2019 Was Hotter Than Any Year in the 20th Century (theatlantic.com) 185
The 2010s were the hottest decade ever measured on Earth, and 2019 was the second-hottest year ever measured, scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today. From a report: After a year of flash droughts, rampant wildfires, and searing heatwaves that set all-time records across Europe and turned parts of Greenland's ice sheet into slush, the finding was not a surprise to researchers, or likely anyone else. But it capped an anxious decade that saw human-caused climate change transform from a far-off threat to an everyday fact of life. Last year was 1.8 degree Fahrenheit -- or just under one degree Celsius -- warmer than the 20th century average, Gavin Schmidt, the chief climate scientist at NASA, said at a briefing announcing the news. Almost everywhere on the planet's surface was warmer than average, though the Arctic was especially searing. "Every decade since the 1960s has been warmer than the decade previous," he said.
In short, it's bad, but you probably knew that already. At least four different groups of scientists, each working independently, have now concluded that the 2010s were the hottest decade of the modern era. (NASA and NOAA start this era at 1880, when they say weather record-keeping became reliable and widespread enough to trust, but the nonprofit research agency Berkeley Earth argues that 2019 was the second warmest year since at least 1850.) What's worse is that greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuels, which are the biggest driver of climate change, also surged to an all-time high last year, according to a preliminary estimate. Deke Arndt, a chief climate scientist at NOAA, said at a briefing today that "an obvious signal" of this greenhouse-gas-powered heating had appeared in the upper layers of the ocean, which broke the all-time heat record last year.
In short, it's bad, but you probably knew that already. At least four different groups of scientists, each working independently, have now concluded that the 2010s were the hottest decade of the modern era. (NASA and NOAA start this era at 1880, when they say weather record-keeping became reliable and widespread enough to trust, but the nonprofit research agency Berkeley Earth argues that 2019 was the second warmest year since at least 1850.) What's worse is that greenhouse-gas pollution from fossil fuels, which are the biggest driver of climate change, also surged to an all-time high last year, according to a preliminary estimate. Deke Arndt, a chief climate scientist at NOAA, said at a briefing today that "an obvious signal" of this greenhouse-gas-powered heating had appeared in the upper layers of the ocean, which broke the all-time heat record last year.
How to have a clean conscience (Score:5, Funny)
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.html
* Do not have children. Remember that children (who don't ask to be born) will be born into a world where there is little hope in reversing large-scale human-driven environmental destruction.
* Don't drive
* Don't fly
* Don't eat meat
Our political and economic systems are incapable of proactively dealing with climate change, for the simple reason that people will not vote for a more inconvenient lifestyle. The most any of us can hope to do is prevent future human suffering by not having more of us (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism)
Re:How to have a clean conscience (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the problem with the internet-- parody is almost indistinguishable from being earnest but misguided.
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Logically, he could be a left wing-nutter talking crazy, or he could be a right-wing nutter mocking a strawman caricature of a left-wing nutter.
I would propose that left wing nutters this extreme don't really exist in sufficient numbers such that one is likely to happen across this article on SlashDot and comment. They are out there, but are extremely, very rare contrary to popular right-wing opinion.
From this, I deduce that odds are he is being sarcastic and it's the latter case and is a dreary form of "a
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I would propose that left wing nutters this extreme don't really exist in sufficient numbers such that one is likely to happen across this article on SlashDot and comment.
Perhaps. I'd propose that antinatalists are at least so rare that it doesn't matter whether they personally adhere to their purported belief system or not. Plenty of other people will pick up the slack and have kids, since they don't have either a monopoly nor control over human reproduction writ-large nor the means to expand their ideology, considering the only way they can pass it on to future generations through parenting is to adopt, and the moment they achieve any level of progress, the supply of ado
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But, but, but, solar minimum the climate change denialists were waffling on about for a while with the delusion it would get way cooler. Well, golly gee, FUCK. What happens when we hit the next solar maximum, when this is short term cycle solar minimum.
That next big heat wave up north could be the one to trigger a methane cycle, as more methane hydrates melt, the temp goes up and more methane hydrates melt. Then more and more ice melts and the country impacted by far the most, the USA and specifically the
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That's the problem with the internet-- parody is almost indistinguishable from being earnest but misguided.
Yup. And there's a name for it. [wikipedia.org]
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And don't use unnecessary energy like posting to the Internet. You first.
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Kill yourself Luke, set an example for us all.
You do practice what you preach, right?
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The religion of exclusions.
The most fervent people seem to follow religions of Don't, the stricter the religion the better the people feel about themselves, because on how well they can endure it.
* Do Adopt Children who need a loving home
* Do drive responsibly, try to take more then one person, purchase and use fuel efficient cars, and use them until you cannot anymore.
* Do fly when you need to or it is your best interest to. Try to get all your affairs in once to reduce return trips.
* Do eat food in moder
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Part of the time I was in college I was a "financial vegetarian", I couldn't afford meat. Never missed it much, as long as you know how to cook you can make stuff that tastes good to you and gives you all the nutrients you need (an embarrassing percentage of young people today can't cook, my generation let them down).
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If the governments job is to help people procreate, Once the gov is fully on board with helping, it will not be long before the human race will be on the verge of extinction and the planet will be safe.
Just my 2 cents
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If current demographic trends hold, the world population will peak and in some models even start declining within this century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth). A lot of what is driving this decline is lower fertility rates due to more people living in the cities, more educated populations interested in self-actualization over procreation, and rising empowerment of women (in other words women in many parts of the world are no longer viewed as the walking womb, with all the im
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Do you have an example of that working anywhere, any time in history?
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No one wants to hear we can solve real problems by becoming more civilized without strict government controls, just education, improved standards of living, and freedom of choice.
Do you have an example of that working anywhere, any time in history?
Yes. Google the phrase 'demographic transition'.
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If people that understand the impact of children on the well-being of our planet stop having children, we will be left with children of parents that do not understand the impact of children on the well-being of our planet. That's a recipe for a much bigger disaster.
So please ditch advice number one and keep the rest. The last one is the most important one. Almost half of our planet's usable surface is meat-factory now. Whatever CO2-sink used to be there, it's gone. We've gone way beyond ridiculous. Our meat
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https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.html
* Do not have children. Remember that children (who don't ask to be born) will be born into a world where there is little hope in reversing large-scale human-driven environmental destruction. * Don't drive * Don't fly * Don't eat meat
Our political and economic systems are incapable of proactively dealing with climate change, for the simple reason that people will not vote for a more inconvenient lifestyle. The most any of us can hope to do is prevent future human suffering by not having more of us (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antinatalism)
People who believe that can do us all a favor by following those injunctions to the letter. They will soon realize why alternate energy resources will not replace fossil fuel resources because of the simple matter of energy density. No alternate energy resource can replace a diesel tractor in plowing 1280 acres of farm land, the size of an average American farm. Corporation farm 10X that many acres per farm.
Resorting to animal power would result in drastic increases in Methane output, and drastic red
Technology pessimism [Re:How to have a clean c...] (Score:3)
You are a technology pessimist.
All of the things you claim are impossible are in fact possible.
Using sustainable energy sources does not mean going back to plowing with animals. That's a false dichotomy.
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https://phys.org/news/2017-07-effective-individual-tackle-climate-discussed.html
For anyone who reads this it says have *one* less child. Considering the resources a person consumes, perhaps obliterating consumerism and the practice of consuming resources unnecessarily would be an option. Maybe getting kids off tablets and phones and out playing with other kids maybe a way to repair some of the social issues we are having as well.
* Do not have children. Remember that children (who don't ask to be born) will be born into a world where there is little hope in reversing large-scale human-driven environmental destruction.
The loss of petroleum based fertilizers and increasing presence of radionuclides in the environment suggests we are heading for a die off of people from s
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Not to mention the ongoing zillions of watts of power than are needed to make all that go.
Zigawatts?
I still can't get the hang of the metric system.
Next year (Score:3)
And next year will be even worse, and the year after that will be even worse than that, because greenhouse gas emissions are increasing year over year, not decreasing. Amazingly, signing "accords" and having climate conferences have done nothing to help. It is time for you to act.
Luckily that is exactly what everyone is doing (Score:5, Informative)
Amazingly, signing "accords" and having climate conferences have done nothing to help. It is time for you to act.
Well luckily that is whatever everyone is doing, "act"ing!!
I certainly see no actIONS taken in support there is actually a climate issue.
Obama buying a multi-million dollar house feet above sea level, tells you all you need to know about how important this issue truly is.
Re:Luckily that is exactly what everyone is doing (Score:4, Informative)
Obama buying a multi-million dollar house feet above sea level, tells you all you need to know about how important this issue truly is.
You will get modded down for that, but it is 100% true. And to top it all off, it was a 8000 sqft VACATION HOME.
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Re:Luckily that is exactly what everyone is doing (Score:5, Informative)
So he doesn't care that his $14 million vacation home will be underwater at some point? The point is, why would you buy a 8000 sqft VACATION HOME? We are supposed to be reducing, conserving, right? To buy an extravagant vacation home on an island that will be underwater doesn't make any logical sense. I mean, climate change is the most important issue, right? Everyone should be sacrificing.
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Wait, is he building a home or buying an existing one? Building a new one I 100% agree, buying an existing one then you're making no sense.
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The house was already there, so he is in fact conserving something rather than expending resources on something new. Something new might have looked nicer for one thing.
I do think he might be surprised at how quickly the tide comes in, though.
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You will get modded down for that, but it is 100% true. And to top it all off, it was a 8000 sqft VACATION HOME.
It's (probably) true but also doesn't mean anything. Obama isn't Al Gore and his vacation home isn't going to make a difference to anything anyway.
Nobody's asking you to sacrifice everything to make no difference to the overall situation. Just support large-scale efforts to reduce emissions with carbon neutral energy, efficient cooling & heating, mass transportation, etc.
Re: Luckily that is exactly what everyone is doing (Score:2)
Seem to be true.
https://www.townandcountrymag.... [townandcountrymag.com]
Nice quote:
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Nice try but the people buying those homes do so expecting a bailout from the government [delmartimes.net].
Nonsense (Score:2)
Right, the whole issue of the importance of global warming is completely refuted buy Obama's purchase of a sea level home. That's just an amazing thought process you have going on there.
Aparently you believe the whole world revolves around him. If Obama doesn't wear a seatbelt does that mean seatbelts arent important too or are his actions only meaningful when you can personally use them to support your own beliefs?
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Obama buying a multi-million dollar house feet above sea level, tells you all you need to know about how important this issue truly is.
Nope. It tells you all you need to know about how much the house is insured for.
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"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
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There would be more impact from shutting off the USA than bombing India to pre-industrial levels. The USA emits approximately double the CO2 when compared to India's CO2 emissions.
Also, on a per-capita basis, the USA's current CO2 emissions are far higher than China's.
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No. I mean you should stop eating meat. Stop using unnecessary energy. Switch to renewable power.
Wrong (Score:2)
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Per capita is meaningless. It's all per Terra.
China and India are the problems.
Re: False (Score:2)
Wrong. Which countries are responsible for most of the âCOââ in the atmosphere right now? Itâ(TM)s the US.
We have benefited the most from treating the atmosphere as an open sewer. Therefore, we are very much responsible for âCOââ reductions.
Re: False (Score:2)
Has slashdot, fix your fucking utf8 to ascii function.
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make significant sacrifices (such as not having kids
And here I was thinking I was the selfish one for enjoying the bachelor's life.
Who cares? (Score:2)
There's money to be made! By the time things really start going to hell I'll be dead having accumulated more money!
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Pretty much this. I'm 45. I have no kids. By the time the shit hits the fan, I'll be gone.
And since our politicians are even older than me, and, I can only assume, don't give a shit about their kids...
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And since our politicians are even older than me, and, I can only assume, don't give a shit about their kids...
Or, very possibly, they don't believe in climate change at all. After all, Obama just bought a 8,000 sqft vacation home on an island. Why did he do that if he believes that sea levels are going to rise? It doesn't make any logical sense.
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Why doesn't it makes sense to you? Do you think that that house is the entirety of the Obama family wealth? Do you think that they'll be unable to sell it? What part confuses you, exactly?
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Do you think that they'll be unable to sell it? What part confuses you, exactly?
If it is underwater it will be a hard sell, but I think that is unlikely, and so apparently do they.
No doubt they have insurance in case we are all wrong.
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A politician is a hypocrite? You're right, a ridiculous point, especially since Obama is loathed by much of "the Left" almost as much as Clinton.
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As much as it might be a ridiculous point to argue, it's worthwhile to understand the valid argument demonstrated by it. Namely, those calling for s to give up things we like ...
Who the fuck is telling us to "give up things we like"?
We're telling the world develop better energy technologies.
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As much as it might be a ridiculous point to argue, it's worthwhile to understand the valid argument demonstrated by it. Namely, those calling for s to give up things we like and live life in a radical new way have zero fucking intent of doing so themselves. Sure, it is just one person, but there's no better way to get a free people to say "Fuck you" and refuse what you say out of spite alone.
I agree in general but buying an existing house, no matter what price, is not really a problem. No ex-president of the US is going to live in a 2-bed apartment for a range of reasons of which hypocrisy is only one minor one.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama's rich enough to buy the remaining decades of use a pre-existing (built in 2001) vacation home has left before it gets washed out to sea sometime after he's gone, and also not have to worry his kids will go hungry because of it.
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Obama's rich enough to buy the remaining decades of use a pre-existing (built in 2001) vacation home has left before it gets washed out to sea sometime after he's gone, and also not have to worry his kids will go hungry because of it.
So ... he's fiddling while Rome burns?
I mean, OK, but that's not what everybody was telling me that he was like when I had my doubts. He was the second coming, he was the change we were waiting for, a shining example, blah blah.
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What good would it do to leave an already-built mansion unused? Who wins?
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By the time things really start going to hell I'll be dead having accumulated more money!
Which will buy you a really fancy life style, er, in hell.
Take a good look in the monitor... (Score:2)
And did you know an optical mouse uses as much as 5 times the power as a ball mouse?
I know, the troll hurts.
Re:Take a good look in the monitor... (Score:4, Interesting)
100% accurate. That is essentially the crux of the issue: we use too much energy. No one really wants to talk about that, because it directly impacts their day-to-day life. They just want to talk about "renewable energy".
Re:Take a good look in the monitor... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. It's a collective problem, not an individual one. If those morons had spent the dough to build a modern, efficient nuclear power infrastructure we would be way ahead of the curve and I could use as much power as I can afford.
Tax CO2 emissions (flat tax, no trading bullshit) based on a reasonable estimate of future costs and destruction and nuclear power would start to look cheap.
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Oh yeah, there isn't a problem that a good tax won't fix. Typical.
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Oh yeah, there isn't a problem that a good tax won't fix. Typical.
Collectively you are actually 100% right. On any individual level motives will get in the way of advancement so it's up to a collective to resolve the issue at scale. The only leavers we have on that are legal enforcement or financial.
But I'm sure you're one of those anti-government types who is bemused about that magical sewer system attached to your house, the magical road in front of it and only see your taxes get spent on ticket machines at the DMV queue.
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You're confused. "Taxes" don't "Provide roads and bridges, electricity and communications, education and health services, enable clean air and water." People provide/build/construct all that stuff. There are many ways in which those people and the resources required could be paid for.
Taxes just shift around who ends up paying for stuff (hint: for most readers, it's mostly you), wasting a bunch of resources via built-in inefficiency, while also ensuring the politicians, bureaucrats, and their various friends
Nuclear, Coal, Oil are 20th century holdovers (Score:2)
Bullshit. It's a collective problem, not an individual one. If those morons had spent the dough to build a modern, efficient nuclear power infrastructure we would be way ahead of the curve and I could use as much power as I can afford.
It's been 70 years and it still doesn't exist.
Tax CO2 emissions (flat tax, no trading bullshit) based on a reasonable estimate of future costs and destruction and nuclear power would almost be competitive with coal.
FTFY.
You should lobby to remove the Price Anderson act if you think that nuclear doesn't need subsidies. In the meantime the funding adversity that wind and solar have faced have simply made them better energy solutions that don't require the huge amount of financial subsides nuclear, oil and coal receive to boil water.
If we wind nuclear down gracefully, now, we may avoid another nuclear disaster from an aging brittle facility.
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Kicking the can down the road is no solution to human problems. Nuclear advocates want the electricity whilst passing the problems of nuclear power to subsequent generations - I think the acronym is NIMG, Not In My Generation.
There is no safe way to store nuclear waste.
Indeed.
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Yup. Too bad we get 80% of our energy from fossil fuels, though.
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The total energy consumption is the sum over all human of each individual energy consumption. Less humans means more energy per person for the same total budget. Stop having kids, it's as simple as that.
I'm concerned about the Hoax (Score:3, Interesting)
The easy stuff takes political will (Score:3)
There is also variable pricing on electricity and carbon taxes but those take even more political will. Look at Fort McMurray, scene of a terrible forest fire a few years ago. They won't support a carbon tax so I don't hold out much hope for the easy stuff.
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Hey, that's mnot true. My dogs play outside.
But, yeah, I'm amazed how few kids you see outside in the subdivision next door (my "subdivision" has only 4 houses and no kids, the subdivision to my south has scads of young families), even in the nicest weather. When I was a kid in the city, we were always wandering around outside. And when my kids were growing up in the city, the next door neighbor wouldn't even let her kids inside when the weather was nice.
What where? (Score:2)
Was there a solar cycle argument some years back? (Score:2)
I've given up arguing with people about this some years back - it seems like the news is arguing better than I could - but when I used to trade factoids with my brother, one of them was that 2010-2012, somewhere in there, was warm because of the solar cycle, and I think I was assured temperatures would be back down around now.
It's hard to just google this stuff because there's so much back and forth, so many endless points offered, that you have to wade through thickets, and I'm tired of it. When you get
coldest year! (Score:2)
look at it the positive way; 2019 will have been the coldest year from now on.
OK ... (Score:2)
... so when are we going to go nuclear and do something about it?
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Hard to tell, but this quote said no :
Last year was 1.8 degree Fahrenheit—or just under one degree Celsius—warmer than the 20th century average,
Original source (Score:5, Interesting)
and from the NASA website: https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel... [nasa.gov]
The NASA site has a nice graph showing five different groups data: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def... [nasa.gov]
And the BBC site has a pretty good summary article: https://www.bbc.com/news/scien... [bbc.com]
Re: Original source (Score:3)
So what is the explanation for 1880-1940 warming?
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So what is the explanation for 1880-1940 warming?
Warming over that period was less than 0.1C. You're better off picking the period 1900 - 1945 [woodfortrees.org] where warming was about 0.4C.
Forcing from CO2 over the latter period was 0.3 Wm^-2. That means we saw about 1.3C of warming for every Wm^-2 of forcing.
Forcing due to CO2 from 1880 to today has been 1.8 Wm^-2 with a warming of about 1C. Over the entire record we saw only 0.6C warming for every Wm^-2 of forcing.
Based on this back of the envelope calculation, only about half of the warming during the period of 19
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So, based on those articles, the summary is wrong, then. "Measured" isn't an accurate word to use. "Estimated" perhaps, or, "concluded", or to be pedantic "averaged temperature departure from average as analyzed and recorded in the revised data-set of adjusted previous measurements" even. Very little "measured" temperatures make it into articles like these.
Re: Every where (Score:2)
So much fucking stupidity in your comment it is not worth a response.
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Here's a different source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/1... [cnbc.com]
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No on average, over the entire earth.
You can have the hottest year on record without having any daily record highs.
Math is neat like that.
Re:Climate not Weather (Score:5, Informative)
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Then you haven't been paying attention. The alarmist constantly use winter storms to claim AGW. Usually to the mantra of "more severe storms".
Re:Climate not Weather (Score:4, Insightful)
Nor is it evidence that AGW is true.
The graph in the articles most certainly is evidence: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/def... [nasa.gov]
If you claim that this isn't anthropogenic global warming, you need to come up with an alternate hypothesis that fits the data and:
1. explains why the temperature is rising (and, no, it's not the sun: we measure the solar intensity.)
2. Explains why anthropogenic greenhouse gasses do not cause warming, even though we have very good measurements of infrared properties and radiative transfer, and all this has been well known and validated for over 50 years (long before the issue has been politicized), and
3. explains why the amplification effect you use to explain the warming in part 1 does not also amplify greenhouse warming.
So far, nobody has come up with an alternate theory that fits the data. And it's not for lack of trying.
Re: Climate not Weather (Score:2)
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people in such locales will see stories like this proclaiming disastrous consequences from a 1C rise over 100 years and conclude it will take millennia for their home to be anything but a frozen hellhole.
It doesn't take millennia just a few months: the summers up here in Alberta are really nice.
Re:I gave up worrying about global warming (Score:5, Funny)
Planet 1: You look terrible, what's wrong?
Planet 2: I have homo sapiens.
Planet 1: Oh don't worry. It will pass.
Re:Which century? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything so clearly politically motivated I take with a grain of salt, and so should everyone else.
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F**k me. I haven't been on ./ for some years now, and now that I return for a quick look, I know why. Your comments are on point and well-founded yet you get "-1" while some random comments from climate change denialists get "+5 insightful".
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He takes that one graph he and the other yucksters guffaw about on Facebook with a grain of salt and ignores literally everything else. "This one time something was wrong 20 years ago, let's ignore everything else and memefy that yuck yuck yuck!".
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Re:Which century? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science that makes absolute claims about measurements of 0.01 deg C differences,
Here's the climate graph. I see a noise level of about 0.2 C, not the 0.01 C you claim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
with instruments that are only accurate to 100 times that level - yes.
It turns out that averaging over a large number of measurements, and doing the average over a year (365 days of measuements) makes the measurements a lot more precise (by one over the square root of the number of measurements, as it happens.) If your instrument precision is +/1 1, averaging a mere hundred measurements will give you a precision of 0.1 C.
Averages are a lot more precise than single measurements.
Look up measurement theory.
...
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Here is the original NOAA report [noaa.gov] and it claims the temperature was 0.98 deg C above "normal", which would imply an accuracy of +/- 0.005 deg C. The actual tolerance is a few orders of magnitude - by your own statement - above that. If it was, in fact, 0.2 deg C of error, then the temperature they report should be 1 (+/-1) deg C, implying a value between 0 and 2 deg C. Using significant digits means there is a corresponding accuracy, and we see that such an accuracy does not exist.
As far as averaging to
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Yep, -1 for capitalism. If you're keeping score, that makes it Capitalism: 499, Everything Else: 0.
I'm joking, this isn't a capitalism problem it's a democracy problem. You could certainly have a communist system, for example, that executed millions of people or made slaves out of large swathes of the population. That brand of communism is called 'communism'. And you could certainly have a democratic, capitalist society that implemented sane limits on pollution and set sane energy policies - we just don't h
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"you could certainly have a democratic [...] society that implemented sane limits on pollution and set sane energy policies"
Sorry, no. People will never vote for significant limits because this directly impacts their way of life on a daily basis. They might vote for limits on stuff where demand is elastic (like a small tax on meat) but not stuff for which demand is inelastic and which actually makes a difference (blanket ban on modern farming using fertilizers and pesticides). You can have a small gas tax o
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That, of course, is impossible because for it to be true, 2019 would have needed to be hotter than 2019.