2014 Was Hottest Year on Record, Surpassing 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html

by gz5 • 12 years ago

104 100 12 years ago

marpstar• 12 years ago

I had seen the anomaly graph a month or two ago and it had confirmed my perception of Summer 2014 in the the upper Midwest USA (Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota). We had a relative cool summer; The temperature didn't even hit 90 degrees until well into August.

It was a welcome change, as our hot summers are always accompanied by brutal humidity. I'd like to know why it was so cool last year.

Daishiman• 12 years ago

Because as the Arctic warms, the Jet Stream becomes more chaotic and reaches further south.

beat6• 12 years ago

Minnesota's winter of 2013-1014 was brutal. I have never experienced such cold in my 16 years here. Schools and businesses closed regularly for days because it was unsafe to be outside for any length of time.

This is anecdotal, of course, but it ties to the cool summer, I think.

avnfish• 12 years ago

"Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said the next time a strong El Niño occurs, it is likely to blow away all temperature records." Terrifying.

thrownaway2424• 12 years ago

That's likely to be either this year or next year. NOAA puts out an update weekly, and they are currently saying "There is an approximately 50-60% chance of El Niño conditions during the next two months".

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/la...

mrfusion• 12 years ago

Was the cooler eastern US an anomaly or is this an expected long term result?

gz5• 12 years ago

Some eye opening tidbits in here:

"The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997"

"Several scientists said the most remarkable thing about the 2014 record was that it occurred in a year that did not feature El Niño"

Of course all of this is in relation to a history starting only in the late 1800s, so we are looking at a blip on geological time scales, but still even micro-cycles within macro-cycles can be instructive and meaningful. Would like to hear from the experts on the macro view.

jjoonathan3• 12 years ago

Not an expert, but the wiki page seems pretty accessible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record

    Satellites: 35 years
    Balloons: 65 years
    Instruments: 165 years
    Ice cores: 800,000 years
    Sediment cores: at least 500,000,000 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#med...

gus_massa• 12 years ago

It' not very clear, but the "on record" probably include only the instrument measurement period, or something like that. The ice cores graph (linked near the bottom) says that 125.000 years ago the temperature was much hotter (+8°C). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record#mediaviewer/...

graycat7• 12 years ago

They have some data relatively good for the NYT, e.g., graphs of global average differences (they call anomalies which is common but, still, wildly inappropriate value-laden terminology) temperature each year for the past 200 years, etc. Good. Next question has to be, measured how, by whom, and where we can get peer-reviewed reports because, frankly, I just cannot take what you publish seriously. Not a chance.

But, then, the NYT, with their usual interest in drama and their trilogy of human transgression, retribution, and redemption, go off on their usual, talking about extreme values.

NYT, again, once again, over again, one more time, just for you again, and not nearly for the first time, all your get'm up on their hind legs drama with extreme values (what's meaningful, nearly all that's meaningful in this case, are the averages; without the averages the extreme values would be better than nothing, but with the averages the extreme values are just mammary glands on a boar hog and at best distracting) is one of the main reasons all your many, nearly daily, in my e-mail inbox offers of full access to NYT I just ignore because I know your real agenda and your main techniques. NYT, occasionally you publish what at least looks like some good stuff (on big issues but typically without the evidence that would justify taking your reports on big issues seriously), but, for nearly all the rest of your stuff, if you take it seriously then you are just wacko. Instead, about the best that can be said for your stuff is that it is just light entertainment.

Just want you to know that you are not fooling everyone.

mturmon2• 12 years ago

You have been down voted (not by me), which is reasonable given that you say the report is lying, but offer no counter-evidence.

If you look at the press release (http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/january/nasa-determines-2014-...), you can notice a pointer to the data and the methods. If you want to be taken seriously, you'd have to engage that, rather than making empty claims and diverting the conversation to a referendum on the limitations of the NYT.

I also want to mention that the word "anomaly" in this context is a term of art for any difference between a value and a mean value -- this is not an editorial injection by the NYT. It is necessary to use these differences because seasonal and regional temperature variations make plots of raw temperature (or precipitation, etc.) fields not very useful. If you were aware of the literature in this area, you would know this.

graycat7• 12 years ago

you say the report is lying

I never did any such thing. I just said that (1) their graph data was good but (2) their concern about extreme values was bad. Both (1) and (2) are plainly obvious and need no "counter-evidence".

I don't trust the NYT, but I didn't say that they were "lying".

making empty claims

I made no claims except the obvious one that the NYT was emphasizing extreme values which, clearly for such data analysis, is wrong.

The argument about global warming is totally clear, "settled": No one knows what the climate will be in 10, 50, or 100 years for any scenarios having to do with humans.

Proof: Look at the results of the climate computer models; they are in fairly good agreement and predicted that today the temperatures would be much higher. They were wildly wrong. QED

Why were the models so wrong? For the technical part, assuming that the work was done honestly (and I don't really believe that), Freeman Dyson has a remark, I don't recall precisely, that maybe the problem was the models didn't do well modeling the effects of the biological responses or some such. So, maybe they did well enough with the Navier-Stokes equations, Planck black body radiation, sun spots, etc. but blew it on green leafy vegetables. But, at least from Freeman Dyson, we don't know.

Why would the NYT emphasize extreme values? That's not a scientific or technical question and, instead, is about their motivations. My guess about their motivations, YMMV and no technical references needed, is that they want to pass out drama to get attention for their ads. Believe it or not. But a long time ago people saw that truth and the newspapers were not good bedfellows:

Evidence: An Andy Hardy movie from the 1930s where, clearly, the audience accepted that newspapers passed out nonsense. More? Sure, Citizen Kane, which a lot of people can find believable.

For the sources of the NYT, I didn't see any mentioned. Sorry to say, at this point, given Obama's political positions, I can no longer take data from NASA or NOAA very seriously, but that is not a biggie in this case. I didn't claim that the extreme values were wrong, just that, when we do have average data, for the data analysis in question here, extreme values add nothing but confusion. Here I am on very solid ground: Clearly the temperature is a stochastic process; commonly we get new extreme values right along even if nothing is really changing. There are some quite precise results in the cases of coin flipping, Brownian motion, and martingales. What would be surprising would be that we didn't get new extreme values -- if we never got more extreme values, then we would have some bounds for the process that we would have a tough time believing.

"Anomaly" is still the wrong word. Actually, with a good meaning of anomaly, we should just f'get about them; that is, they are anomalies, and in that case the whole NYT article is moot.

Yes, I mentioned that it is common in this global warming mud wrestling to say anomaly -- it's still the wrong word. Critical reading comprehension 101 would have us conclude, correctly in my view, that here anomaly is intended to mean not really from nature but from humans and their evil CO2, and that is value-heavy. Or, the suggestion is that there is a reason for the anomaly, and their claim of the reason is human CO2. Send your money now to your favorite green political pressure group.

jjoonathan3• 12 years ago

The IPCC reports are a good place to start your search if you're actually interested in the peer reviewed literature.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

However, I find your insistence regarding peer-reviewed reports a bit puzzling in light of the vitriol that you fire at the NYT's opinions, given that they aren't out of line with the conclusions drawn by the scientific community. Is there a similarly thorough and rigorous body of peer-reviewed literature out there supporting different conclusions? Because AFAIK the situation looks like this:

http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/files/2013/05/climate-...

graycat7• 12 years ago

The IPCC

100% pure, total propaganda with nothing objective at all, certainly not peer-review.

After reading their Guru Ramaswamy's radiative forcing it was totally clear that they were totally worthless for anything meaningful.

They are a political organization trying to raise money by carbon taxes on the developed countries to transfer wealth to the third world.

Somehow I just lost 37 points today, 5 points from my post here and another 4 points on a post on how to help a 7 year old girl who went to the wrong comic book store. Apparently with HN arithmetic, 5 + 4 = 39.

For the girl, I suggested she go to a music store that focused on classical music. I also suggested the movies, stores of American Girl. The comic book shop was right next to porn. Gee, my suggestion was not liked.

the vitriol that you fire at the NYT's opinions

The NYT has long been and still is a NYC wild-eyed liberal, bleeding-heart, emotional hysteria organization, heavily for wealthy English majors and wannabees.

I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise the NYT, but I fired no "vitriol" but (1) said good things about their graph but (2) criticized them for using extreme values to get people excited.

Again, once again, over again, one more time, rock solid, for such a situation extreme values may be better than no data at all but, given good average data, one more time, this time just for you, once again, maybe you will actually read it this time, you can read, right, the extreme value data is useless. Or, some solid advice -- f'get about extreme value data. Stuff it for the hottest, the coldest, the least ice, the fastest winds, etc.

Leave the importance of extreme values to, say, Olympic records. For GDP, that's an average. For the corn crop, we want an average. For crude oil production, we want an average, say, monthly. For global temperature to consider global warming, we want an average. An average, not extreme values.

One biggie reason for the importance of the average is that it essentially is, has to be, what's important, e.g., the area under the curve, the total energy involved, etc. The average per day times the number of days is the total, e.g., as for your income and paying your taxes.

But the NYT will use anything they can get away with to get their readers all hysterical, up on their hind legs, believing in their trilogy of transgression by evil humans against the pure, pristine, precious, 100% all-natural mother earth. So, it's a 1000 year old morality play they learned in English literature class. Then there is the retribution part -- destroy the coral reefs, the oceans, the whales, the forests, NYC via rising sea levels, etc. Then there is the redemption -- suffering, sacrifice, self-denial. So, walk or ride bicycles, use electric cars (NYC liberals hate anything having to do with cars -- in Texas, Wyoming, and Montana they like cars). In this way the NYT creates a story and an audience for their story and then just keeps running such stories to feed their audience. They also make NYC liberals feel good. If you don't see this transparent manipulation, too bad -- it's what they've been doing for decades. You've been manipulated by some people who want your eyeballs, your money, your time, etc.

What's going on with the temperature of the planet? No one knows. The record is totally clear -- the computer models have been wildly off. The models are far too much in agreement and far too far away from reality -- what the models predicted for now is much, much higher temperatures than we are seeing.

Just why the models are wrong, no one knows. Maybe they got the Navier-Stokes equations right, or the sunspot data right, or the black body radiation right, or the convection right, or some such, but messed up on the biological effects, the oceans, or whatever.

Maybe we are still slowly pulling out of The Little Ice Age. As we warm from The Little Ice age, we will also have to warm the oceans, and they are mostly 3 miles down and 7 miles or so over much of the Pacific; it might take a long time to warm the oceans from the cooling they got in The Little Ice Age. There is the NAS report that shows that from year 900 to year 1000, just before The Little Ice Age started, the temperature was increasing very rapidly, about the same as the past 100 years, and that increase had nothing to do with human generation of CO2.

But, given their record, and their nonsense with extreme values, there's no way to trust the NYT. So, we need to get their data from other sources. They have to name the sources or we have to regard their writing as just drama. NASA? Sadly they may have been bent by Obama who wants global warming as one of his issues.

While I hate the NYT, all I wrote about them was that they wanted people to get excited about extreme values, and there I was rock solidly correct. If you can't see this, then that's your problem.

Shivetya• 12 years ago

Political theater,the differences are within margin of errors for measuring devices, however if we needed more evidence that all models of warming were wrong and we still aren't, well here you have it.

After all, which models that all the alarmist have been using since the beginning of the century have modeled what we have been seeing?

I am not saying there is no climate change, mother nature does damn well on her own. I just find all the alarmist to be, rather like members of a radical religion

jnevill• 12 years ago

"Within the margin of errors for measuring devices" What is this nonsense? Yes... a single thermometer will have a known margin of error, but when you take a measurement across thousands of thermometers, and then look at the trend of those measurements over decades... I mean... what the hell are you talking about?

kevinskii• 12 years ago

I agree. Claiming that a 0.01 degree Fahrenheit increase in global temperature averages compared to 5 years ago somehow indicates that the warming "pause" is over is merely political grandstanding. Climate Depot has more:

http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-balk-at-ho...

mikeash• 12 years ago

Do you have a citation for the claim that the margin of error for the measurements is larger than the measured difference? That seems unlikely. 0.04 degrees is plenty big for modern scientific instruments.

cholantesh3• 12 years ago

Scientific literacy is one heck of a radical religion!

drc372• 12 years ago

For the US, it was only the 34st warmest.

To put it in a bit more perspective what the NY Times is saying:

http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-balk-at-ho...

hyperbovine2• 12 years ago

Ahh yes. Climate Depot. Brainchild of Marc Morano, whose previous career highlights include (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Morano):

"He began his career working for Rush Limbaugh from 1992 to 1996, during which time he was known as "Limbaugh's man in Washington".[1] After 1996, he began working for Cybercast News Service, where he was the first to publish the accusations from Swift-Boat veterans that John Kerry ... Beginning in June 2006, Morano served as the director of communications of Senator Jim Inhofe."

This is totally the person I trust to get an unbiased perspective on science reporting.

viggity• 12 years ago

Ahh yes. Argumentum ad verecundiam. Let's bash a guy because he hangs out with someone you dislike instead of refuting his centrals points.

You're total the person I trust to make logical arguments.

lotsofmangos6• 12 years ago

"For the US, it was only the 34st warmest."

That has no significance at all though. You are talking about under 2% of the world's surface area.

sxcurry• 12 years ago

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

drc372• 12 years ago

It was more of poking fun, but I am a skeptic. I believe the government can come up with any data the want to push their agenda. I believe almost any scientist can "prove" almost anything, especially when trying to prove it to people outside their knowledge set(like the general public).

Now don't get me wrong. I believe in making the world a better place for my kids. But to get caught up in all the hype that comes from the media (including the article I linked to) is laughable.

This argument is about politics and $$$ (both sides of the argument).

danielweber• 12 years ago

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

lotsofmangos6• 12 years ago

Best thing is to go to an actual source. The NOAA has it as 4 hundredths of a degree higher.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/

"The year 2014 was the warmest year across global land and ocean surfaces since records began in 1880. The annually-averaged temperature was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), easily breaking the previous records of 2005 and 2010 by 0.04°C (0.07°F). This also marks the 38th consecutive year (since 1977) that the yearly global temperature was above average. Including 2014, 9 of the 10 warmest years in the 135-year period of record have occurred in the 21st century. 1998 currently ranks as the fourth warmest year on record.

The 2014 global average ocean temperature was also record high, at 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 16.1°C (60.9°F), breaking the previous records of 1998 and 2003 by 0.05°C (0.09°F). Notably, ENSO-neutral conditions were present during all of 2014.

The 2014 global average land surface temperature was 1.00°C (1.80°F) above the 20th century average of 8.5°C (47.3°F), the fourth highest annual value on record."

ikt• 12 years ago

"But scientists and climate skeptics are countering that the claims of “hottest year” are based on immeasurable temperature differences that are based on hundredths of a degree differences."

So they agree it's the hottest year on record, just not as hot as they think the climate change people think it should be, well that's good to know?

gdubs2• 12 years ago

Mentioned this in another thread, but I've been reading Stewart Brand's "Whole Earth Discipline" [1], and it's very interesting. In particular, I feel persuaded that nuclear power is our big shot at bringing atmospheric levels of CO2 down to manageable levels.

Brand was one of the first "Greens". His Whole Earth Catalog inspired a lot of the 70's techno-hippies, like Steve Jobs, and it's fascinating to read how his positions have evolved over the decades, and how he is championing positions he wouldn't have expected to be championing when he was younger.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline

superobserver• 12 years ago

Does he at least consider Thorium as a nuclear power source?

beat6• 12 years ago

If thorium was all it's cracked up to be by its proponents, it would already be a major power source. Thorium reactor technology dates back to the 1960s, but there still aren't any commercial thorium reactors, although hundreds of other reactors have been built since then.

The lack of market drive to thorium - not just in the tree-hugging US, but in less sensitive places like China - is a dead giveaway that either a: it's not nearly as easy as it's made out to be, b: it's not economical relative to other reactor designs, or c: it's not nearly as safe as claimed. I think c can be ruled out, based on common sense and the fact that China doesn't care so much about safety. That leads to either a, or b, or some combination of the two.

At any rate, the hard reality of the invisible hand tells me that thorium isn't so awesome after all, or we'd see thorium reactors in commercial use by now.

gdubs2• 12 years ago

He briefly mentions it and enumerates its potential benefits.

graycat7• 12 years ago

Nuclear power was killed off by the World Secretary of Energy at Large Jane Fonda.

Admiral Rickover was over ruled.

kragen• 12 years ago

Brand was always, in some sense, a counter-counterculturist; a lot of "Green"/hippie folks were and are not just antiwar and anti-environmental-destruction but anti-technology and even, in some sense, anti-civilization. Brand's always been at the opposite extreme, at the same time as he shared the counterculture's inspiration to build something new. Sort of like a Yankee Hernando de Soto.

Ten years ago, even five years ago, it was plausible that nuclear power would be our only viable option to get off fossil fuels. Now it's clear that photovoltaic can get us there, and maybe even without a carbon tax or equivalent restrictions.

http://discipline.longnow.org/DISCIPLINE_footnotes/4_-_New_N... has his updates on the nuclear energy chapter. (He doesn't have much to say about solar.) I can't find the text online.

InclinedPlane3• 12 years ago

Ah yes. Always remember, "weather isn't climate", except when it's warmer, then it is.

splawn3• 12 years ago

Weird, I thought this article was about a years worth of global weather data. Perhaps you don't understand scale?

InclinedPlane3• 12 years ago

Let me ask you this, if 2014 were merely an anomalously cold year, would the reporting and commenting be different?

Maintaining scientific rigor is difficult in the best of times. Unfortunately, people give in to vain impulses to try to short cut the process and "prove" their position is correct even though the actual scientific process is slow.

One hot year is just one year, as one cold year would be. It's proof of very little. Certainly the validity, or not, of incredibly complex climate models does not rest particularly strongly on one year out of many.

Short circuiting the climate debate when a year is warm is no better than when a year is cold, and merely legitimizes the practice.

mollerhoj2• 12 years ago

In the meantime, scientists are struggling to make lawmakers actually believe in science! Scary stuff. I really hope that the GOP turns on this issue soon enough. It's hard to believe that this is actually needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFOPf0s5u5E#t=54

api6• 12 years ago

At this point it's obvious: CO2, which traps heat by a clearly understandable and straightforward physical mechanism, is altering the Earth's climate with unknown but likely mostly negative consequences.

That means we can add this fact to an already very long list of reasons that we must go beyond fossil fuels.

I personally don't think the CO2 problem is at the top of that list. The top slot by far belongs to the depletion problem. There is a finite amount of the stuff that is economically recoverable. We don't know exactly where the limit is, but when we hit it -- assuming we have no alternatives -- we will begin a downward spiral toward the collapse of modern civilization. This might also involve global warfare, possibly nuclear, and a "mass die off" of the human species. At the very least all economic growth would cease and with it all opportunity for anyone to advance their condition in life. The pie would begin shrinking, and this would bring a return to a scarcity mentality in all things. An "orderly die-back and return to bare subsistence" is probably the best case scenario.

The fact that our entire modern technological society is absolutely dependent upon a finite source of energy is probably the greatest existential threat that we face. That this isn't talked about more is likely a result of denial in the face of a very terrifying problem. A good way to think about it is to compare it to a planet-killer asteroid that we know is headed our way.

Next up is probably the geopolitical nightmare of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels transfer massive quantities of wealth from (relatively) liberal open societies to brutal totalitarian states where people are beheaded for questioning the dominant religion or dictator. It finances both terrorism and the ideologies behind it. The only alternative way to still get these fuels would be to embark upon a blood-soaked imperial crusade to simply seize these fossil fuel reserves, an alternative that's arguably worse than the existing state of affairs for many reasons.

I'd put the CO2 problem in the third slot below these. The fourth slot would probably belong to the other environmental damages inflicted by fossil fuel mining and use including air and water pollution and the destruction of otherwise valuable land.

Anyone who argues for the fossil fuel status quo at this point is delusional or insane. I personally think this is the greatest problem facing our civilization.

mollerhoj2• 12 years ago

"Can we stop arguing at this point? Anyone who still thinks the fossil fuel status quo is okay is insane."

72%[1] of republicans in the senate are insane apparently.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFOPf0s5u5E#t=54

lotsofmangos6• 12 years ago

I guess it comes down to your definition of sanity. A hell of a lot of people think they can talk to the creator of the universe by closing their eyes once a week. The human race does not generally set the sanity bar all that high.

r00fus• 12 years ago

They're perfectly sane (they see their constituency as their funders - of which Big Oil is a big name), but corrupt.

How do you remediate a corrupt system?

GFK_of_xmaspast2• 12 years ago

"72%[1] of republicans in the senate are insane apparently."

I never doubted it.

corylehey2• 12 years ago

CO2 argument aside, just because oil makes such a large portion of energy doesn't mean we are dependent on it to that degree.

It's simply the most economic way to currently fill that energy need. If oil runs out, which may be way further into the future than anyone realizes, then it will no longer be the most economic option and thus replaced by the next in line.

Mass die off? bare subsistence? What kind of comic books are you reading that in?

api6• 12 years ago

I'm just going to say that you should research this a bit.

How much sunk cost do we have out there in fossil-fuel-based infrastructure and technology? How much would it cost in energy to replace all that sunk cost? Where's the investment capital going to come from for all that in a shrinking economy?

Many people thought we'd hit "peak oil" in the 2000s. They were wrong. That's the nature of bubbles -- they always go higher than anyone anticipates. The amount of oil we produce will continue to rise with demand on a kind of stair-step function until it doesn't. The people who predict the bubble popping always sound like fools until they don't. Then they sound like prophets, but then it's too late.

When will this point be? Next decade? Four decades from now? Nobody really knows. You're comfortable with that? Do you have kids?

Also keep in mind that we might be able to keep stretching it out very far if we adopt things like coal to liquids, gas to liquids, etc. But as we do that, the environmental damage will increase exponentially as will the CO2 emissions per unit energy generated. If you think we have a CO2 problem now...

I would think our recent experience with economic bubbles would provide some sense of how these things unfold. Bubbles make everyone look like a fool in turn. First they make the skeptics and "bears" look like fools, and then they pop and make the believers look like fools.

Fossil fuel extraction -- the self-catalyzed exponential utilization of a finite resource -- behaves quite a lot like an economic bubble and will ultimately end the same way because physics. The question is whether we will have moved on enough by then that the blow is cushioned. That's an existential question IMHO. If the answer is "no," there won't be much of a future.

300bps3• 12 years ago

There is a BBC show called Bang Goes the Theory that is similar to mythbusters. There was a particular episode where they took a typical UK family and unbeknownst to them put them into a house that was solely powered by electricity generated by bicyclists. It is a stark lesson on how much we take easy energy from fossil fuels for granted:

http://www.electricpedals.com/human-power-station/

It is quite foolish and selfish that generations living from about 1900 to 2100 will burn up 3 billion years of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels.

It will be at the least drastically painful when the fossil fuels run out if we don't take action.

rralian• 12 years ago

There is a finite amount of the stuff that is economically recoverable. We don't know exactly where the limit is, but when we hit it -- assuming we have no alternatives -- we will begin a downward spiral toward the collapse of modern civilization.

Whoah, that seems a little overly pessimistic. We _do_ have alternatives, they just aren't economically competitive with fossil fuels. So I say bring on supply constraints... anything that raises the price of fossil fuels helps to make alternatives more attractive and increase investment into their research and refinement.

So I'd still be way more concerned with the CO2 problem, overfishing, pollution, mass-extinction... all that stuff.

ThomPete• 12 years ago

The problem with this discussion is that it positions climate change is the biggest threat to humanity. But there are other dangers such as AI far more lethal to humans and there are other factors to take into consideration.

For instance its hard to see the world in general becoming richer and getting more people out of poverty by doing green if we dont find effective alternatives to the green energy we have today as it's simply not enough to just replace current usage but also develop solutions that are exponentially more effective.

At the same time its obvious that the way we currently ignore externalities in economy is not giving us a full picture of how things are really looking.

In my mind we have to trust technology to be the solution even though it might end up advancing us.

nzealand• 12 years ago

Conservatives who deny that C02 is bad, simply don't like the solution, which they fear being more government...

http://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion

api6• 12 years ago

I'm not aware of any other political course of action that's ever been able to cope with a tragedy of the commons where property rights within the commons are difficult to assign.

rconti• 12 years ago

To think that a resource will suddenly disappear with no replacement is to ignore the entirety of history.

Fossil fuels will not simply run out, and we are already transitioning to alternatives. That transition will speed up as costs increase. The market works.

What the market is NOT doing is pricing in the impact of CO2. Which is why the CO2 emissions are the bigger problem.

api6• 12 years ago

Nothing will suddenly disappear, but it will suddenly become impossible to increase production. Since it's the rate limiting reagent, that limits the economy to flat or shrinking.

thedangler• 12 years ago

2014 was the hottest year. But the summer in my city was complete crap. It was cold and rainy. Hope its better summer this year :)

jayess4• 12 years ago

Of course, no mention that this is based on the ground-station temperature record which is continually being "revised" so that the past is cooler and cooler. I believe the raw station records have now been "revised" three times so that the original data is becoming meaningless. The satellite record does not show that 2014 was the warmest.

JshWright• 12 years ago

I'd be interested in seeing that data, if you happen to know where I could find it.

jayess4• 12 years ago

I believe it's available here, but they don't make clear the revision details:

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ushcn.html

jayess4• 12 years ago

No surprise I'm being downvoted, but here's the satellite temperature record:

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2015

[Edit: why would people downvote a link to the satellite temperature record?]

graycat7• 12 years ago

Why? Like Galileo, you are a heretic, fighting the orthodoxy, willing to contradict the true religion! Pope Laureate Guru will send out his acolytes to deliver his inquisition and excommunication! That's why!

beat6• 12 years ago

So here's a question... why is the older data being revised? The way it's phrased, and it may not have been your intent, is a deliberate conspiracy to make the changes look greater than they actually are.

This touches on the inexplicable assumption driving much of the anti-warming crowd... the idea of a massive conspiracy of scientists worldwide to lie about climate change, fake data, and supress evidence to the contrary. Those making that assumption never really address why such a conspiracy exists.

jayess4• 12 years ago

Well, you tell me. Why would the manually produced, subsequently "adjusted" thermometer data be trumpeted so that everyone is announcing that 2014 was the hottest ever, when the satellite record shows no such thing?

What would you do if your livelihood depended on towing the company line?

I've looked at the data local to me for the stations that are rural and have had no development. The raw data shows no warming. The adjusted data suddenly shows warming.

My view is that it's just odd to emphasize the error-proned data over the more reliable data for dramatic effect. That's not science. And when governments and media just pick it up and run with it, it weirds me out.

programmarchy• 12 years ago

Perpetual crisis is an effective way for government to expand their power. "Global" warming, being a global phenomenon, is particularly useful for expanding global government, which has been an obsession for oligarchs for thousands of years. Plato wrote about the "noble lie" in The Republic.

joshuahedlund2• 12 years ago

I wish the NYT article included more data (though there is a chart). Raw data is available at NCDC[0]

It is true that the data shows a continually warming trend, with 2014 as the warmest on record. It is also true that the recorded warming is proceeding at a very slow pace, with the new record anomaly of 0.69 C only 0.04 C higher than the previous records of 2005 and 2010 and only 0.06 C higher than the record of 1998.

It is false to say that the globe is not warming, but it also false to say that the warming is on pace for even a full degree of warming by the end of the century. The "warmest X years have all occurred since Y" but they are also clumping together pretty closely and moving up from that clump ever so slowly (which incidentally makes me quite optimistic about our continuing technological progress away from fossil fuels)

[0]http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13

phaemon3• 12 years ago

That links says that temperatures are rising "at an average rate of 0.16°C (0.28°F) per decade since 1970."

So, "it also false to say that the warming is on pace for even a full degree of warming by the end of the century" is completely wrong.

joshuahedlund2• 12 years ago

The "average rate per decade" is highly variable depending on your starting decade. The average "pace" of the last 4.5 decades is 0.16 C per decade, the "current" annual "pace" of the last 10 years is less than 0.01 C per year.

Edit: here you can play with years and rate-per-decade trends: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global

300bps3• 12 years ago

Thank you for the data, but it brings up a big question for me. How do they boil down "Global Temperature" to a single number from 1880 to 2014? In 1880 there were only 38 states and the Statue of Liberty hadn't been delivered yet for 5 years.

Today they have temperature sensors in Antarctica, the North Pole, Alaska, Utah, the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the middle of the Pacific Ocean, etc, etc. Did they have these same sensors in 1880? In 1900? In 1920?

Where is the data that shows the constituents of the "one true number" that claims to stretch over a period of 134 years?

ch4s3• 12 years ago

You know the phrase "The sun never sets on British soil"? Well that dates to the 18th Century, and they we measuring temperature everywhere they were. True, expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic were later, but they also recorded temperature.

So, the record, while incomplete, is pretty good.

SeanDav2• 12 years ago

Oh great, now we are back to "Global Warming". For years that label was not working because many areas were experiencing record low temperatures which kind of made the "Global Warming" advocates all look a bit silly. Thus the term "Climate Change" was introduced because after all who can argue against the fact that the climate is changing! I am on the fence as far as "Global Warming" is concerned but even I must admit that the climate is changing - the fact that the climate has always changed and always will seems to be besides the point.

Now we have a warm year and back we go to "Global Warming". Really hard sometimes to take these people seriously.

wnevets• 12 years ago

what? Are you saying you dont think on average the planet is becoming warmer?

SeanDav2• 12 years ago

I am saying we do not know yet if the climate change is within normal parameters, and even what is the definition of "normal change". The earth has been much much warmer and much much cooler.

What I find irritating is the rather poor science behind much of this (statistical modelling being presented as scientific proof for example), and government agendas and business interests are all clouding the picture.

The UK government for example have raised a huge amount of tax on the back of these fears.

Retra• 12 years ago

By "these people", you mean Justin Gillis of the New York Times?

What do you care what the terminology is? Our climate doesn't really give a crap if you call it 'warming' or 'changing.' That has nothing to do with data.

I don't think you could be missing the point more if you tried.

cholantesh3• 12 years ago

For years that label was not working because many areas were experiencing record low temperatures which kind of made the "Global Warming" advocates all look a bit silly.

Demonstrably false. Both terms are equally old and their level of usage has not markedly changed over the years in scientific literature.

I am on the fence as far as "Global Warming" is concerned

Not suprising; you're giving unwarranted credence to claims whose origins are fossil fuel lobbyists and spin doctors. The scientific community is practically unanimous about the reality of global warming.

lumberjack• 12 years ago

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis

No you aren't crazy if you notice that engineering fields tend to attract many brilliant people with wacky beliefs.

It's very evident in any controversial topic, even on HN as you can see ITT.

wikithro• 12 years ago

Back when I helped edit wikipedia physics articles, it was very noticeable that almost every crank with an anti-relativity agenda had an EE background. Not just engineering, but very specifically electrical engineering.

2014 Was Hottest Year on Record, Surpassing 2010

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