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2014: Hottest Year On Record

Layzej writes Data from three major climate-tracking groups agree: The combined land and ocean surface temperatures hit new highs this year, according to the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United Kingdom's Met Office and the World Meteorological Association. If December's figures are at least 0.76 degrees Fahrenheit (0.42 degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th century average, 2014 will beat the warmest years on record, NOAA said this month. The January-through-November period has already been noted as the warmest 11-month period in the past 135 years, according to NOAA's November Global Climate Report. Scientific American reports on five places that will help push 2014 into the global warming record books.

32 of 560 comments (clear)

  1. noooo by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    closing eyes, plugging ears and singing naaaa naaa naaaaaaa. unbiblical! 'murrican dream for all

    1. Re:noooo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Hey, as soon as you want to get real and build out the nukes we'll need to actually address this you let us know.

      Otherwise keep chanting windandsolarwindandsolar while plugging your ears and we'll keep ignoring you.

    2. Re: noooo by JWW · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yep. Build nuclear power plants or shut the fuck up. I'm sick and tired of hearing "denier, denier, denier" from these people and then when solutions are proposed, they say "hell no, you can't do that". That fucktard RFK jr. even said no to wind power near the carbon sucking Kennedy compound. What the want is to implement economy crushing socialism, actually solving the problem is NOT what most environmentalists really want.

      Back nuclear or shut the fuck up. Note: I'm not asking the impossible, climate change luminaries like James Hansen have called for nuclear power to be used.

    3. Re: noooo by itzly · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Despite you getting sick at hearing "denier, denier", the fact remains that a significant number of the public and in politics deny there's a problem in the first place. How can you expect people to agree on a solution when we can't agree on the problem ?

    4. Re: noooo by tbannist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm not anti-nuclear, but requiring other people to agree to your solution before you'll admit the problem exists is pretty pathetic bullshit.

      How about we agree there's a problem and then start determining what the best solution will be? I'm pretty sure it will include nuclear power, so there's no reason to be an asshole about it.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    5. Re:noooo by ThosLives · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And, at the same time, it was the coldest year in Chicago's recorded history. Who knew?

      Well, yes, because "global" warming isn't really global - a global average is kind of meaningless for determining the local effects in any given region.

      The problem I have with global climate change "debate" is not that climate is changing, but that there is an assumption that the net effect will be negative. Some regions will surely become less hospitable, and some will become more hospitable. I'm disappointed that more studies haven't shown which will prevail (or if there will be a net neutral effect). Instead we just get fear mongering about famine and war.

      Also, I still believe the focus is on the wrong thing: rather than try and stop climate change (after all, if it doesn't change because of CO2, it may change due to something else) we should try and work on technologies so we can survive - no, thrive - regardless of the climate. (Isn't that what humanity has done for most of its existence anyway?)

      --
      "There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
    6. Re: noooo by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Despite you getting sick at hearing "denier, denier", the fact remains that a significant number of the public and in politics deny there's a problem in the first place. How can you expect people to agree on a solution when we can't agree on the problem ?

      I would suggest sheer perseverance of publishing the science in the face of such unfounded denialism will eventually do the trick, in the same way that it worked to convince the public of the link between smoking and cancer despite the opposition from vested interests at the time. The attacks on the science and scientists that we see today is very much the same tactic used by the tobacco industry and conservative organisations against doctors who claimed that smoking was dangerous.

      In the end, science will win over politics (just like it did with tobacco, asbestos, etc). Those "significant number of the public and in politics" who claim to know better than all the climate scientists of the world will look more and more out of touch with reality as the temperature records keep getting broken.

      In fact, the deniers have put a lot of stock in the current slow-down of temperature increase, and once it starts accelerating again (as it has done numerous times when there have been similar slow-downs over the last century) then it will cause great damage to their public support. If you remember back 5 years or so years ago, many deniers were claiming that it was actually getting cooler in comparison to the El Nino year of 1998. Once the record temperatures started happening again they silently dropped that claim, although it still hasn't stopped a lot of people from still bringing up how some people considered global cooling to be a possibility back in the 1970s. How convenient that they forget their own side's similar mistakes.

    7. Re: noooo by unimacs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nuclear power plants are expensive to build and operate with any degree of safety. Wind is actually becoming fairly cost effective. That being said any realistic solution would include nuclear, renewables, and natural gas (at least for awhile). Also a major component would have to be major improvements in energy efficiency whether it be in transportation, HVAC, or transmission. Lots of energy is lost through pure waste. Efficiency measures save money over time and improves cash flow for business that implement them. Doesn't sound like crushing socialism to me.

      Tying renewables and other non-nuclear solutions to some sort of socialist plot is just another way to scare people away from dealing with the problem.

    8. Re:noooo by ranton · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem I have with global climate change "debate" is not that climate is changing, but that there is an assumption that the net effect will be negative. Some regions will surely become less hospitable, and some will become more hospitable. I'm disappointed that more studies haven't shown which will prevail (or if there will be a net neutral effect). Instead we just get fear mongering about famine and war.

      If sea levels rise and destroy hundreds of cities in the process, who really cares if a few Midwest regions get a little longer growing season? People don't waste time talking about pros and cons because the cons outweigh the pros by such a wide margin that it isn't worth talking about.

      --
      -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    9. Re:noooo by ThosLives · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But the net is hugely negative. 1/3 of the world's people are close enough to a coast that they will have to do something when sea levels rise.

      So why don't people move now before they're underwater? Put another way - have all the people who are proclaiming coming disaster started moving their assets away from the coasts? Why are we focusing on emissions rather than moving people now? Surely moving people is cheaper (and more direct - that is, localized) than trying to control emissions. Such a thing would avoid depending on other people to fix their behaviors - it would also guarantee an outcome, rather than a probabilistic estimate of what happens if we curb emission X.

      People must really place a huge time preference on things to delay moving in spite of the proposed huge future costs. Or, they just don't believe it... or the "speed" of things isn't really as fast enough for people to care.

      Climate Change is happening too fast for much life to cope. The speed of the change is all negative.

      This is both defeatist and probably more political than technical. If political will is high enough, humans can do crazy things in short (e.g., decade-span) timeframes, especially when we don't have to invent anything but just have to move people inland or build hydroponics or desalination plants etc. It's all political, not technical. If we want to reduce the cost of sea level rise, why not tax people closer to the coast, and reduce tax away from the coast? Rhetoric talks, but money walks. And hitting the individual harder (rather than corporations) will motivate people much faster than not. Hell if you think the future disaster is high enough, you should ask your governments to build everyone living within X of a coast a brand new house inland and giving it to them (and personally be willing to be taxed for it), because that will cost less than the future cost of disaster mitigation later.

      I guess, at the end of the day, the focus is too one-sided on emissions, rather than on relocation or adaptability. I know if I lived close to a coast, I would move inland rather than rely on some disparate group of companies and nations to reduce their emissions which will maybe prevent my land from eroding away or getting hit with bad weather in my or my child's lifetime.

      I would rather put in policies to avoid turning inland (midwest US for instance) farmland into subdivisions - I hate to see our local farmland turning into cookie-cutter homes; reducing farmland seems to make us more sensitive, not more robust.

      So that's what I mean by too narrow focus, in tech, in media, etc - everyone is focused on emissions, not on adaptation. If we don't adapt, we die - trying to refuse to adapt is actually worse in my mind.

      --
      "There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
    10. Re: noooo by jandrese · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The fact that we still don't have a long term solution for the waste is a concerning one. Yucca mountain was our best hope, and its dead.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    11. Re:noooo by hamburger+lady · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Mammals were flourishing 55 million years ago. So the temperature and CO2 levels would be just fine for people.

      i hate to break this to you, but the mammals that thrived 55 million years ago were not the same as the mammals of today, much less people.

      just because some long-extinct animals made it fine back then doesn't mean that people would.

      i can't believe i even have to explain this to people.

      --

      ---
      Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
    12. Re: noooo by ideonexus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Interesting. No global warming in 17 years... what a funny number, 17. It's a prime number. Why not 10 years, 20, or even 100? Why are "skeptics" always so hung up on 1997 as the baseline for all global warming trends? Does it have anything to do with the fact that the 1997-1998 El Nino event generated a record year for high temperatures? I was just getting interested in the science of global warming when this phenomenon hit, and I remember NASA scientists warning everyone that we could not blame rising carbon dioxide levels for the anomalously hot temperatures of those two years.

      Ironic that 17 years later, the 1997-1998 El Nino event is now the holy grail baseline year to which all skeptics cling like a polar bear to a melting iceberg. In 2008 the skeptics were using this baseline to claim that global cooling was taking place. Then, as yearly record high temperatures kept happening, they used this baseline to claim that global warming had flatlined. Now, just eight years later, the trend from 1997 is on an incline, but the skeptic story is that temperatures aren't warming as fast as predicted. Keep clinging to 1997, you are just one El Nino event away from looking really really silly.

      As for the WattsUpWithThat blog, I used to respect it until Anthony Watts pulled a 180 on accepting the findings of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Originally he said he would accept the findings whatever they may be because it was funded by the Koch Brother's, but when the independent research led by a prominent skeptic further confirmed Global Warming was real, Watt's rejected it. The man has zero credibility at this point.

      --
      i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
    13. Re: noooo by Teckla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Let me start my comment by saying I very much believe in global warming and that I believe it is primarily caused by humans dumping enormous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

      I would suggest sheer perseverance of publishing the science in the face of such unfounded denialism will eventually do the trick, in the same way that it worked to convince the public of the link between smoking and cancer despite the opposition from vested interests at the time.

      There's a big difference this time that makes your analogy break down. Smoking does not give people that much of a boost in their quality of life. (In fact, it costs them a lot of money, and it makes them horribly sick--possibly even killing them!)

      Lots of cheap energy gives people an enormous boost in their quality of life. Even if you get everyone agreeing that global warming is real and caused by human industry, they're still going to want their cheap energy--even if that means we continue dumping unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

      The two primary camps today are the deniers (who are obviously deluded) and the believers (who are also deluded--they actually believe humanity will solve the problem, given enough evidence or education or whatever).

      There are billions--billions--of humans on the planet, and a large percentage of them want to improve their quality of life--or, at the very least, not see it drop. There are hundreds of countries, many of them ready, willing, and able to burn all the coal and oil they can afford. (If some countries use less--in an attempt to reduce CO2 emissions--there's less demand, thus prices will drop, thus it'll become more affordable to those people and countries that so desperately want that energy to improve their quality of life.)

      Humans are simply not going to stop dumping enormous quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. It. Just. Isn't. Going. To. Happen.

      Our only hope at this point is some breakthrough technologies that produce energy at a lower cost than alternatives like burning coal and oil. If that happens, the free market will take care of the rest. If you want to slow, stop, and reverse global warming, we need to throw money at alternative energy research. Anything else is doomed and hopeless. There's simply too much demand for (cheap) energy.

  2. Go Nuclear by ggraham412 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    France went nuclear a long time ago, and they adopted it at a pace that if replicated around the world would cut C02 emissions to levels recommended by the IPCC. Nuclear energy is the only viable technology we have at the moment that can both reduce CO2 emissions meaningfully and avoid throwing an additional billions of people into poverty.

    1. Re:Go Nuclear by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nuclear energy is the only viable technology we have at the moment that can both reduce CO2 emissions meaningfully and avoid throwing an additional billions of people into poverty.

      [citation needed]

      You people keep making these bald assertions, but I don't see any reason that wind and solar can't handle this problem. We need more power storage, yes. So what? We're building it, and we know how to build more of it. Since solar power produces the most power when we need it the most, and pays back its energy investment in less than a decade but lasts more than two, I'm having a hard time figuring out just where you people got the idea that nuclear was the only answer. Most people who think that there is only one answer are wrong. The world is a lumpy place.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:Go Nuclear by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Solar power repays its energy cost in production in 6 to 12 months, not decades and it lasts over 30 years, not just 20 ... talking about PV obviously.

      Sigh. You obviously know nothing about avoiding people accusing you of exaggeration. I'd say you must be new here, but...

      Also, you're exaggerating. It takes around three years for a thin-film panel to repay its energy investment. But I'm accounting for the entire system, installation, side preparation, et cetera. And then I'm anti-exaggerating, as mentioned previously. All that's important is to show how foolish the claims are.

      Storage is interesting if you want to take your house (or boat or caravan) off grid. For a nation spanning grid it is nearly irrelevant until you approach 100% production of peak demand.

      That's nice. We don't have a nation-spanning grid. You can't just move power from anywhere to anywhere at will. It doesn't work like that. First, there are far too few links; many cities are served by a single point of ingress for electrical power. Second, we lack long-haul capacity, even if we could get the power to the long-haul links, we couldn't carry it.

      We need more storage, or to dramatically improve the grid. It would be nice to do both. But storage pays revenues when the grid fails, which it can do even if you improve it. We clearly need more storage.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Go Nuclear by Tailhook · · Score: 1, Insightful

      but I don't see any reason that wind and solar can't handle this problem

      That's you not wanting to face reality the same way deniers don't.

      We're building it

      That's fiction. There are some troubled experimental systems, and what we're learning is that we're going to need a politically infeasible amount of industrial build out to dot the land with tens of thousands of thermal storage facilities and storage reservoirs, both consuming stupid quantities of water that, somehow, no one has a better use for. Not going to happen.

      The land use problem alone precludes solar for more than localized energy supply. Only peanut gallery internet fanbios indulge the fantasy that there is vast amounts of wasted land we can carpet with panels. In the real world every inch of it is contested by lawyers and pressure groups that ensure utility scale, coal-replacing amounts of solar and storage is a pipe dream.

      It's simple. You chuckleheads put down the windandsolar crack pipe and we progress. Until then you'll have the power system you have now, plus a lot more natural gas.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    4. Re:Go Nuclear by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Didn't GT Advanced Technologies claim that their sapphire glass manufacturing process were damaged by unreliable power?

      Yes, but they also explained that it is SoP for having equipment on-site to mitigate that problem, and that Apple insisted that they not install it. So in fact, the grid is already not capable of delivering power reliably, and this is hardly a mark against renewables when it's already a mark against everything. The primary reason that we can't deliver power reliably is that we have a dumb grid. Only now is this changing; PG&E for example is literally in the midst of adding sensors to their long-haul lines because they actually cannot monitor their condition. When people hear "smart grid" they think of smart meters and commercial A/C that won't activate when you want it to, but the most important parts are actually nowhere near their houses. It's all about adding sensors and intelligence to back them up to the actual transmission equipment so that PG&E knows that a line is reaching its capacity before it happens, and not after an equipment failure which is the only way they've been able to do it so far. Presumably, the other utilities in the country are in the same shape, but I don't really know about them first-hand.

      Adding more nuclear production won't improve our ability to deliver reliable power, because of the inadequacy of the grid. The grid is often cited as a reason why renewables won't work, but it has to be upgraded anyway because it's not doing its job now. And it's not just monitoring; we have little unused long-haul capacity, and many towns and even cities are served by a single link. You can't call it a grid when it's star-wired.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:Go Nuclear by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It sounds like you don't have an example. Nuclear, Coal and Gas have been doing it for decades. Hydro has been doing it for longer.

      Rejecting nuclear for wind and solar means burning oil, gas and coal until wind and solar are able to handle baseloads. Nuclear plants are being replaced with coal, oil and gas plants as we speak.

      Note that "renewable" in this graph goes back to the 1950's and includes hydroelectric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Electrical_Generation_1949-2011.png

      I don't see renewables replacing anything any time soon. Only nuclear can reduce the carbon emissions significantly.

  3. Re:Before or after? by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Was that before or after the historical data was fudged in ways the 'climate science" community won't disclose?

    (And no, moderators, I'm not trolling. This is a legitimate question.)

    Have you finally stopped beating your wife?

    --

    Stephan

  4. Re:Before or after? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You pose a question but don't give enough information to answer it or even check for validity in the implied claim you're making. Try again.

  5. But its cold where I live today by RichMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The inability of the human species to extract itself from personal state to think globally is going to be our demise. If we can't recognize that we are responsible for maintaining our environment in a livable state we are in big trouble.

    And it really is not "globally" any more. The entire planet is our personal space.

  6. Before or after? by something_wicked_thi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course it's a legitimate question. It's not that you're asking loaded questions in bad faith and have no intention of believing anyone who gives you an honest answer. And people who are asking legitimate questions always put climate science in scare quotes. And they would never ask a leading question that they could easily learn more about with some google searches. Nor is it trolling to make unfounded, baseless, and unsourced accusations about climate science being shadowy manipulators of data that refuse to provide any details about how they derive their work.

    You're not a troll at all. Just a reasonable person interested in honest discourse. Exactly the kind of person I frequently see here on Slashdot.

    (For those who are truly interested in learning more on the topic of how they correct biases in sea level temperature, unlike the guy "just asking questions" above, perhaps you might find this NASA paper informative and interesting)

  7. Re:Before or after? by itzly · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, "fudging" means to adjust the data with intent to mislead. In this case, the data is adjusted to correct for errors. If you want to accuse the scientists with intent to mislead you need to substantiate your accusations with some proof.

  8. Denial as a form of negotiation by kenj123 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is a problem with public policy. even though the overall group could be better off because of government intervention, there still could be sub groups of winners and losers. I think that a lot of the deniers will only admit there is a problem when they are sure the solution does not make them a loser. So it could be beneficial to start implementing solutions and see which one get shot down because these 'denegotiators' think the cost is to high to their group.

  9. Yeah, hottest year on record by russotto · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Just like 1991 and 2012. At least until it's quietly corrected and 1934 regains its title.

    1. Re:Yeah, hottest year on record by Hardhead_7 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      1934 wasn't a particularly hot year across the globe. It was a very hot year in the United States, but that's not what we're talking about, is it? Science-deniers love 1934, because they love to cherry-pick data.

  10. Re:Before or after? by itzly · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Do you honestly think the scientists are going to give you a signed confession reading "Yes, we mislead you!" or something?

    No, I expect you to come up with some proof. That means you do your own research, and when you get different results, then you publish them. That's how science is done.

  11. What happened to the US? by unimacs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm old enough to remember the first moon shot. There used to be a time when the US was willing to invest billions to achieve goals and conquer technical challenges. Funny, the economy didn't collapse. It wasn't considered socialist or un-American. In fact, it was a point of pride and helped established us as world leaders. Now "American Ingenuity" is becoming a thing of the past.

    While we sit around arguing whether global warming is a real issue or not, the rest of the world is moving forward with solutions. We're getting left in the dust.

    I'm not sure how so many modern conservatives still manage to think of themselves as patriots while sticking their heads in the sand. It's pathetic.

  12. The epitome of alarmism by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A quote from Judith Curry's blog sums it up well;

    "last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a supposedly scientific body, issued a press release stating that this is likely to be the warmest year in a century or more, based on surface temperatures. Yet this predicted record would be only one hundredth of a degree above 2010 and two hundredths of a degree above 2005 — with an error range of one tenth of a degree. True scientists would have said: this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005 and left it at that."

    http://judithcurry.com/2014/12...

  13. Re:Math Lesson For the Kids. by meustrus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not making any statement on the validity of warming. I'm pointing out how even "Scientific" reports and journals like Scientific American paint a falacious picture with word manipulation. A single temperature 9 degrees higher that 19 average is NOT a meaningful statistic. It is ENTIRELY normal!

    What we are reading is written for the eyes of a mass audience. The only people that know enough to understand the actual basis of their conclusions are other climate scientists. Climate variations are very hard to measure and describe for an average person to understand in the time it takes to read an article. We are past the tipping point of climate change and the environmentalists are getting more desperate every year to convince the average person to take action. It also just so happens that global warming is melting glaciers and permafrost all over the world. Things that have been frozen for longer than anyone can remember, even in the summer. Glaciers from which climate scientists have taken core samples precisely because they have existed for so many thousands of years that they still contained frozen evidence of what the atmosphere was like every single year when a new layer of snow was compacted into them. The melting is the #1 simplest evidence for an average reader to understand, and you want to criticize the wording for not being statistically meaningful? If you want the statistically meaningful results, study climate science and read what the scientists read.

    --
    I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.