why it’s really likely that it’s caused by human activity, I hope you’ll start asking what the right way is to start addressing this problem. I’d like for humans to live ha
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Re:This is the year of the extreme climate claims (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who believe in human-influenced global warming are usually NOT the same who believe in the sky-fairies and the Great Spirit.
"To think that man could be capable of effecting change on such an enormously huge scale is the height of arrogance. Sounds like you need to lay off the weed and granola"
Man? A single man probably doesn't stand a chance but millions, hundred of millions, billions?
I'm afraid so. It takes a long time but once there's enough heat built-up and stored, the effects will persist for decades, perhaps even longer.
"a whole solar system's worth of evidence to suggest that it's a natural occurrence"
the processes are natural and the Sun is the single biggest driver - but think of Old Sol as a nuclear plant, delivering steady, predictable baseload.
Once the plant is in operation, it just keeps humming along, provided there's enough cooling but if that diminishes, it quickly spins out of control.
So the GHGs, natural and man-made, are retaining more of the solar heat and storing it in the oceans and at some point, that stored heat is going to be released and we'll have a very bad couple of decades at best.
Re:This is the year of the extreme climate claims (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who believe in human-influenced global warming are usually NOT the same who believe in the sky-fairies and the Great Spirit.
"To think that man could be capable of effecting change on such an enormously huge scale is the height of arrogance. Sounds like you need to lay off the weed and granola"
Man? A single man probably doesn't stand a chance but millions, hundred of millions, billions?
They need to head off to West Virginia to see the Terraforming we've done. Looks like a reshaping of the land of biblical proportions. Entire mountains now reside in what used to be valleys.
I'm afraid so. It takes a long time but once there's enough heat built-up and stored, the effects will persist for decades, perhaps even longer.
"a whole solar system's worth of evidence to suggest that it's a natural occurrence"
We have a couple different things going on. Carbon Dioxide is a fairly long term greenhouse gas. Methane is much more powerful in effect, fortunately shorter lived in action. A few "anti-greenhouse gases are also short lived, like Sulfur Dioxide, which can cool the planet for a time after large volcanic eruptions.
My biggest concern is that as methane is released as is happening now, we'll be going through a special kind of hell for a hundred years or so.
the processes are natural and the Sun is the single biggest driver - but think of Old Sol as a nuclear plant, delivering steady, predictable baseload. Once the plant is in operation, it just keeps humming along, provided there's enough cooling but if that diminishes, it quickly spins out of control.
So the GHGs, natural and man-made, are retaining more of the solar heat and storing it in the oceans and at some point, that stored heat is going to be released and we'll have a very bad couple of decades at best.
It is such an odd thing that the deniers deny the simple chemical process that without which, life as we know cwouldn't exist, or in a seeming miracle of divine intervention, somehow keep the situation exactly the same, and that the Greenhouse effect is only happening for non-human greenhouse gas injection.
800 Terawatts of radiative forcing is nothing to sneeze at.
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That has to be one of the most insightful AC comments I've read in a long time.
Re:This is the year of the extreme climate claims (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that's something you could calculate all by yourself. And now please argue that those additional 130 ppm in the atmosphere are not man-made!
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Would be great if you cited the sources and showed the numbers.
Finding the sources and the numbers is so easy, that anybody could do that themselves. Consider it part of the exercise.
Re:This is the year of the extreme climate claims (Score:4, Informative)
Re: If mere algae could completely change the make (Score:2)
What, like the dinosaurs? I'd love a list of the 'big animals' we've 'already extincted'...
Re: and if you think that the quantity of graphs (Score:2)
You need to learn the law of large numbers. When you combine the results of many measurements into one it's perfectly reasonable to express final result to a couple of orders of magnitude better precision than the original measurement.
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(Haven't we been through this before?)
Not if the bias is systemic. It often is. There are lots of papers on the subject.
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I turn mine up to 11!
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OK, let's have a simple review of basic reasoning skills.
IF a year is a record hot year,THEN it is almost certainly an El Nino year. That's because El Nino years are always hotter than the underlying trend, whatever that happens to be. However: ENSO has been going on for generations, but frequent sequences of record setting El Nino years is a new phenomenon.
So clearly El Nino is a contributory,BUT NOT SUFFICIENT condition for setting global heat records. To produce the pattern of record years we've seen
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The last El Nino of similar strength was 1999, from memory, which kicked off the pause. El Nino is followed by la Nina, which cools the globe, so next year we won't have these tedious articles about short term spikes in weather masquerading as climate.
"Kicked off the pause"? Seriously? What you must mean is that, if you cherry-pick the global surface temperature data to start in 1997/1998, when the oceans turned over to the atmosphere a gigantic quantity of the heat they had been storing, it almost looks like there has been some sort of "pause" in rising temperatures, since then. (As long as you also don't count the new jump in surface temperatures that have happened since the oceans again began to turn over some of the additional heat they've accumul
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The last El Nino of similar strength was 1999, from memory, which kicked off the pause.
Actually if the previous example is anything to go by we will still have this article. La Nina is supposed to cool the globe but last time all it did was draw a horizontal line through global warming. i.e. expect 50% of the months next year to be new record highs.
As for the "pause" you just said it perfectly well, La Nina is a short term cooling just like El Nino is a short term heating. As a result both of these are excluded from global warming trends meaning there never was a "pause".
Re:El Nino (Score:4, Interesting)
Neither El Nino is supposed to heat the globe nor La Nina is supposed to cool it.
Both phenomena simply change wind patterns and surface currents in the ocean, and hence lead to different didtributions of warm and cool water and hence rain patterns.
That is all.
Except for perhaps more clouds (globally?) none of them has any effect on global warming, and my bet would be that El Nino causes more clouds and hence has a cooling effect.
The idea that El Nino is heating up the earth is a /. myth and only shows that no one even cares to read the wikipedia article.
This is an El Nino ocean temperature distribution picture: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/... [bom.gov.au]
This is an La Nina picture:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/... [bom.gov.au]
As a laymen you can not even guess which is which.
And as final note: both phenomena are restricted to the Pacific and have e.g. no influence on the weather of Canada, most parts of the US, Europe or Africa or Asia/Russia/Siberia.
The idea that one of them has an warming effect or cooling effect on the globe is completely ridiculous, even if you know nothing about the phenomena it should be obvious to everyone.
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Neither El Nino nor La Nina have an effect "on the globe". Both are local phenomena, and both equally cause warming at one place and cooling on another one. For every square mile where the current El Nino causes warmth there is a square mile elsewhere on the globe where it causes cooling. And for La Nina it is just different places with opposite effect.
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For every square mile where the current El Nino causes warmth there is a square mile elsewhere on the globe where it causes cooling.
Almost. The heat is transported from the (deeper) ocean to the surface, otherwise there wouldn't be a global spike in surface temperatures during El Nino years.
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I thought that they were about moving the heat through the ocean. When we see a short global cooling event its because the warmer water sunk in the ocean. When we see a spike in temperatures its because the warmed water was carried by the current back to the surface. One is La Nina, the other El Nino, I don't recall which is which.
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Says someone who clearly knows nothing about data management.
Re:I've seen this before (Score:4, Interesting)
Huh. So what you're saying is, five years ago we had a year in which some months broke all previous records for heat, and this year that's happening again, but... what, exactly? I can't tell whether you're just using this topic to vent about your coworkers, or whether you actually have an opinion on global warming (or the lack thereof), or if you're just very disappointed that we haven't had a bunch of Category 5 hurricanes. ;p
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But then the record heat early in the year, when there is this thing called a "summer", was canceled out by the cold temperatures, during this thing called "autumn", and the year turned out to be an average year in temperatures.
That didn't happen over the last 14 months, however. It's been above-average for over a year, now. So while that's amusing it's not highly relevant.
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Statistics will say anything if you torture them long enough.
People are so caught up in proving global warming that it seems more like a mental illness, or a religion, than science.
You want to impress me? Then let's talk about solutions we can all agree upon instead of whether or not global warming exists. One thing I've figured out is that any solution to global warming that does not include nuclear power just will not work. We need nuclear power now.
I don't believe that there is such a thing as catastr
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Funny is, that Germany has an unusually cold summer :D ...
But we had record heat in spring
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but when there is evidence against they make excuses.
There is no evidence against it.
If there was no global warming, the temperature readings would slowly go back the ones we had 30, 40, 50, 70 years ago,
But as they keep climbing ... where could there be any evidence against it?
the law of averages means that there are going to be the odd extremes here and there but the rest of the data points will cancel them out.
Pretty odd law, never heard about it. Did you make it up?
Current situation is like new world
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Where is this that the cold temperatures 'cancelled' the summer temperatures? The global average continues to rise on both month by month and annual basis. Locally it's quite possible to have a very cold or very hot or average season and for local annual average to be up or down for a period. But that's just a variance within the data that adds up to the global average.
>> Well here's a news flash, the law of averages means that there are going to be the odd extremes here and there but the rest of t
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when there is evidence against global warming
Well when you show us evidence against global warming maybe we can discuss it. But the only thing that has been shown is the occasional model or the occasional prediction to be wrong. The vast majority of the evidence is still strongly for it.
I.e. this year may turn out to average quite nicely with colder winters. That doesn't change the fact that It's the warmest month on record, and that last year was the warmest year on record, and that in the past 5 years 4 were the warmest years on record, and in the p
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If the summer months keep breaking records but the winter months keep canceling them out, that still indicates there is an ongoing change even if the "average" isn't moving.
Yeah, sure, whatever. I don't care any more. Here's what I do care about, solving the problem. I've looked at this problem for a long time now and I've concluded the only solution is nuclear power and anything else is suicide.
If you want to engage the brain with someone about the possible problems with greater temperature variation then perhaps someone else will step up. Whatever question you ask I have one answer, nuclear power.
Re:I've seen this before (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's look at this again in six months, when we know the entire year's temperatures, before we make claims of global warming.
"In fact, CityLab reports that the earth has now experienced 14 consecutive months of unprecedented hotness."
Right there in the summary.
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The excuse might be that there's a La Nina event
You do realise that El Nino/La Nina events aren't post-hoc justifications invented by "alarmists", but are an actual measure of ocean current and temperature patterns called the Southern Oscillation Index [wikimedia.org]?
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Don't care. I decided about two minutes ago to take this conversation on a new direction. Instead of arguing on whether or not global warming exists I propose we talk about solutions. If the problem is too much CO2 from burring petroleum and coal then we need nuclear power. Anything other than nuclear power is suicide.
How about that? Can you get on board with nuclear power or are you going to hug trees until the seas rise to drown you?
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If you start planning for a new nuclear plant today, it will be probably finished in 25 years. If at all. In the meantime you are happily continue with CO2 production?
While you actually could likely build 10 times as much energy production with wind and solar and other means in the same time frame. Gradually replacing fossile plants and ICE cars.
OTOH you can also reduce your energy consumption by investing into better insulation and more intelligent ways of living and housing.
Re: (Score:3)
You mean the punny things on subs and carriers? Sorry, that is like comparing an internal combustion engine in a car with a gas turbine.
A naval reactor sizes range between 200MWt and 600MWt making them perhaps 1/10 the size of the biggest reactors on land to about the same size as the smaller ones operating in India. Point is we can build nuclear power plants in a reasonable time if we want to. I fail to see how the size matter here, just build more of them. You know, cheaper by the dozen, right?
Cheaper
Re: (Score:2)
I countered with a wager that by the end of the year the temperatures would be nothing of note.
[...]
I was told that even if the past year was a completely average year that I was not to equate weather with climate. You see, I was told, just because one year produced a completely nominal temperature average world wide that this was not evidence that global warming isn't happening.
What do you consider "nothing of note"? Because we haven't had a 'completely average' year in well over 20 years [nasa.gov].
The heat was merely sunk into the ocean to appear in a later year, or something like that. For certain this "hidden" heat that didn't show in air temperatures was still there in water, rocks, or something. I was told that this heat would still result in some major hurricanes in the future, or some other extreme weather events.
Let's look at this again in six months, when we know the entire year's temperatures, before we make claims of global warming. I'd wager that this year, like so many in recent history, will be just as much a nonevent as it was those five or six years ago.
Oh, and where were those Category 5 hurricanes we were supposed to see?
Your co-worker's fuzzy understanding of climate science is only relevant to the discussion if your co-worker is a leading climate scientist.
Re: Land is always "hot" (Score:5, Informative)
Go read up on the BEST project [berkeleyearth.org]. They had similar concerns about the current analyses, including the influence of the urban heat island effect.
Unlike the armchair deniers found on the internet, they actually did their own analysis, both with and without urban readings. Somewhat to their surprise, excluding the warmer urban readings completely made virtually no difference [berkeleyearth.org] to the overall result.
specially when there is such a huge agenda behind it with massive amounts of money
I don't suppose you're referring to the fossil-fuel industry's agenda? It's hard to get more massive than the trillions of dollars they have at stake.
Re: (Score:3)
There is a good chance we are already behind the tipping point. Most of them were pointing to 2013-2016 as deadline and we have already missed it. It doesn't mean world will end tomorrow, but it means that regardless of what we do now, we will end up in Venusian hothouse in 100-200 years.
Re: Cooked data is cooked. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't there a basic test you need to pass before you get mod points?
That's a great idea, but no. Any asshole with a little karma can get modpoints. You have to pass the test of public opinion to keep getting modpoints, though. And in the past, moderator opinion, too. Not sure how that's worked out since.