2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record

The Bad Astronomer writes "Last year was the 9th hottest year out of the past 130, according to NASA and the NOAA. That's no coincidence: nine out of the ten hottest years on record have been since the year 2000. It's long past time to face facts: the Earth is getting hotter, and to deny it is an exercise in fantasy."

Comments

The open question...

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Is it a bad thing? Or did we just dodge an ice age?

Re:The open question...

[Geoffrey.landis]

One of the things that has always bothered me about the global the warming/climate change thesis that its advocates predict nothing but negative consequences.

You are confusing two different groups of people.

Climate scientists are pointing out that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the temperature, and that this is well known, although the amount still has large error bars-- about plus or minus fifty percent, actually. These aren't "advocates;" this is science: ordinary, messy, plodding, data-intensive, science.

For saying this, however, climate scientists are being attacked relentlessly. It's a politically driven argument, not a scientific argument, which means that it can't be refuted by any amount of data.

There is another question, which is, what will the effects of this warming be? Since the deniers won't even credit that carbon dioxide has a warming effect at all, the odd result is that the ONLY people discussing the effects of temperature increase are the ones looking at negative effects. It's a one-sided debate because the other side has abdicated. They find it easier to attack the scientists than actually look at what the effects will be.

I do predict, however, that eventually the terms of the debate will change, and the deniers will start changing their argument to "well, we may be increasing the temperature, but that's a good thing. We want to increase the temperature."

Actually, I'm looking forward to that shift. First, I really would like to see both sides looking at effects. But, mainly, iI\t's a lot better than the "scientists are frauds and scientific results are a hoax and global warming is a scam" that is currently the argument.

Re:The open question...

[Daniel_Staal]

There are good effects of global warming, and there are bad effects. It's sometimes hard to predict which are which. What we do know is that it is change, and a major one, to the support system which keeps the human race alive. Unmoderated change is likely to be a bad thing, and we know that lots of the effects will be bad. Best not to run the experiment with our only life-support system.

Take the article you linked to: Ok, so that's an increase in arable land. This will be offset by other lands becoming less useful. The total might be higher or lower: Hard to say for sure. However, the Sahara doesn't have great soil, so even if it's wet enough to grow crops, it's unlikely to be as productive as, say, the American mindwest. Also, many plants are fairly picky about the conditions they grow in. Temperatures, elevation, type of soil, total rainfall, rainfall pattern, length of growing season, ratios of daylight to darkness during the growing season, all of these are known to impact the productivity of many crops. Taking a crop that grows well in one place and moving it someplace else often cuts yield significantly. Even if the total amount of arable land goes up, that doesn't mean we'll be able to grow more useful crops.

Global warming is a massive uncontrolled experiment, and if it goes badly humanity will suffer for it. We don't necessarily know it will go badly, but it appears at least as likely as it going well. (In fact, it appears more likely, overall.) I'd rather avoid that type of situation.

4th coldest year?

[Confusedent]

If this is the 9th hottest year, and 8 of the past 12 have been hotter, then wouldn't that technically also make 2011 one of the four coldest years out of the past 12? Doesn't change the fact that the past decade has been hotter than the others, but the phrasing is considerably more alarmist than "2011 4th coldest year out of past 12!!"

Re:There is no denying the Earth is getting hotter

[DCFusor]

Mod parent up. I farm, I also trade commodities. I'm outdoors a lot and have been monitoring all this since '80 or so. It's getting warmer for certain. I like it warm, but some of the things I grow don't. And pests that used to stay south of here have moved north to here and we are getting new problems from that. They can migrate quick, but trees cannot...I'm not going to die from the change we have, but another 30 years on this same track - what was productive farmland will be a desert. So, someone will have to tear down that city you live in to grow crops in, because some of the best land on the planet - right here, won't be anymore, and that food's gotta come from somewhere. At our human density, everything that isn't city is farm...more or less. It's not going to be pretty. Gonna vote NIMBY against tearing your city down while you starve? GoodLuckWithThat. Who cares what caused it - we better look into how to change it back!