Slashdot Mirror
The Last Three Months Were the Hottest Quarter On Record
New submitter NatasRevol (731260) writes The last three months were collectively the warmest ever experienced since record-keeping began in the late 1800s. From the article: "Taken as a whole, the just-finished three-month period was about 0.68 degrees Celsius (1.22 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th-century average. That may not sound like much, but the added warmth has been enough to provide a nudge to a litany of weather and climate events worldwide. Arctic sea ice is trending near record lows for this time of year, abnormally warm ocean water helped spawn the earliest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in North Carolina, and a rash of heat waves have plagued cities from India to California to the Middle East." Also, it puts to bed the supposed 'fact' that there's been a pause in temperature increase the last 17 years. Raw data shows it's still increasing.
bizwriter also wrote in with some climate related news: A new report from libertarian think tank Heartland Institute claims that new government data debunks the concept of global climate change. However, an examination of the full data and some critical consideration shows that the organization, whether unintentionally or deliberately, has inaccurately characterized and misrepresented the information and what it shows.
The Heartland Institute skews the data by taking two points and ignoring all of the data in between, kind of like grabbing two zero points from sin(x) and claiming you're looking at a steady state function.
sudo apt-get install popcorn
Ah yes, all those super-rich climatologists picking on poor impoverished Big Oil.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Way to prove my point!
I don't give a shit about C02 emissions. It's stupid to assume that the world would give a shit, even if some other countries managed to. Honestly, I'm more pissed off about the other effects of burning coal (have you checked your mercury levels lately?) and fracking.
I'm also not suggesting the earth dies. I'm suggesting we/our economy/culture very may well. The earth doesn't give a shit, it's seen plenty hotter and plenty colder. It's humans that are fucked, well, keeping our pop above 7 billion anyway.
In terms of being a 'far-left' radical...I've hung out with that crowd. They are just as dumb and backwards as the far-right (surprise!). Now, my political philosophies can certainly be considered radical, but I bet not in the way you think. In brief: Computational Socialism (gasp!! The S word!) made viable through modular GW-scale lead-cooled fast reactors.
If your philosophy doesn't involve trying to raise the whole world (countries/borders are inhumane and out of date) out of poverty with the end goal of a stabilized world population...well then...fuck you.
So, you like them because they're untainted by facts? Good point. No, great point, wouldn't want to be led astray by facts.
Actually the summary is fairly untainted by facts. For instance:
Yikes, that all sounds alarming right?
Except...
1) Arctic sea ice is actually currently above last year's level, which was already a rebound of over 25 million square km more than the previous year at the minimum extents.
2) The ocean waters in the North Atlantic hurricane region are right around average for this time of year, by no means "abnormally warm".
3) "Rashes of heat waves plague" various places every summer, and always have. NOAA recently reinstated 1934 as the hottest year in the US on record.
The article attacking the Heartland data does have a minor point, but it is absolutely true that temperatures have been essentially flat for around 17 years, while CO2 has been at the highest levels in history. There have been quite a few peer reviewed papers trying to explain this pause, so it's clearly a real phenomena. We'll see if it continues, the El Nino this year is now expected to be a fairly minor event.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I see that the GISS temperature series is quoted to maintain the "hottest quarter" narrative.
See for example
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/18/hansens-nasa-giss-cooling-the-past-warming-the-present/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/24/unadjusted-data-of-long-period-stations-in-giss-show-a-virtually-flat-century-scale-trend/
Much of the data has been created by infilling gaps, homogenization, and other adjustments. They cool the past, add adjustments to the present, and drop stations out of the network creating a warming signal.
It is no coincidence that the cleanest most reliable temperature measurement system for the USA the CRN (climate reference network run by NOAA) shows NO warming over the last decade, confirming that there has been no warming as seen in other temperature records for 13-17 years. (The 17 year is a satellite record also without adjustments by the global warming partisans).
The CRN has triple redundant air aspirated sensors in pristine observation sites spread uniformly through out the USA, so no adjustments are needed. Despite CO2 rising. The computer models are broken. See...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/07/noaa-shows-the-pause-in-the-u-s-surface-temperature-record-over-nearly-a-decade/
The claim that the latest X period is the warmest is like a 30 year old man claiming that the last 5 years of his life have been the tallest in his entire record. Yet hes is not growing anymore !
If I raised your core body temperature by 2C indefinitely you would eventually keel over and die. Don't underestimate small changes when they act globally.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The raw data shows the same warming trend. And the adjustments are there for a good reason - otherwise the deniers would be complaining even more about the heat island effect and siting / instrumentation problems than they even are today (oh, and to head people off, the warming trend gets even stronger when you outright remove the "bad", "artificially hot" meteorological stations the deniers complain about). And all of the adjustments are cross-checked by a variety of peer-reviewed verification methods. For example, the heat island effect on stations is (among other methods) cross-checked by comparing windy days with still days, as wind greatly reduces the heat island effect.
In short, to anyone who thinks they've got some killer reason why the adjustments are wrong, simply write a paper, go through peer-review like everyone else has to do, and viola, you're part of the actual scientific debate and I'll take you seriously. Until then...
Fox: "I think we should call it... your grave!" Cast: "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"
I'm repeating a few things others have said in reply to your post but adding on here to help fill up your /. side bar...
1) Like the first guy said, your chart shows sea ice area is clearly near the bottom. The summary says "trending near", not absolute lows. So you proved that point for them.
2)Your temperature graph shows quite a bit of white but on the whole, there is a lot more red tint than blue, especially considering the scale is over +/- 10C. Ask any 5 year old what the main color is for the ocean and they'll say red. Its obviously abnormally warm.
Every now and then I go down your "informed skeptic" rabbit holes to make sure I didn't miss anything in my personal conclusion that AGW is real and a problem, but every time the data YOU present always ends up refuting your point. Whats your game in all this?