Slashdot Mirror
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."
Is it a bad thing? Or did we just dodge an ice age?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And this is the real crux of the issue. The only way we're going to be able to support 9+ billion people on this planet is if we keep things running pretty much the way it is now.
I think the point being made is that if it happened without us being here at all, there must be causes that we have no control over. If there are causes that we cannot control, it would be folly to waste the time and money trying to control what we cannot.
Xerxes ordered his slaves to whip the waves to keep the waves from coming in. He was trying to control something he couldn't in a way that wasted time and energy and probably lives. People who ignored the fact that the sand spit they were building million dollar houses on wasn't there 100 years ago are demanding that something "be done" to keep the spit from eroding today.
As a society, humans are very good at seeing "how things are today" and leaping to "this is how they should always be", even if that means "doing something that doesn't change what's happening".
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!!"
There have been many significant climate changes over the billions of years since the Earth was formed. And you know what? They have usually been *really* bad for the dominant species at the time.
In reality, farmers care a great deal. Even a few days' change in the growing season, or an increase in the temperatures during the hottest part of it, will change what crops are able to grow and the taste that'll come from them. Wineries in particularly are heavily affected by even one or two days' difference in warm or cold temperatures at the right or wrong time for the grapes.
Civil traffic engineers should care, since temperature changes impact what planned maintenance needs to be done on roads. A colder or snowier winter (one doesn't necessarily mean the other, oftentimes a severe cold snap removes enough moisture from the air to limit snowfall while a milder winter can mean more snowfall) means a need to stock up on road salt and gravel. A hotter summer means a need to resurface roads more often and a need to plan against using looser surfacing that can fall apart in high heat (ever noticed a freshly pave asphalt road in midsummer a bit too far south?).
Tourism? Shifting weather conditions can reduce the skiing season in many regions. Even one lost week can mean going out of business if it happens 2-3 years in a row for the smaller operations such as restaurants or private home renters, and the employees suffer too since they don't just lose tips; most of them lose working hours. Too-hot summer weather makes people avoid some destinations in the middle of summer as well.
Don't forget your power bills. Use a lot of air conditioning?
Boo hoo to the farmers. They had their day.. in the middle ages.
Food comes from the supermarket these days, smartass.
Global warming is a hoax, just like the science of modern field crops.
Bah to science, let all stories about global warming get 150+ comments bitching about nothing!
Ah but you see, the argument is that this time it's the dominant species' fault. So let the climate alarmists be consistent, take the blame like the higher human beings they claim to be and at long last shut the fuck up. Meanwhile the rest of us can adapt to the change like nature expects us to do or die trying.
Do you think evolution works like an X-Men comic? Are you expecting to grow gills, or absorb infrared radiation in the next couple of decades?
Most climate "alarmists" (aka scientists) are not worried about "harming Gaia" or somesuch bullshit (though *you* were the one to anthropomorphize "nature", which doesn't "expect" anything, so I'm not sure what that's all about). They are pointing out that yes, many of the changes ARE the dominant species fault, and are collectively blaming that species of which they are members. And they are hoping that the data they provide will help this species - through technology, and not fantasy - better understand just *how* to adapt (both by reducing the change and compensating for it) to what's happening.
Of course the world won't end. But if you don't think it's a good idea to plan ahead and try to reduce potential disaster to the human race long term, you might as well just restate your position as "fuck everyone else". But then don't be surprised when everyone else tells you to go fuck yourself...
But if the information they posess is based on BS, should they not be called out. Last year was the coldest in the last 30, which is recorded by the local news, and the local wweather stations.
Are you talking about your town? Who cares!
2011 was the 11th warmest *globally* since records were kept in 1880, and is the 35th year on a row where temps are above the 100 year average. And that's with La Nina helping to cool things. Your information is just plain incorrect.
Please tell me what the "correct" average temperature is for the Earth? Even if you could, based on 130 years of temperature data why would you pick the temperature today as the point at which you would stop the change as "correct", when the Earth has been around for 1000s (throwing the biblical types a bone here) to billions of years and based on THAT scale the "correct" temperature might be some thing far different (much hotter, in fact, even if you only include the last 65 million years?).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png (ok, not billions of years, but the geologists are working on improving that, I am sure, and it won't look any better for warmists)
I am all for reducing for man made emissions as it is economically feasible to do, I am all phasing out the use of petroleum products for transportation and other purposes as we find ways to do it that don't require making Peter destitute to subsidize Paul to do it. But I just don't have the hubris to say today (or any in the last 30 years) is the "correct" average temperature for the earth and not 2 or 3 degrees warmer or 2 or 3 degrees colder based on a starting date for data that makes today look bad when other examinations of data based on different starting dates make it look like today is really cold compared to where the Earth more commonly has been. I also can't ignore the fact that ice ages come and go and they tend to do so with great rapidity. The only constant is change. If scientists and engineers actually could create a stable environment at a particular temperature set point, chances are we would find out the results of that would be far worse for people than any predictions of anything short of a runaway greenhouse effect.