This October Was the Hottest Ever Measured (scienceblogs.com)

GregLaden writes: Scientists track the global surface temperature, an average of readings from thermometers at approximately head height, and an estimate of sea surface temperatures, in order to track global warming. Over the last year or so we have been seeing many record-breaking months. Now, both the Japan Meteorological Agency and NASA have identified October as an extraordinary month. October 2016 is significantly warmer than any other in the NASA record, which goes back to 1880.

Comments

Climate has never not been changing.

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11.

(Oh, and trying to stop it is like trying to stop the Earth from rotating)

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[dywolf]

Not the point.
Point: it's never changed this fast, and it's our fault.
Denier doesn't get it, news at 11:05.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Glock27]

You'd better take a long look at my post below regarding satellite measurements. The recent trumpeting of warmest this and that is highly suspect - including the "2014 is the warmest year on record" claim.

It's enough to make you think there's a hidden agenda or something...

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[phishybongwaters]

I'm in Canada, and we're seeing the effects clear as day, longest warmest summers I've ever experienced, harshest winters when they hit.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Not the point. Point: it's never changed this fast, and it's our fault. Denier doesn't get it, news at 11:05.

True science needs deniers:

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. - - Jacob Bronowski

The "Science" of Physics was "settled" back in the time of Issac Newton. Oops, then came Einstein along! Our views on global climate change are based on we *think* is right, based on the facts that we have today. In another 100 years, things might look very differently. Hey, using blood-sucking leeches to treat sick folks seemed like a good idea a while back! The gag is, blood-sucking leeches are back in fashion in modern medicine: it turns out that they are very useful in restoring blood flow to skin transplants.

Even Einstein himself, probably one of the most gifted minds that ever walked on this planet, had problems with that newfangled Quantum Theory:

Einstein: "God does not play dice!"

Niels Bohr: "Stop telling God what to do!"

Erwin Schrödinger: "So, is like, my cat dead or alive . . . ?"

Einstein: "If I had my way, all those cats would be dead! They pee on my furniture, and shit in my shoes!"

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Im in Texas and it was the coolest, wettest summer I've ever experienced!

But our experiences are nanoseconds in the geological sense.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Jason Levine]

And just to forestall anyone replying to you with "lots of snow means no global warming": Warmer air means it can hold more moisture. This leads to more precipitation. Also, warmer weather means less lakes freeze over which means more lake effect snow. So a warming climate CAN lead to more snow despite the claims of certain politicians who claim that seeing snow outside proves global warming wrong.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[rs79]

Try going outside. You appear to be in a condo in Vancouver. You may be on heroin.

It's been so cold in Canada in the last three years we've broken dozens if not hundreds of cold record temperature records:

http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/febru...

We've not broken one for warm/hot, just record cold.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

"Environment Canada has released its list of top weather stories over the past year, and the long winter chill took top spot."

The Great Lakes attained 92 per cent ice coverage for the first time in 35 years, sea ice was back on the East Coast and ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was its thickest in 25 years."

Frost in late may/early June? Welcome to Canada, eh?

http://www.quintenews.com/2015...

Niagra falls has frozen about 7 times in 200 years. Last year and the year before were two of those times.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

Plus, you know, the Arctic sea ice has grown so much - because it's unseasonabley cold and hs been for a decade according to the NOAA - that we have to redraw the maps becvause of eht INCREASE IN ARCTIC SEA ICE. There's more of it now than when "global warming" started.

I'd have to say, as a Canadian living in Canada you don't see a lot of global warming here. More like the next ice age.

One scientist who predicted this in 2008 had his work vetted by CERN and NASA and botttom line: 27 more years of this cold then it'll warm again.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technol...

Look at the number of temperature records set for cold and hot worldwide. I believe that explains why they're so desperate to prove a hot climate record. It's because they keep trying to prove one, keep being corrected when it's pointed out it's not really a record in a field of so many cold weather records.

Can't say there's any sign of warming in Canada. The current Indian Summer, a first in a decade is not a sign the planet is warming, Sparky.

Re: Climate has never not been changing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not talking the right change, if you are calling summer, winter. That is seasons, like salt and pepper. Which is funny, we had early frost in the Midwest. And the usual tree changes were early, along with the first snow contests. No winner yet. Trees aren't bare yet, so looking for an early season. That will not be entered into the record books. But, if I remember right, the 1(880's had the big killing blizzards in late fall that killed the cowboys and school kids returning from school, supposedly went from barefoot go to school, to zero in hours.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[RabidReindeer]

True science needs deniers:

No, True science needs challengers.

You can deny the Gravitational Theory all you want, but if I drop an anvil on your head, you're still dead.

On the other hand, if someone challenges that gravity must inevitably operate in such and such a way and that leads to development of anti-grav technology, that's True science.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

The "Science" of Physics was "settled" back in the time of Issac Newton. Oops, then came Einstein along!

Well, yes and no. Yes in relativistic environments (near light speed) you get a different physics. But this is only applicable to elementary particles and the like.

For the rest: all the calculations that were done previously using Newton's laws: the force needed to change the speed of an (not relativistic) object (cars, trains, elements of a machine...) are STILL calculated using newtons law.

And this is the hallmark of the true science denier: he wants to use the fact that science is allways in motion to promote the notion that nothing is ever certain. I can assure you that whatever new theories there will be found concerning the laws of physics they will have to comply with all known observations and therefore will have to be in compliance with newton's laws for normal day to day objects.

Einsteins theories have not supplanted Newton's theory gave an extension for elementary particles. BTW talking about Bohr and the theory of quantum mechanics: there is no sane way to apply these to macroscopic objects. For that you NEED newton's laws. So in that sense they are more complementary.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Opportunist]

Yeah, and allow me to debunk it: They want to continue living on this planet.

I know, I know, it's so obvious once someone says it...

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Maritz]

Yeah but snow is COLD. Come on man.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Maritz]

Yeah congrats you're playing the role of the creationist, but in the climate arena. Take a bow son.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[NotDrWho]

The problem that I have with anthropogenic global warming is that it started out sounded like a science-based issue, but it has since moved into the realm that's more reminiscent of a religion (complete with established dogma, punishment of heretics, an apocalyptic theology, etc.). Most proponents today sound less like reasonable people and more and more like shrill cultists holding up placards proclaiming the end is nigh.

It also disturbs me that AGW proponents have not only created an echo-chamber for themselves within the university system, but have also carefully tailored what appears to be an unfalsifiable hypothesis. It's very difficult to conceive of any data that could contradict it. And when data DOES come along that seemingly does contradict it--rather than reconsidering the hypothesis itself, proponents merely "adjust" the data until it nicely fits the hypothesis again.

Meanwhile, individual weather patterns continue to be dismissed as "just weather" when they are mild or abnormally cold, but sung from the rooftops as evidence of AGW when they are usually chaotic or hot. This very report cites October as the hottest October on record as evidence of global warming. Will it therefore be evidence AGAINST global warming if this December is the coldest December on record? Or will the same people who cited this report as AGW evidence suddenly dismiss that as "just a minor weather pattern, not related to climate."? Or maybe the data would somehow be cleverly be "adjusted" until December turns into the hottest on record instead (you see, that initial data didn't take into account a huge adjustment for ocean currents being very strong in the Indian Ocean this year, therefore we have to adjust it up several degrees to compensate).

I know this will get me modded down on /. But that is why I've come to seriously doubt the idea of anthropocentric global warming over the last several years, and why I have come to believe that the issue is more about religious zealotry and social agendas than actual science.

Re: Climate has never not been changing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody else curious that they reference October 2016 in the article, not 2015? I'm not sure that I can trust this information, maybe it needs another correction. :-)

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[AthanasiusKircher]

True science needs deniers:

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. - - Jacob Bronowski

Your quotation is not the attitude of a "denier" -- it is the attitude of a curious mind who is not a "believer" and is willing to ask questions. Yes, this is a generalization, but most "deniers" of climate change aren't necessarily well-versed in the details of climatology, but are nevertheless convinced that they have found the "truth" which apparently has escaped the notice of most experts in the field. And, more importantly, they will seek out any random data points -- no matter how irrelevant -- to support their predetermined belief .

The "Science" of Physics was "settled" back in the time of Issac Newton. Oops, then came Einstein along! Our views on global climate change are based on we *think* is right, based on the facts that we have today. In another 100 years, things might look very differently.

I think you've missed the entire point of the Scientific Revolution. With Newton came a new possibility in science, namely the acceptance of a mathematical model as a description for reality, even if the "real world" causes couldn't be nailed down completely.

This is what got Galileo in trouble, for example. It wasn't that he was interested in the Copernican mathematical model -- the Church was fine with people using whatever mathematical predictive models they wanted. But Galileo was tried because he wanted to assert that he had found the TRUE order of the cosmos, not merely a better mathematical model.

Newton changed that. Rather than Aristotle's physics, which asserted that everything in the universe tended toward rest in its "natural place," Newton said that things were driven by "unseen forces" like gravity, which previously had been associated with occult and magical phenomena (not the stuff "scientists" of the day would dabble in).

But Newton got around this problem by admitting that he wasn't necessarily asserting the TRUTH of the reality of these unseen forces... only that his mathematical model worked better assuming they existed. And it had great predictive power. This became the model for modern science.

And that's a fundamental distinction that's often lost on people who misunderstand scientific methodology -- those Newton-like mathematical models are rarely falsified completely. The explanations for exactly why they occur may be falsified or explained in a different way, but the math is often what drives science these days.

In that sense, Newton's math model of physics was never falsified -- it was merely tweaked by Einstein to accommodate weird phenomena at unusual speeds and under other conditions rarely observed back in the 18th century. Similarly, we could even say that phlogiston as a mathematical model was never really falsified -- the explanation changed from a substance in combustible materials to a gaseous fuel (oxygen), but the weird mathematical properties ascribed to phlogiston (negative mass, etc.) still modeled the phenomena.

To return to the present case -- there is a real trend and climate scientists have mathematical predictive models to describe it. Yes, the explanations of what exactly is going on may change, but it's unlikely that the underlying mathematical patterns will be completely "falsified," just like Newton's mathematical models are still taught in schools, because they basically work for common scenarios.

Also, there's lots of climate data, and humans have natural cognitive biases that lead them to find patterns in even random data. That's why we need experts who spend most of their days sifting through this data to try to separate the real trends from random data points.

But then the "denier" comes along and says, "Uh, but what about this one? But what about this one?" The denier wants to cherry-pick data points or data sets to s

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

http://www.vancouversun.com/te...

64 temperature records smashed in B.C.
Weather experts are now predicting June will be Vancouver's hottest on record
Vancouver Sun June 30, 2015
Fuck you.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

Einstein has been proven by experiments in short time. Tony Wazzup and his merry band of geologists have not been after many years.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Global Warming...it causes EVERYTHING!!

Nice little circular theory you got there.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

The problem that I have with anthropogenic global warming is that it started out sounded like a science-based issue, but it has since moved into the realm that's more reminiscent of a religion (complete with established dogma, punishment of heretics, an apocalyptic theology, etc.).

IOW you were fine with it until somebody noticed that there could be real life consequences. Then you locked up, because that's something only religions talk about, but not real science - that lives in a world of spherical cows in a vacuum on a frictionless surface.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[AthanasiusKircher]

Meanwhile, individual weather patterns continue to be dismissed as "just weather" when they are mild or abnormally cold, but sung from the rooftops as evidence of AGW when they are usually chaotic or hot.

I agree with you to some extent that an individual data point shouldn't be trumpeted as being evidence of anything for a long-term trend. But I would note that this is NOT what TFS says. It says (1) October is the hottest October in the past 135 years (that's based on 135 data points, not one), and (2) there have been many such record-breaking months recently.

That's not an individual data point. That's a bunch of data seen in a 135-year context. You can argue that 135 years is still a short time window for climate, but still, it's more than a random single data point.

This very report cites October as the hottest October on record as evidence of global warming. Will it therefore be evidence AGAINST global warming if this December is the coldest December on record? Or will the same people who cited this report as AGW evidence suddenly dismiss that as "just a minor weather pattern, not related to climate."?

If December is the coldest December on record globally, it would certainly be MAJOR news. Those who dismiss accounts as "weather" usually are talking about... well, the WEATHER.

For example, there were all sorts of headlines this year in February in the U.S., with claims about it being one of the coldest or even THE coldest on record, particularly on the east coast of the U.S. That's true.

But, if you look at global average temperatures in February 2015, I believe it was near the HOTTEST on record. Someone will certainly come out to correct me, but I'm reasonably sure it's been about 30 years since we've had a month where GLOBAL temperature even below average, let alone setting a record for "coldest." So if something like you say happens, it will be VERY unusual indeed.

The globe is a complex system. If you introduce more energy into the system, it will do all sorts of things. Some areas will get hotter. Others will get colder. Some will get wetter. Some will get dryer.

What you can't do is look at some random anecdotal weather pattern -- even if extends for a month or more across one side of a continent -- and claim that we should take that as evidence that GLOBAL temperatures aren't going up.

Seriously. There IS a difference between "weather" and global average temperature. One hot month in October is NOT news. Saying it is the hottest month on record in a series of years that have "hottest months on record" does seem to point to a broader trend. If you can't tell the difference between that and the fact that you had a lot of snow last winter, I don't know what to say.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[dave420]

It's called "an overwhelming body of evidence, which some people ignore on ideological grounds".

It's not an echo chamber, it's science. If someone can demonstrate AGW is not happening, they will find fame and fortune in these exact same institutions. They will be lauded and given wealth and opportunity beyond measure.

All your examples are just ignorance of what the scientists are actually talking about and what they're doing. Blaming them for that is, well, ridiculous. Judging from what you've written you have a lot of knowledge of this subject missing, so no wonder you get so confused. It would look like a scam to me, too, if I knew as little as you do on the subject. I don't mean to sound rude, but there is simply no other way to put it.

The fact you will ignore scientific discoveries because they sound weird to you and confuse the evening news with scientific journals speaks more of your grasp of science than any science in particular.

And yes, people who actively deny scientific findings (using a medium born from the same method) will usually garner criticism, and rightly so. The irony is palpable.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[CrimsonAvenger]

For the rest: all the calculations that were done previously using Newton's laws: the force needed to change the speed of an (not relativistic) object (cars, trains, elements of a machine...) are STILL calculated using newtons law.

I take it you are unaware that you have to take Relativity into account when determining satellite orbits?

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[clonehappy]

Fuck you.

How eloquently you have rebutted the GP's argument. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

Regardless, weather isn't climate, so fuck both of you.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[AthanasiusKircher]

By the way, as a further set of datapoints, I'd have a look at this NOAA report with a list of months with greatest deviations from the previous global average.

You'll note that 8 of the top 10 of them occurred in the past 5 years. And this report is from September, so once October is included, it will likely be 9/10 of the most significant upward deviations occurred in the past few years.

One October data point is not the news. The issue is that data point taken in context of the larger and well-established trend.

Re: Climate has never not been changing.

[silentcoder]

Its really easy to falsify. Put some co2 in a jar. Put some ordinary air in another jar. Leave both in the sun for an hour. Measure their temperature.
If the co2 jar is not hotter than the air jar as predicted then you falsified the theory. Good luck with that.
Everything else is basic thermodynamics.. if the rate at which energy leaves the system is reduced it heats up. No matter how big or complex the system. Of course you could try to disprove thermodynamics instead...

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

Don't get too excited, we're in a pretty strong El Nino, it's supposed to be unseasonably warm, I'm worried that it's not warmer. The Warmists are grasping at straws because even the El Nino hasn't broken the pause, there still hasn't been any statistically significant warming in the RSS satellite data for 223 months.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[pipingguy]

Therefore, end capitalism!

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[phantomfive]

I know this will get me modded down on /. But that is why I've come to seriously doubt the idea of anthropocentric global warming over the last several years, and why I have come to believe that the issue is more about religious zealotry and social agendas than actual science.

The key is to recognize what is supported by evidence, and what is still hypothesis.

Strongly supported: adding CO2 to the atmosphere will generally cause warming.
Hypothesis: adding CO2 will cause so much warming that there will be a disaster.
Hypothesis: our computer models can accurately predict the climate of the future.

A lot of people have trouble with the idea that parts of AGW theory can be well established, but other parts are highly conjectural. It's ok to accept some parts while doubting other parts.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[BECoole]

Not the point.
Point: it's never changed this fast, and it's our fault.
Denier doesn't get it, news at 11:05.

What are you talking about? Climate has changed in a matter of hours.

Mastodons have been found frozen with summer fruit still in their mouths. That means they were in a temperate climate one moment and within the next few hours, frozen for the next several thousand years.

Re: Climate has never not been changing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the earth is a mason jar.

Facepalm!

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[smooth wombat]

"How come you can make-um snowballs in summertime?"

"Well, you see Hiawatha, it's too cold to make 'em in the winte'."

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[CaptainLard]

The "Science" of Physics was "settled" back in the time of Issac Newton.

It still is! Newton's laws work just fine for explaining pretty much anything a human can put their hands on. Einstein took it a step further to explain what humans can put their advanced instruments on.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[pipingguy]

"I know this will get me modded down on /. But that is why I've come to seriously doubt the idea of anthropocentric global warming over the last several years, and why I have come to believe that the issue is more about religious zealotry and social agendas than actual science."

Bingo! Of course, your comment in fact did get modded up, so this upmod too, is further evidence of catastrophic climate change.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[AmiMoJo]

The deniers will only ever be happy if we build a second earth, reset it to 1800 and re-run the last couple of hundred years with the industrial revolution as a baseline for comparison.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[pipingguy]

"It's not an echo chamber, it's science. If someone can demonstrate AGW is not happening, they will find fame and fortune in these exact same institutions. They will be lauded and given wealth and opportunity beyond measure."

Pull the other one.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[allcoolnameswheretak]

North America has often been getting our (Europe) dose of winter the last couple of years. Last couple of years temperatures where I live never got below the freezing point. Now its mid November and we have been getting almost 20 degrees C (68F) on some days. In central Europe winters have been noticeably warmer and we barely get any snow anymore.

Seriously, anyone doubting climate change and global warming, simply educate yourself and read the Wikipedia articles on it. They are scientific, to the point and unbiased.

Unless you are one of those people who think that reality and science has a liberal bias... then there is no helping you.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Billly Gates]

A science denier is the US is religious and feel God is saying otherwise and think scientists have an ideological agenda because they don't deny evolution.

This started due to Reagan courting them in 1980 and creating the religious right. When oil interests lobby it is merged with religious theology as it came mingled together.

This is dangerous as their eternal security is at stake for thinking differently from the church which is one with this. So expect strong opposition and shows how screwed up the right became by merging religion for power

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[CaptainLard]

The problem that I have with anthropogenic global warming is that it started out sounded like a science-based issue, but it has since moved into the realm that's more reminiscent of a religion (complete with established dogma, punishment of heretics, an apocalyptic theology, etc.).

So what? The science is still there no matter how much perceived crap is on top of it! The greenhouse effect still traps radiated heat from sources such as incident light (see: your car with the windows up in the sun). CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas in atmosphere (see: Venus). The carbon cycle has recorded itself in all sorts of ways so we have a general picture of whats "normal" (see: tree rings, ice cores, fossil record). Humans are currently contributing carbon to the atmosphere that is NOT part of the usual cycle (see: oil rigs digging 5 miles into the earth) but was sequestered a long time ago when conditions were drastically different.

If you stop worrying about how some guy says some data point may be off by 0.3% and look at what we know about the physical world we occupy it should be obvious that we should be spending time and money on reducing our carbon footprint.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because, according to AGW zealots, EVERYTHING is evidence of AGW. And AGW has exactly ZERO contraindications.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Chas]

Sorry?

Wikipedia?

Unbiased?

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

When somebody like you calls the adjusted, normalized field data average monthly temperature data, my head just wants to explode. Even the Climatologists call it "Data product".

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[swillden]

Not the point. Point: it's never changed this fast, and it's our fault.

Actually, your point is half false, and half irrelevant.

Greenland ice core records show that the planet has, in relatively recent history (geologically), seen much faster temperature changes. Up to a 7C rise in 40 years, IIRC, and without any obvious cause. That's the false part.

The irrelevant part is whether or not it's our fault. Suppose we had exactly the same temperature rise, with potentially exactly the same impacts on human life, but that it happened due to some sequence of events that we did not cause. Would that mean that we should sit back and do nothing about it?

Of course not. If your house is burning down, it doesn't matter whether you started it or not, you put out the damned fire.

In this case, we need to understand that the planet's climate is not and has never been stable. We have compelling evidence that it not only has been dramatically hotter and colder, but also that human-affecting changes can happen on human time scales. This means that we must either learn to stabilize the climate, or accept that we're going to have to live with whatever chance brings us, or some combination of the two.

Now is a really good time to start learning to actively manage the climate. We've proven that we can affect it, the next step is to work on affecting it in ways that benefit us, rather than harm us.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[oh_my_080980980]

douche bag post comment...news at 11....

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

Well, yes and no. Yes in relativistic environments (near light speed) you get a different physics. But this is only applicable to elementary particles and the like.

I suppose that is why "correctly accounted for the "anomalous" precession of the perihelion of Mercury" (Tests of general relativity) was one of the first bits of supporting evidence for General Relativity, the planet Mercury is hardly an elementary particle.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[CaptainLard]

I personally haven't touched a satellite (who's orbit is reasonably approximated by Newton), a transistor on a die or felt a photon quatumly interact with the electrons in my hand but I have thrown a baseball, driven in a car, sat at my desk, and basically moved around the earth in a way that Newton can closely describe.

I'm guessing you're in high school (or closely removed from) based on your attitude and mention of the SAT and your 100% or nothing view of the world. Someday you'll see it helps to look at things with a little nuance. Till then carry on splitting hairs for inconsequential victories while letting everyone know you're angry in your well fed and sheltered existence.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[hey!]

The problem that I have with anthropogenic global warming is that it started out sounded like a science-based issue, but it has since moved into the realm that's more reminiscent of a religion (complete with established dogma, punishment of heretics, an apocalyptic theology, etc.).

It's easy to have this perception if you haven't really been following the details of the debate, other the bowdlerized version in the (now emasculated) press.

The debate goes back over a hundred years. AGW was well and thoroughly debunked in the early 20th century, and on solid scientific grounds. For example it was "known" that CO2 was in equilibrium between the oceans and the atmosphere; the bulk of any increase in atmospheric CO2 would be absorbed into the oceans.

So what happened? Well, lots of things. Oceanographers went out and observed the ocean and realized that it's buffering capacity was much less than thought. We gained access to the upper atmosphere, which debunked the scientific consensus that increases in surface temperature would get mixed away. In the 50s we got the technology to make precise enough measurements of atmospheric CO2 to track its increase. And from the 60s on we gained the ability to track and correlate large bodies of data whereas researchers until then were limited to manually processing small quantities of data with pencil and paper. That's the most important point and I'll come back to it in a moment.

AGW became a political issue when An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, and it seemed to many of us like everything we learned about climate in our obsolete 1960s textbooks was being tossed out overnight. But it wasn't overnight. If you go back and follow the debate from the mid-50s using Google Scholar you'll see it took almost four hard-fought decades for the overwhelming consensus of scientific opinion to shift from against to in favor of AGW.

Well, what about the "dogmatic" dismissal of all the evidence against AGW? Well, complex systems always generate contradictory-looking data points. Let's say we tracked the state of the retail economy heading into the Great Depression by following a single representative company: Woolworths. The worse people said things were getting in "the economy", the more out of touch with reality they'd seem to us to be: Woolworth's gross sales in the so-called "Great Depression" kept going up. But if you looked at the big picture consumer spending had plummeted by 25% and retail prices had taken a nose dive, and this explains while Woolworths was thriving; it was displacing traditional retailers with higher overhead that couldn't survive the shock.

Much of the "debunking" climate data -- where it stands up to scrutiny -- is of this sort. For example take a look at this graph of temperatures in Greenland. The temperature spike you see at 1000 YBP is the famous "Medieval Warm Period", and if you go back to 7000 YBP and 8000 YBP it was even warmer. So does that disprove that the world is getting warmer? Are climate scientists who shrug this off being dogmatic?

No, because Greenland isn't the whole world; nor is the North Atlantic region that warmed in the MWP. This gets back to my point about data processing; you need to crunch a lot of data to get the global picture, which as far as we know looks like this.

It seems dogmatic if scientists don't believe what we want to be true and which we can back up with evidence. But there's always evidence in something like climate to support any position you'd like to take. It's the pattern of evidence that matters.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[TonyXL]

So basically whatever happens (more snow, less snow, more ice, less ice, etc.) the cause can be attributed to global warming. Got it.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Jason Levine]

No. Not everything is attributable to global warming. However, the mere presence of snow in one place at one time doesn't disprove global warming. If it did, then I could prove that nobody is starving in the world because I'm feeling full right now.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[NetNed]

True science doesn't use the term "Deniers" to describe those that question methods used and not used to come to their conclusion. Religion uses terms like that.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Mike Van Pelt]

Denier doesn't get it, news at 11:05.

But nuclear is still off the table. Arithmetic denier still doesn't get it that the alternatives are (1) coal, (2) nuclear, or (3) end of technological civilization. News at 11:06.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[tnk1]

I think that is mostly incorrect.

Yes, many religious people are conservative, but I have yet to see where God has made a pronouncement on AGW. In fact, the Catholic Church seems pretty accepting of the possibility that it is happening.

The real problem is that they feel that this is a political issue, not a scientific one because the science is hard to grasp and easy to misrepresent. At the same time, they feel that a crisis is being rammed down their throat in order to push an agenda which increases government regulation and oversight over what people are doing.

To most people, these pronouncements on AGW are effectively taken on faith, not investigation. Yes, you can read lots of peer reviewed papers, but all that says is that some other scientist agrees with the author. If that produces something tangible like a cell phone, these people will eat that stuff up. If all it does is produce calls for a policy agenda that they don't like, you don't have to believe anything religious about it to be suspicious about it.

That's why people keep trying to point at this or that weather system as "proof" or "refutation", even though climate change is going to be much more complicated than a simple hot or cold spell. They don't understand the science, and they are less inclined to go along with it unless they can somehow touch it.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[riverat1]

People who believe that satellite data is the gold standard for temperatures don't understand all the manipulations and adjustments required to produce a temperature from the microwave emissions of O2 molecules in the atmosphere. They require far more adjustments then surface temperature measurements with thermometers. Even one of the principle scientists for RSS, Carl Mears says he trusts the surface temperature records more than the satellite records.

A similar, but stronger case can be made using surface temperature datasets, which I consider to be more reliable than satellite datasets (they certainly agree with each other better than the various satellite datasets do!). Link

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Stephan Schulz]

"You can believe every single major american scientific society, or you can believe the senator with the snowball"

Re: Climate has never not been changing.

[silentcoder]

You think there is something magical about mason jars that make them defy the laws of physics ? Or is it the earth that somehow magically follows different rules ?

We use those rules to predict the core temperatures of SUNS. They work for everything, in the same way, that's why we call them "laws" of physics.

They aren't the "suggestions" of physics. They are not the "guesses" of physics".

But trust a denier to somehow believe they are the wishful thinking of physics.

The laws of thermodynamics do not change depending on the size of the system.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Stephan Schulz]

Does that mean we are all going to die if we don't elect more democrats?

Not the point. You don't get to ignore reality because it has implications that seem inconvenient to some political positions, and or some entrenched interests. There are plenty of free market approaches to manage pollution, as long as you are willing to grow out of the inane assumption that a) the capacity of the world is infinite and b) you have a natural right to dump your pollution onto the rest of us.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Stephan Schulz]

Not the point. Point: it's never changed this fast, and it's our fault.

Actually, your point is half false, and half irrelevant.

Greenland ice core records show that the planet has, in relatively recent history (geologically), seen much faster temperature changes. Up to a 7C rise in 40 years, IIRC, and without any obvious cause. That's the false part.

Greenland ice core records show changes in the temperature in, well, Greenland, and really only in some very few spots we sample in Greenland. "The planet" is about 235 times larger than Greenland (by surface area), To visualise this:

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppgpppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

ppppppppppppppp

pppppppppp

Can you even spot Greenland (the "g")? I find it somewhat interesting that the same people who complain about insufficient coverage with weather stations or proxy samples used in the standard climate and temperature reconstructions that show global warming are happy to make wild suggestions about climate based on very few and limited samples if those support their denial. As e.g. "Pluto is warming! It's the sun!" - based on two (2) very indirect measurements of local density of Pluto's atmosphere during transits of Pluto in front of stars. No, not measurements of temperature, just of local atmospheric density...

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[NetNed]

So tell me this, the claim last year was that is was the warmest year ever by .02 degrees Celsius. Nasa said that number had a 38% chance of being right and a accuracy tolerance of ± .1 degree Celsius. That's pretty simple math there. No need for Newton's laws or Einstein's theories. When a tolerance is higher then the number claimed, do you know the chances of that number being right? If you think it could lots of engineers and mathematicians the world over would like to have a chat with you.


BTW, science doesn't use the word "denier", but religion does. ;-)

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[swillden]

Antarctic ice core records confirm the Greenland results. Yeah, just two points, but points rather far apart, so it at least not a localized phenomenon.

Anyway, what is it that you're trying to argue? That rapid climate change cannot possibly happen without human intervention? Please see my second point, about why anthropogenesis or the lack thereof is irrelevant.

Climate change is occurring. We don't want it do. We must do something about it. The cause of the change really doesn't matter, except insofar as it might point us towards a potential solution... but it's obvious that merely reducing carbon output is *not* going to be enough, so the solution to which it points us is insufficient. We must do more.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[riverat1]

Don't worry. 2015 is going to blow last years record out of the water and if the strong El Nino years of 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 are any indication 2016 will be even warmer. In 2020 the climate science denier's meme will probably be "no warming since 2016".

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

And just to forestall anyone replying to you with "lots of snow means no global warming": Warmer air means it can hold more moisture. This leads to more precipitation. ...

So does that mean California's several-year drought is evidence against global warming? B-)

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Stephan Schulz]

Antarctic ice core records confirm the Greenland results. Yeah, just two points, but points rather far apart, so it at least not a localized phenomenon.

I'd love to see your sources for simultaneous temperature changes by 7 degree C in 40 years in both Greenland and the Antarctic. I'm not aware of these, but I certainly may have missed them.

Anyway, what is it that you're trying to argue? That rapid climate change cannot possibly happen without human intervention? Please see my second point, about why anthropogenesis or the lack thereof is irrelevant.

I'm arguing that our best evidence is that the current episode of climate change is likely unprecedented, and that it is largely anthropogenic. I'm sure that the Chicxulub impactor also had a massive (if different) influence on climate, but I'd like to get through this warming episode without the predominant life form taking a major hit.

Climate change is occurring. We don't want it do. We must do something about it. The cause of the change really doesn't matter, except insofar as it might point us towards a potential solution... but it's obvious that merely reducing carbon output is *not* going to be enough, so the solution to which it points us is insufficient. We must do more.

I'd certainly rather stop messing with a critical system that we only partially understand than to try to actively mess with it. Biosphere 2 should tell us that it is not easy to actively control an ecosystem. Especially if we don't seem to agree on the cause of the change in the first place - your "except insofar as it might point us towards a potential solution" is not a trivial aside.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

What I like best about satellite data vs surface station is surface stations generally (but not always) compute "average" for a day by Tave = (Tmax-Tmin)/2+Tmin resulting in a synthetic number based on a very temporally sparse dataset, then these temporally sparse averages and adjusted by ill defined methods. the data product is also spatially inhomogeneous so the products are gridded. There are numerous thermometers in North America and Europe, few in Africa, Asia and South America, and almost none on the oceans. Data gridding has the effect of spreading the ill-defined adjustments over great distances, often as much as 1200Km but normalises the data into 3 degree cells which are then again averaged to get a global temperature. Most most cases averaging, averages is also a poor technique.

So I consider surface station data both temporally and spatially sparse, subjected to manipulations that are less than forthright and in ways that are mathematically dubious.

Satellites on the other hand sweep the Earth every 98 minutes, the temperature sensing radiometer is frequently recalibrated to both a platinum wire thermometer and the cosmic background. the Dataset is rich both spatially and temporally and little gridding is required.

Additionally Mears and Spencer don't automatically trust their results, as you pointed out, which I think means they are more objective in it's handling.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[david_thornley]

So go find the raw data. There's plenty of it available.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[david_thornley]

There is going to be a year whose measurements are the highest. That was what they meant. The measurements can be unrepresentative in some cases, and so there's always going to be fuzzy measurements. Also, barring catastrophic heating, one year is not likely to smash previous records; it's going to be a little warmer than the previous warming year. Hence the numbers you're having problems with.

Exactly what did NASA say about the accuracy tolerance? Was it that the global temperature could be off by that much? If the measurements have a fixed bias, there's no problem, since what we're interested in is how they change.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[david_thornley]

That term isn't used for people who question the methods used. That term is used for people who refuse to believe that AGW could be happening, and who are willing to believe that 97% of climate scientists are politically motivated liars more than they're willing to believe what's happening.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[IceAgeComing]

All those articles mentioned are actually just blog posts. The article hopes you will lose interest and not actually look those papers up in your closest university library. Because they will not be there.

The link you posted has been analyzed and shredded to pieces already, so please update your bookmarks:

https://greenfyre.wordpress.co...

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[david_thornley]

More to the point, our experiences are of small dots on the globe. Where I live, we had a cool summer, but that was certainly not true across the world.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Rakarra]

So, Im in Texas and it was the coolest, wettest summer I've ever experienced!

This is due to the high-pressure systems in the Pacific that are caused by unusually warm waters in the West Pacific Ocean. That feeds a high-pressure ridge that pushes storms that usually would hit the US West Coast north into the Arctic instead, where they get chilled and then head back south through the Midwest. It's a large factor in both the West's deep drought, as well as the storms that absolutely socked the South, Midwest, and Northeastern US in the last couple years. All thanks to warm water elsewhere! Fortunately, that's created a temperator differential which has fed what looks to be a record El Nino this year, so it's likely the West will get the flooding they need, and that might give the rest of the US a break.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Rakarra]

Fine, then how about NOAA, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Japan's Meteorological Agency agreeing Jan-Mar 2015 to be the hottest Jan-Mar on record, globally of course. Abnormal high temperatures in Europe, Asia, Western Canada, Alaska, and the Western US, while abnormal cold temperatures hit central and eastern US and Canada.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Rakarra]

This is what got Galileo in trouble, for example. It wasn't that he was interested in the Copernican mathematical model -- the Church was fine with people using whatever mathematical predictive models they wanted. But Galileo was tried because he wanted to assert that he had found the TRUE order of the cosmos, not merely a better mathematical model.

Well, that and he basically called the pope a simpleton in his writing. The pope didn't lead the charge to get Galileo in trouble, but he stopped protecting him from those who were.

Re: Climate has never not been changing.

[Rakarra]

Thank you, Roland Emmerich, but you should really register a Slashdot account.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[riverat1]

So I consider surface station data both temporally and spatially sparse, subjected to manipulations that are less than forthright and in ways that are mathematically dubious.

I don't get that you would think the adjustments to surface temperatures are less than forthright. They are well documented in the relevant papers about the adjustments.

Here is a NOAA page on their temperature data.

This page at Berkeley Earth describes their data set and some of the adjustments.

As far as the sparseness of some regions of the globe goes we don't care so much what the actual temperature is globally as much as we care about how it's changing over time. If the global temperature is derived in a consistent manner then it's probably a reasonable representation of temperature change.

Satellites because of their orbital inclination don't cover the polar regions at all and have to deal with issues of observation angle for near polar readings. Also they have to make adjustments for clouds and high elevations messing up their readings.

I don't disbelieve the satellite readings, I just don't see any good reason to trust them over the surface measurements, particularly over the time period since the satellites went up (1979) when the surface systems have also been improved to higher standards.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Most of the articles I read, especially on scientific topics, are written in a professional, yes, unbiased, matter-of-fact way.

But of course, if your perception has been decalibrated so much off common-sense that scientific statements seem "biased" to you, then there might be something wrong with your sensory input stimuli. I believe one of the most common cases of this psychological disorder in the US is prolonged exposure to Fox News channel.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Mr.CRC]

The scientific method has no bias. But if you think that the human implementation of the scientific method is free from bias, then there is no helping you either. Humans don't suddenly become saints when doing science.

P.S. What I said in no way implies any particular view on AGW.

Re: Climate has never not been changing.

[Mr.CRC]

I found some variables on the floor. Did you loose them?

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Mr.CRC]

If we have models that predict AGW, then why is climate engineering a bad idea compared to political means, for which there are no working predictive models at all? At least climate engineering would be science based.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[BoogieChile]

Ahh, the old Gish Gallop> , eh? Never gets old, that one.

I'll just leave this here. Your sea ice claims are well wrong.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[scruffy]

The "Science" of Physics was "settled" back in the time of Issac Newton.

What bullshit! The problem with gravity, its mysterious action st a distance, continues to this day. Physicists are still looking for gravity waves/gravitons with no success yet.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

http://www.vancouversun.com/te... [vancouversun.com]
64 temperature records smashed in B.C.
Weather experts are now predicting June will be Vancouver's hottest on record
Vancouver Sun June 30, 2015

How eloquently you have rebutted the GP's argument. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

Why yes, I have. Thank you. And Fuck off.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Eunuchswear]

Additionally Mears and Spencer don't automatically trust their results, as you pointed out, which I think means they are more objective in it's handling.

given how often they've fucked up tha's not supprising.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Eunuchswear]

The M&M Critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index: Update and Implications (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 16, Number 1, pp. 69-100, January 2005)
- Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick

E&E? Peer reviewed?

Hahaha...

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Eunuchswear]

So, when exactly was the last coldest month on record?

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Eunuchswear]

Wow. A list of names. Where does any of that describe E&E's reviewing policy?

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Eunuchswear]

It's not like they have a webpage that lists the global mean temperature for every month going back 100 years.

They don't? http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Eunuchswear]

Strange. Nowhere in there is the word "peer" or "review".

Boy, do you know how to cut'n'paste though.

I'm following my political agenda -- a bit, anyway. But isn't that the right of the editor?

-- Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen.

had we known then how that outlet would evolve beyond 1999 we certainly wouldn’t have published there

-- Roger Pielke Jr.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Eunuchswear]

Wow, you mean that:

It's articles like these that are meant to stir climate hysteria given the fact that 1) the record only goes back to 1880 which 2) gives any day, week, month or year a very high chance of either becoming the coolest or warmest on record given how short the time frame is.

is total bollocks, the coldest months on record all happened long ago while the hottest ones are all happening now.

Who would have guessed it.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[ssam]

He said "Newton's laws work just fine for explaining pretty much anything a human can put their hands on".
So it would seem that you are the idiot who can't read. Someone needs to go back to pedant school.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Chas]

Ah, the old "You must watch Fox" canard.

No. Sorry, my commentary was simply on the perceived lack of bias by Wikipedia and it's editorial staff.

Nothing more.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

I don't get that you would think the adjustments to surface temperatures are less than forthright. They are well documented in the relevant papers about the adjustments.

Because the raw unaltered field data is unavailable, so nobody can replicate the adjustments to confirm that the adjustments made are actually the adjustments described in the relevant, even the
U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) are Quality Controlled Datasets, and the bottom line is I just plain don't trust the "Rockstar" Climatologists
Karl and Peterson refuse congressional subpoena,
Mann is a narcissistic asshole who blocked me on Facebook for no good reason, I simply said "Well Doctor, discovery will be interesting" in a thread about Mann vs. Steyn, The Climategate Emails revealed them to be sophomoric at best, conspiring to perpetrate a con on the world at worst wasting billions of us taxpayers money.
There is nothing there that convinces me that anything published by any "Working Climatologist" as Lewandowski et al said should be trusted as accurate without overwhelming evidence and Cronie reviewed papers hiding behind a paywall isn't my definition of overwhelming evidence.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[NetNed]

ITS MATH!!!! When a tolerance is bigger then the number claimed that means the number claimed has NO CHANCE of being even close to accurate. The tolerance given was enough that it could have also been the coldest year ever. NASA produced those numbers after the first announcement and barely any news source posted them, because frankly it would pour water on the flames of the claim. It's false advertising. Seriously, look up tolerances and how they work. Science is and always has been debatable otherwise we'd all think the world was still flat. Math has it's room for debates, but tolerances is not one of them.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

And last month was the hottest month on record, but they were only 38% certain.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[swalve]

The Catholic Church is, in a lot of areas, the religious left. There are some exceptions. But they have been more for science than against it over the years. Your evangelicals? Not so much.

Here is why the religious don't like the idea of anthrogenic global warming (as well of a lot of conservationism/ecological problems): as the story goes, God made the earth for us. All the rocks and plants and animals are there for us to enjoy and make use of. Now, God is omnipotent, they assure us. So if God is omnipotent and created the earth for us, He and His Noodly Appendages would never allow us to fuck up the planet to the point that it would threaten our survival or comfort. We live in God's walled garden. He won't let us do anything that would permanently harm that garden.

So, to suggest that we DO have the power to affect the earth itself is denying the power of God.

We will never win by arguing with people who reject the premise of the argument. Zealots of all kinds need to be nodded at, patted on the head and ignored.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[dryeo]

Actually I believe it was first used for the germ theory of disease deniers, people who were in denial that little living things could cause illness or even existed and refused to even look in a microscope, little well experiment by washing their hands before entering the operating or birthing room.
The history of the germ theory of disease is quite interesting, at first most of the evidence was statistical in nature, acceptance would be expensive and mean the changing of habits so well respected scientists, surgeons and such were in total denial about it as it is expensive to move and fix water supplies, and the very idea of washing your hands before surgery or after using the toilet was revolting to some.
Here we are now and most everyone accepts that some diseases are caused by invisible beings and it is a good idea to practice cleanliness.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[riverat1]

Because the raw unaltered field data is unavailable, ...

Have you looked here. They certainly haven't thrown out the original raw data. That's the base starting point for any adjustments they make.

You may not trust climate scientists but have you ever considered the size of the conspiracy that would be required to perpetrate such a fraud? At least thousands of scientists over the whole world for at least the past 30 or 40 years? If they're that good at it you might as well give up.

I don't disagree that Mann has a prickly personality but the trial has nothing to do with his science. It's about Steyn accusing Mann of "molesting" the data in an obvious comparison to Jerry Sandusky who was also at Penn State. Discovery in the trial won't find any evidence of scientific malfeasance just as all of the other investigations of Mann and the Climategate emails found essentially nothing.

The paywalls on scientific papers is unfortunate but if nothing else you can go to the libraries of most research universities and read them. Even if they're behind paywalls.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

As of today, the warm ocean temperatures that define El Niño have surged to a stunning three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than normal in the central tropical Pacific, the highest level ever measured. By one measure, this wicked El Niño is the strongest ever recorded: What it means

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[riverat1]

Individual scientists may have their biases but when you get more than a few of them together the biases tend to cancel out.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

And just to forestall anyone replying to you with "lots of snow means no global warming": Warmer air means it can hold more moisture. This leads to more precipitation. ...

So does that mean California's several-year drought is evidence against global warming? B-)

What part of "can hold" did you not understand? The "can" part?

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

Don't get too excited, we're in a pretty strong El Nino, it's supposed to be unseasonably warm, I'm worried that it's not warmer.

Bwahaha. You mean like 1998 was a extremely strong El Nino - and there supposedly was no warming since 1998? Well, apart from this year, which is much warmer than 1998.

From two years on, you will claim "No warming since 2015".

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

I sat at lunch, at Princeton, while you were still still swimming around in your dad's balls

You were a janitor at Princeton, and now you are a senile old git, is that you point? Not understanding a sentence containing the phrase "pretty much" says much more about you than the claim you just made.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

True science doesn't use the term "Deniers" to describe those that question methods used and not used to come to their conclusion. Religion uses terms like that.

And it gets used for people who repeatedly deny facts. Even by true Scotsman scientists.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Mr.CRC]

If you assume random biases. What is the basis for that?

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[riverat1]

Probably better than assuming all the bias is in one direction. One of the best ways to make your name in science is to discover something that makes a significant change to the current dogma.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

Bwahaha. You mean like 1998 was a extremely strong El Nino - and there supposedly was no warming since 1998? Well, apart from this year, which is much warmer than 1998.

From two years on, you will claim "No warming since 2015".

This year, It looks like your definition of much warmer and mine must differ, what I see is BEST and GISTEMP show slight warming, every other is nearly flat or slightly cooling like RSS. There is even discussions about whether the warming prior to the 1998 El Nino was statistically significant.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

Bwahaha. You mean like 1998 was a extremely strong El Nino - and there supposedly was no warming since 1998? Well, apart from this year, which is much warmer than 1998.

From two years on, you will claim "No warming since 2015".

This year, It looks like your definition of much warmer and mine must differ, what I see is BEST and GISTEMP show slight warming, every other is nearly flat or slightly cooling like RSS. There is even discussions about whether the warming prior to the 1998 El Nino was statistically significant.

Too bad you didn't actually look at the data, you would have seen that some of the WFT series are sadly a "little" out of date. Both WTI and BEST don't contain any 2015 data.

Leaves us with 3 series, two showing an obvious climb in temperature, and one showing a small decrease. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g...

And that last series happens to be RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_3 - and it doesn't show actual surface temp, but some convoluted calculation of temperature in the lower troposphere using microwave radiance: "TLT is constructed by calculating a weighted difference between MSU2 (or AMSU5) measurements from near limb views and measurements from the same channels taken closer to nadir, as can be seen in Figure 2 for the case of MSU. This has the effect of extrapolating the MSU2 (or AMSU5) measurements lower in the troposphere, and removing most of the stratospheric influence. Because of the difference involves measurements made at different locations, and because of the large absolute values of the weights used, additional noise is added by this process, increasing the uncertainty in the final results."

But because it shows just what deniers want to see, it's the one series they like.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[budgenator]

As I said, "It looks like your definition of much warmer [woodfortrees.org] and mine must differ, " because all I see is some "It might be getting warmer but it hard to tell for sure" and it certainly not Apocalyptic thermogheddon warmer.

Re:Climate has never not been changing.

[Plumpaquatsch]

You know what: you cling to your not-really-temperature-of-the-air-3-miles-up is going down, and I'll stick to actual thermometers at 6 feet above ground going up, and we'll see if you will claim "no warming since 2016" in 4 years as I predicted.

2016

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome! I'll book my holiday for October!

Back to the future..

[malkavian]

Nice to know that next year will be even warmer.. I've been enjoying the warm October we've had here in 2015..

Re:Back to the future..

[Anonymous Coward]

October 2016 is so hot that the heat has flowed back through time to make the scientists start sweating it today.

Re:Back to the future..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just over in WI, and my energy bills are going up because super cold winters and super hot summers. The avg may have only gone up a little bit, but the std-dev has gone crazy.

Re:Back to the future..

[jones_supa]

Same here in Finland...some days of last month felt almost summery.

Re:Back to the future..

[PopeRatzo]

keeping academics awash in a government funding jackpot

Those filthy rich scientists, awash in money. Yes, they're the problem. Greedy goddamn climate scientists and their grubby-handed grad student research assistants. Living like kings while the honest energy industry has to scratch out a subsistence with nothing but hard work and grit.

I'll tell you, this world is upside-down.

Re:Back to the future..

[dave420]

You seem to be in the "I don't understand it, but from my limited personal experience and assumption of knowledge I'm pretty sure it'll be fine" camp.

Anything that helps reduce your heating bills is fine with you? So you'd be fine with someone murdering you then, as that will lower your bills to 0 indefinitely - clearly there are limits to what you'd accept to lower your bills. Hyperbole aside, the warming you are experiencing comes with a price, and that price is a lot more than your heating bills. No-one is denying the climate hasn't changed in the past, only that when it has changed this quickly we weren't around to experience it, and that a climate change will mess up humanity's requirements from the land - such as farming where we have the suitable land, infrastructure, and skills to make use of it. Our crops are also suited to our current climate - more CO2 and heat will cause lower staple crop yields, and make pests more dangerous to the crops.

But I guess you can ignore all the science, focus on your temporary heating bill dip, and be happy. That's easier and doesn't require all this horrible thinking.

Re:Back to the future..

[kwiecmmm]

The Earth has feedback mechanisms to keep things cozy.

Yeah but these feedback mechanisms have serious consequences as well.

The oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic because they are absorbing some of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

The warmer oceans are causing some species to die off http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/unusual-warming-kills-gulf-of-maine-cod-151029.htm

And we don't know what all of these feedback mechanisms are going to be and what their consequences are going to be either. But if we start having mass die-offs of phytoplankton, most animals will die off including us.

Earth's feedback mechanisms, are made to cope with temperature change over tens of thousands of years, not in a century or two. So either we can change now to help stabilize this change before it gets really bad or we can just sit back and watch it happen and continually adapt to all of the changes, while we kill off a lot of different species and alter the planet completely.

Re:Back to the future..

[Anonymous Coward]

How many hundreds of millions of dollars did Al Gore make off that scam again?

Re:Back to the future..

[Coren22]

He lives in a mansion and flies around in his own personal jet, so it must have been pretty lucrative. When climate scientists have their conferences over videophones, maybe we can take them seriously.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Gore went from a net worth of $1.7 million to $200 million in a matter of 13 years...I wish my net worth grew like that.

Re:Back to the future..

[Coren22]

That was meant as a separate thought, but didn't get separated. I would never accuse Gore of being smart enough to be a climate scientist.

Re:Back to the future..

[sjames]

Just think of all of those stinging and biting insects that are not going to die now that the weather is milder.

Re:Back to the future..

[Coren22]

Did you actually read the comment I responded to, or are you spouting off like a "fucking moron"?

Re:Back to the future..

[Coren22]

He made millions by espousing an ideal that people need to cut their carbon emissions, while producing more carbon that (according to snopes) 12 average houses in the same region, and flying around in his own personal jet (which is an enormous waste of energy and maximizes his carbon emissions used on travel).

I am trying to point out that the man made millions off of being the largest hypocrite on the left.

Re:Back to the future..

[Coren22]

LOL, thanks APK for the new signature, it will look great with all your failures...

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:Back to the future..

[ebvwfbw]

Been to a campus lately? You'll probably get mad. I know the lab I used in the 1980s. It was just like it was in the 1940s. Today the entire campus it seems has been replaced by up to date everything. I bet even the mice are updated and new.

Re:Back to the future..

[PopeRatzo]

Been to a campus lately? You'll probably get mad. I know the lab I used in the 1980s. It was just like it was in the 1940s. Today the entire campus it seems has been replaced by up to date everything. I bet even the mice are updated and new.

It probably wouldn't do to use the same mice they used in the 1940's.

Re:Back to the future..

[Plumpaquatsch]

He lives in a mansion and flies around in his own personal jet, so it must have been pretty lucrative.

He lived in a mansion long before he ever heard of Global Warming. And he never owned his own personal jet for that matter, and mostly flies commercial these days.

Early release?

[JonnyCalcutta]

How did they get October 2016 a year early? Is there some kind of pre-release scheme I'm not aware of?

More importantly, should they really be releasing the results so long before the rest of us get some sweet October next year action? Its totally ruined the surprise.

Re:Early release?

[JonnyCalcutta]

Just to add - a simple typo like that is enough to give my conspiracy liking friends a hard on until next October.

Re:Early release?

[Nutria]

IIRC, back about 20 years ago, the Chinese released audio of a successful rocket launch a few minutes before the rocket actually launched. Big chuckle in the West. Reminded us all of Soviet fakery.

Re:Early release?

[Anonymous Coward]

W\hen failure is not an option, its perfectly logical to release the information beforehand.

Re:Early release?

[jones_supa]

It's not a typo. They reviewed October 2015 and made a prediction for October 2016.

Re:Early release?

[serviscope_minor]

How did they get October 2016 a year early? Is there some kind of pre-release scheme I'm not aware of?

No, no, it's the third release candidate, so it's feature complete. There were a couple of issues in the tracker that we had to work out, but it's on the whole pretty much identical to the final beta relase in 2012.

If you're still on that, there's no hurry to upgrade, since there were no CVEs between now and then. If however you're having a problem with excessive numbers of flying insects still being present, I suggest you upgrade as those bugs have been worked out and fixed.

Re:Early release?

[JonnyCalcutta]

Was it a good review? Should I pre-order or wait to get it on sale?

Why this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"Scientists track the global surface temperature, an average of readings from thermometers at approximately head height, and an estimate of sea surface temperatures, in order to track global warming. "

There hasn't been thermometers at approximately head height all over the world until about 8 years ago. In addition, the "estimate" of sea surface temperatures are done by models. And models have been proven to be complete utter bunk. How would they possibly have "estimated" what sea surface temperatures were from the 1880s? Therefore the conclusions reached are complete nonsense.

Although I 100% agree with AGW, the science is suspect.

Re:Why this is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, there would be measurements of sea surface temperatures over many decades. This is done for good reason.

Even before meteorology was a science, people had a good reason to want to know sea surface temperatures. They affect fishing, which is a source of money and food. In shipping routes, it would affect when they might see ice on the waters, which is a hazard. Sea surface temperatures were measured then. I'm aware of data sets going back to the 17th century. You can easily get this data online for free.

Today, ships still do measure sea surface temperature, in addition to buoys. This data is of particular interest in tropical regions because of the importance to hurricanes. Measurements are done as water is cycled through the engine rather than lowering a bucket overboard to sample the water. For that reason, there is a positive bias to the raw observations during the past several decades. As a result, the temperature record is actually revised downward in recent decades to counteract the observation bias. Despite what some people think, adjustments to the data to remove biases work both ways. Not all are upward. Also, global sea surface temperature data generally comes from the many satellites in orbit. This data set only goes back a few decades, but it's a great data set.

NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[Glock27]

That's amazing! Especially, given the complete lack of correlation with the satellite datasets:

UAH RSS

The satellite datasets directly integrate temperature over almost the entire globe, with no interpolation and no revisionist "adjustments". They use laboratory grade instruments, and are frequently calibrated against balloon soundings. And no, there is nothing magic as far as detecting temperature trends gained by measuring at ground level only.

It's beyond ironic that NASA is trumpeting ground-based measurements while ignoring better data gathered from space.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[tshawkins]

That's amazing! Especially, given the complete lack of correlation with the satellite datasets:

UAH
RSS

The satellite datasets directly integrate temperature over almost the entire globe, with no interpolation and no revisionist "adjustments". They use laboratory grade instruments, and are frequently calibrated against balloon soundings. And no, there is nothing magic as far as detecting temperature trends gained by measuring at ground level only.

It's beyond ironic that NASA is trumpeting ground-based measurements while ignoring better data gathered from space.

And the first satelite was launched when?

Ohhh certainly not in the late 1800's.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[Yoda222]

Which part of the statement "This October Was the Hottest Ever Measured" is the uah data supposed to completely "lack of correlation" with? When I look at the global temperature in the uah data (http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc_lt_5.6.txt , Globe column) and take only October (month=10), I see that October 2015 is indeed the warmer, with a delta of 0.57 degC with 1981-2010, where the previous warmest were 2012 and 2014 with 0.37 each.

It's relatively difficult to see that in your plot, as you give a plot with all temperatures, including October and the other 11 months of the year.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[Glock27]

That's amazing! Especially, given the complete lack of correlation with the satellite datasets:

UAH RSS

The satellite datasets directly integrate temperature over almost the entire globe, with no interpolation and no revisionist "adjustments". They use laboratory grade instruments, and are frequently calibrated against balloon soundings. And no, there is nothing magic as far as detecting temperature trends gained by measuring at ground level only.

It's beyond ironic that NASA is trumpeting ground-based measurements while ignoring better data gathered from space.

And the first satelite was launched when?

Ohhh certainly not in the late 1800's.

Certainly. However, since the last adjustments, the surface datasets of record have been diverging from the satellite measurements:

The Diverging Surface Thermometer and Satellite Temperature Records
The Diverging Surface Thermometer and Satellite Temperature Records Again

Interesting that this is taking place going into another big climate conference complete with demands for "climate justice", and also while we're on the eve of a solar Grand Minimum...

A quote from that last linked article:

Scientists at the Climate and Environmental Physics and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Berne in Switzerland have recently backed up theories that support the sun's importance in determining the climate on Earth. A paper published last year by the American Meteorological Society contradicts claims by IPCC scientists that the sun couldn't be responsible for major shifts in climate. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, rejected IPCC assertions that solar variations don't matter. Among the many studies and authorities she cited was the National Research Council's recent report "The Effects of Solar Variability on Earth's Climate".

Other researchers and organisations are also predicting global cooling - the Russian Academy of Science, the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Scientists, the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism Russia, Victor Manuel Velesco Herrera at the National University of Mexico, the Bulgarian Institute of Astronomy, Dr Tim Patterson at Carleton University in Canada, Drs Lin Zhen at Nanjing University in China, just to name a few.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[CaptainLard]

Lottery Commission: "Congratulations! You just won our largest ever estimated jackpot! $539M is greater than the next biggest jackpot by 0.08% +/- $2k! We'll know for sure in 2 weeks."
You: "Yawn. I only deal in absolutes and percentages greater than (some moving target)% and spend all my time pointing out anything less than perfect information delivered by time travelers from the future. As you can imagine the internet keeps me too busy to deal with that worthless jackpot."

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[Glock27]

The most important thing influencing policy in these datasets are the trends. Both major satellite datasets show much less of a warming trend from the mid-90's until now than the recently "adjusted" surface datasets. No doubt this is a strong El Niño, we'll see if it can beat the massive average temperature spike in 1998. It's not close so far.

It'll be interesting to see how things play out over the coming decades...

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[0xdeadbeef]

Click here for the warming trend scientists don't want you to know!

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[Yoda222]

So when you said before "complete lack of correlation", what you meant was "not 100% correlation", right?

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[pastafazou]

Just a quick question about this...if the satellite record shows .57 degC, and the GISS record shows a full degree, what does this mean, exactly? The discrepancy between the two values is greater than the error margins of the two sets. So how are we supposed to trust that the information is accurate, when we get contradicting values that go beyond the supposed error margins?

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[Yoda222]

The biggest difference is the reference. The GISS is the deviation with the mean measured between 1951-1980, and the satellite data use the mean between 1981-2010.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[CrimsonAvenger]

Ohhh certainly not in the late 1800's.

It should also be noted that in the late 1800's, the temp measurements were not made to modern standards of either accuracy or precision on a worldwide basis. Your point was?

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[bdeclerc]

1) Satellites don't measure the same thing as ground thermometers (satellites measure the lower troposphere in its entirety, surface thermometers measure the surface temp) so it's not entirely unsurprising they don't give identical numbers to within an error margin.

2) Satellites don't measure polar temperatures very well, and polar amplification makes the temps at particularly the north pole go up faster than average - so a lower total response from the satellite data is expected.

3) People are freaking out over minor adjustments to the surface record which are well-supported by evidence (for example corrections made for a change in the time-of-day of the measurements at some stations at some point, or stations moving from city-centers to airports outside the city center) but the whole satellite record itself is full of far bigger corrections, the raw data of the satellites isn't a directly measured temperature but a remote sensor reading, which is influenced by a whole bunch of internal (sensor drift) and external (observation angle, satellite orbital height, weather conditions) factors. It's almost a miracle that they manage to get a useful data-series out of these satellite sensors.

Honestly, the only reason deniers try to argue that the satellite record is "more accurate" is because it shows a higher peak in 1998 and less total warming, allowing them to fiddle with the results to make it appear there's no warming at all - except that nowadays even the satellite record no longer supports that conclusion.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[pipingguy]

The Klimate Kultists have a handy-dandy lookup table to respond to any questioning of their religion (but of course, they Fucking Love Science!).

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[bloodstar]

Surely you must realize that satellites do not measure temperature directly. Instead they measure various wavelengths of light, and then use a weighting system to interpret the data Of note, most of the spectral readings are of the lower troposphere and *not* the surface. Additionally, there is a major issue of contamination from cloud cover when trying to use satellite data. That you put forth the idea that there are no revision or interpolation or adjustments shows an appalling lack of understanding of exactly how satellite meteorology works.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[budgenator]

And the first satelite was launched when?

Ohhh certainly not in the late 1800's.

One-third of Man’s entire influence on climate since the Industrial Revolution has occurred since February 1997. Yet the 225 months since then show no global warming at all (Fig. 1). With this month’s RSS temperature record, the Pause beats last month’s record and now stands at 18 years 9 months.
Christopher Monckton of Brenchley

Climate model simulations that consider only natural solar variability and volcanic aerosols since 1750—omitting observed increases in greenhouse gases—are able to fit the observations of global temperatures only up until about 1950. After that point, the decadal trend in global surface warming cannot be explained without including the contribution of the greenhouse gases added by humans. Is Current Warming Natural?

Anything that happened before 1950 temperature wise in regards to human activity is buried under natural variability; so the reality is of the time when measuring a human influence was possible, there has not been any statistically significant warming for the third of the time while a third of all of the CO2 has been added by Humans is without apparent effect other than the planet becoming greener.

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[bdeclerc]

Article title "hottest ever measured", not "hottest in human history", so your objection is to your own imaginary headline, cool that, bro!

Re:NASA ignoring satellite measurements...

[Plumpaquatsch]

That's amazing! Especially, given the complete lack of correlation with the satellite datasets:

UAH RSS

The satellite datasets directly integrate temperature over almost the entire globe, with no interpolation and no revisionist "adjustments".

Bwahaha, that's a good one. First of all, they don't even measure temperature.

Great news for sceptics

[Yoda222]

This is a great news for "climate skeptics". They will be able to use the 2015 (or maybe 2016, if next year still benefits from el nino) for the next five years in the following sentence: "2015 was an outlier", and if the next el nino is not as strong as the current one, they will be able to use 2015 in their favorite argument in the 10 years after that: "the warming stop in 2015. There is a flat line if you use 2015 as reference".

2015 is the new 1998

.

Re:Great news for sceptics

[cbeaudry]

But... it is an outlier. What is your point?

If after this el nino, the avg. temperature curve is flat from about 1997 to present, with 3 el ninos in the mix and 2 large ones at that, it most certainly is an important observation.

The el nino is one thing, unfortunately for those cheering at "the warmest october evah", the la nina might just wipe the smirks of their faces... we'll just have to wait and see. Until then, the alarmists will be smiling and happy that nature is finally cooperating with their models for a brief period.

Re:Great news for sceptics

[geantvert]

This is unfortunate but you are probably right.
Hopefully, I may live long enough to assist to a clathrate gun event that would put an end to that nonsense.

   

Re:Great news for sceptics

[dave420]

There is a third type, too: People who are so convinced of their brilliance, but who are woefully ignorant of the science at hand. That mixture of arrogance and ignorance can cause people to deny something very obvious and spout all kinds of nonsensical ramblings in their own defence. There are plenty in this very discussion.

Re:Great news for sceptics

[danbob999]

But... it is an outlier. What is your point?

OK let say 2015 is an outlier. Then the hottest year ever recorded is 2014. And if 2014 is also an outlier, then 2010 and 2005 are both tied as the hottest years. Then 1998, 2013, 2003, 2002, 2006, 2009 and finally 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Why are all the hottest years in the 2000s (save 1998, which is close enough)? Why are all the coldest years before 1920? Sounds like a trend.

Re:Great news for sceptics

[tbannist]

But... it is an outlier. What is your point?

The point is that the same people who claimed for years that 1998 was an outlier that meant nothing, seamlessly switched to claiming that 1998 was so absolutely normal that it proves there has been no warming at all in (this year - 1998) years (or, in exceptionally dishonest cases, that it has been cooling since 1998).

Re:Data manipulation

[tshawkins]

Now here is man that actualy could do with a few weeks inside a tinfoil hat...

Tiny sample size, evolving measurement methodology

[kenh]

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that all the measurements are accurate, and that our data from 1880 is as accurate as today's data - it isn't, but let's just say that.

We have data that goes back about 135 years - how long has man been on the planet? The most 'conservative' estimates I've heard, which are resoundingly mocked by many here is around 10,000 years, which would put our sample size at about 1.35%. If man has been rolling around the planet longer than that (and we know he has), the sample size becomes even smaller.

So October 2016 was the warmest in the past 135 years... So what? If you're going to argue that a single anomalous weather event neither proves nor disproves 'climate change', how can you infer anything from data for one month out of 135 years, when the devices used to collect the data have improved in accuracy and scope over the sample period? (How did they average surface temperatures across the seas - they didn't have a global network of weather satellites for the first half of the sample period.)

Re:Glad to hear it.

[drinkypoo]

Just to fuck with the climate idiots I like to take a cigarette lighter to the local weather station. Look we had a record temperature of 500F we're all going to die like Al Gore said!!

Odds are that if you think you are surrounded by idiots and assholes, you are the asshole.

Re:Glad to hear it.

[RabidReindeer]

I don't like winter either, but running the A/C all through September was just plain insane!

Especially since I don't turn it on until temperatures top 85 degrees.

Re:2016 huh

[Maritz]

Make your own prediction, let's see what happens. Put your money where your mouth is.

Re:Glad to hear it.

[Oligonicella]

Does that hold true if you think they're morons?

Re: Good to know

[kenh]

Guys in fishing boats dropped thermometers to a random depth under the water surface and recorded their temperatures as accurately as they cared to (maybe to the closest half a degree?) whenever they chose to.

What you have a problem accepting conclusions based on an ever-changing measurement methodology/technology?

Cui bono?

[Opportunist]

Quite frankly, I start to get pissed. Ok, folks, from both sides of the fence, please tell me why. Why would the "other side" lie, and lie so vehemently to start something that is nothing short of a religious war by now?

What's in it for you, specifically? I can see why corporations would fight accepting human created climate change tooth and nail considering that emission control is coming up right behind such an admission. What do you have to gain or lose from siding with whatever side you're not on that you go into full blown shitstorm mode whenever the topic comes up?

And this is by far not the only topic that gets people worked up. What the fuck is wrong with you? Have no problems so you have to create some to get worked up about, so you feel like you still exist?

Re:Cui bono?

[fredrated]

I think mental illness plays a large part.

Re:Cui bono?

[Opportunist]

I don't even think that would be it. It seems more that people feel compelled to take sides in debates, no matter what. Whether you're for or against something is secondary as long as you can get worked up over it.

Re:Cui bono?

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon credits and carbon taxes and carbon exchanges are very profitable and require every government on the planet to harmonize their laws and regulations according to an un-elected global government.

Re: Cui bono?

[silentcoder]

Miniscule ? According to the american geohysical union the total co2 from volcanoes is 0.25% of what human fossil fuels contribute.
If that is "miniscule" what the fuck would you define as large ? Everybody choking to death on smoke ?

Re:Cui bono?

[tbannist]

Quite frankly, I start to get pissed. Ok, folks, from both sides of the fence, please tell me why. Why would the "other side" lie, and lie so vehemently to start something that is nothing short of a religious war by now?

If you really want to know, you should probably read or watch Merchants of Doubt (or do both). The interviews with global warming deniers in the movie are particularly illuminating.

What's in it for you, specifically?

Nothing, really. Mostly, I post corrections when people write things that are ridiculously wrong.

Re:Cui bono?

[david_thornley]

Personally, I'm hoping that various countries move to reduce the warming, and it helps if there isn't all the shouting against it. Also, I like scientists in general, and when the deniers assume that virtually all climate scientists are frauds falsifying their results for political purposes, because that's pretty much what they have to assume to deny global warming, I get annoyed.

Re:Cui bono?

[Opportunist]

Yes, but WHY? I hear time and again that all the scientists lie, but WHY? What's in it for them? Do you get rich by saying that the climate is changing and it's man made? How? By hoping for grant money? From whom? There is exactly nobody out there who has any interest in you telling the world that they should stop blowing CO2 into the atmosphere. If you're in it for the money, argue for the other side. Their pockets are far, far deeper.

It's a bit like the question whether tobacco smoke is bad for you. If you wanted to make the big bucks as a scientists in that area, being on the payroll for Phillip Morris was certainly more lucrative than trying to blame them.

Re:Cui bono?

[david_thornley]

I'm not a denier, and believe the scientists are doing a very good but not perfect job, just like any group of scientists. However, let's take the assumption that there is no global warming (because we're emotionally unable to accept it, we hate the politicians who talk about it, or it would interfere with our paycheck) and look at the situation. Almost all climate scientists say AGW is happening, so there has to be some reason why they're wrong. They're either stupid or corrupt, and once politics is dragged in it's possible to pretend that the scientists are lying for political purposes (BTW, the scientists I've met were not about to change any of their findings for political reasons). It's also important to claim that prominent climate scientists lie. The data is showing global warming, so it's necessary to discredit it. If there are adjustments, they have to be adjustments in favor of warming (which they may or may not be). We also want to look at the data to pick holes in it; one typical argument is to assume that all the indicators have to be monotonically increasing or decreasing, and so if 2015 summer Arctic sea ice turns out to be slightly smaller in extent to 2014 summer Arctic sea ice (I haven't checked to see if it's true) that shows that we're not warming up and summer Arctic sea ice is rebounding.

If someone stops to think about this, it's almost like a reductio ad absurdam. I find it exceedingly more believable that increased CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the Earth (pretty much undisputed by scientists since the late 19th Century), our burning of fossil fuels is putting more CO2 in the air (borne out by the decrease in C-14 in the atmosphere, and validated by comparing the stuff we're burning to what it takes to raise CO2 by a part per million), and that the surface is globally warming up (as shown by temperature readings and climate change).

Re:Tiny sample size, evolving measurement methodol

[shabble]

As pointed out else-thread...

So October 2016 was ..

.. minus 11 months ago.

Re:No Snow

[PopeRatzo]

I'm so tired of putting on chains for the commute..

I've heard of harsh employers, but having you put on chains is kind of excessive.

Where does the sun go at night?

[truck_soccer]

You can't answer THAT, scientists.

Re:Settled Science

[pastafazou]

...because it's not about finding a simple solution any more. Once you get the politicians involved (big thanks to Al Gore), it turns in to "how can we use this potential threat to our advantage". It's now progressed from a simple solution (build more nuclear and hydro) to a multi-trillion dollar industry of conferences, research grants, earmarks, kickbacks, subsidies, and taxes. This nonsense battle has been going strong for more than a decade. We could've just built a dozen reactors and shut down a hundred coal fired generation plants. But that doesn't get the politicians the long term revenue streams they want for their reelection campaigns.

It's been an interesting November as well

[Ol Olsoc]

Note - part of this is about weather, not climate.

Part 1 - Here in the northeast, the leaves are finally off the trees. I've been exercising my motorcycle with 100 mile rides every few days, took a big ride yesterday. Mid 60's temps. Almost too warm for my leathers. We haven't had a real frost yet, just a couple nights when the more vertical surfaces would get a kiss. Hot peppers in the garden still producing. Insects and butterflies still doing their thing. Hunters in T-shirts when once they would hope for tracking snow. I suspect that with the recent La Nina - or is it Nino - going away, the last couple cold (actually normal) winters will retreat now.

Now on to the climate part. Minus the last couple winters, what I wrote above has become the new norm.

And that's the thing. Part 1 above is just relating some really nice weather in a part of the country where its supposed to be fairly chilly this time of year, with a few killing frosts by now. It's just weather.

But coupled with the weather over a longer term, with the previous two winters now being the anomaly - Now that is climate.

And as we find out that the major players in inserting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere - such as Exxon - admitted years ago, but hid or lied or sowed doubt, it is getting harder to be a denier every day.

Meanwhile, I think I'll take another long bike ride today. looks like another mid-60's sunny day.

Re:All the way back to...

[bdeclerc]

We have various lines of evidence going back thousands of years which suggest quite strongly that it hasn't been as hot on average as it is now for at least 120 000 years, and for the previous 5 decades, each decade has been on average hotter than the previous one.

We have a physical mechanism which even in relatively simple modelling predicts such a rise quite convincinglyn, and in more sofisticated models which include unpredictable events like volcanic eruptions manage to reproduce the climate of the last 100+ years very very well starting from first principles (not statistic curve-fitting as some would want you to believe)

We have direct temperature series going back much further than 124 years, only they're local, not global, still, they show that the current circumstances are pretty much unprecedented as far back as we can measure.

It's not because we don't know everything that we know nothing...

Re:Tiny sample size, evolving measurement methodol

[bdeclerc]

We have various lines of evidence going back thousands of years which suggest quite strongly that it hasn't been as hot on average as it is now for at least 120 000 years, and for the previous 5 decades, each decade has been on average hotter than the previous one.

We have a physical mechanism which even in relatively simple modelling predicts such a rise quite convincinglyn, and in more sofisticated models which include unpredictable events like volcanic eruptions manage to reproduce the climate of the last 100+ years very very well starting from first principles (not statistic curve-fitting as some would want you to believe)

We have direct temperature series going back much further than 134 years, only they're local, not global, still, they show that the current circumstances are pretty much unprecedented as far back as we can measure.

It's not because we don't know everything that we know nothing...

Re:Tiny sample size, evolving measurement methodol

[pastafazou]

It doesn't matter about the small sample size in terms of man's history, that is irrelevant. What does matter, however, is the accuracy of the measurements. There are large concentrations of temperature stations in populated areas, and very sparse recording stations in the inhospitable regions of the world. For example, there are 46 stations responsible for all of Antarctica. That's one station for every 304,000 square km. The same situation can be found in the Arctic, the Himalaya's, the Sahara, the Gobi desert, the Amazon...and yet their global temperature is supposed to be accurate to ±0.05C. The satellite record and the GISS surface temperature record disagree by more than a half degree, and yet we're supposed to believe that GISS is accurate to five one-hundredths of a degree!

Is it just me...

[bcothran]

Is it just me that wonders how accurate NASA's global temperature records were in 1880?? I can see them saying it goes back as far as we have accurate records to ___, but 1880? I can't imagine how accurate this could have been - I mean the phone wasn't invented until 1876.

Re:Is it just me...

[geantvert]

Ho my god! You are right.
Modern phones can give you the local temperature but I am pretty sure that phones could not do that in 1876.

Re: Is it just me...

[bcothran]

Communication idiot - they'd have to actually contact weather centers across the globe to get temperatures. Yeah they could be use log books, but consolidating that kind of stuff would be a mess on a global scale unlike today. Don't be an ass.

Re: Is it just me...

[bcothran]

The telephone was just an example which has made communication on a global scale in a timely manner doable. How many weather stations did the US have in 1880? At which point did we have enough data points where we can honestly compare to today? 1890? 1920? 1940?

Re:All the way back to...

[Ol Olsoc]

October 2015 was the hottest month in that entire database, which goes back to 1891.

Gosh, the warmest month in 124 years - that's like saying last Thursday was the warmest day in the last 4 months - so what?

You should move to Canada where at least until recently, they would have made that secret knowledge, and it wouldn't have pissed you off.

Now that being said - you are right. October's weather was just that - weather. Not in any way indicative of anything but temperature readings.

Now if we shift to what would be indicative of climate, we need to look at trends. And once we get enough record or nearly record months of data, then years of data, we can make an intelligent assessment of what is going on.

And yet, instead of using the data freely provided to cherry pick what you like out of it, the answer for denialists is so simple, it is mind boggling to think it hasn't been done yet.

Th greenhouse effect is a fact. Proven by thousands of schoolkids in science fairs. There are certain gases that act to retain energy in proportion to their abundance in the atmosphere. Some are more common but less "powerful", like CO2. Some are less long lasting, yet much more "powerful" like methane.

The greenhouse effect is critical to our existence. If there were no mechanism to retain some of the energy that hits the earth, our dayside would be hot, while our nightside would lose heat at a fast rate. So to deny the effect is to make a need to invent another reason the earth's atmosphere retains energy that hits it.

So here is the simple task for the deniers. Given that the greenhouse effect is real, you come up with a hypothesis why it fails when taken on a global scale, then you try to falsify it.

If AGW does not exist, greenhouse warming must fail on a global scale. Moreover, it must self regulate to maintain enough energy in the atmosphere to allow us to exist, then fail at some point, and renders the atmosphere incapable of accepting any more energy.

Pretty simple. Do the science. Whoever proves that the greenhouse effect fails at global levels is looking at a Nobel prize.

Which in the end - why do the cherry picking,or character assassination political tactics, when you can topple the entire house of cards with one well done reproduceable experiment?

SO...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is Slashdot going to post this crap once a month proclaiming that interpolated, estimated, revised, and combined data sets show each moth is the Hottest Eeeevurr!!

Lets get real here people, they've polluted the data so badly they can't even provide the original, unedited data. NOAA essentially threw out high quality, well calibrated data collected from purpose built devices by combining it with low quality, uncontrolled data from ships. Image if some drug company took data derived from blood samples measuring a drug level and decided they needed to "adjust" it with samples taken from urine.

Agenda driven Science is what it is.

Re:SO...

[CauseBy]

Mmm hmm. Agenda. We all totally WANT gas to be expensive. That's why we created this international conspiracy of millions of scientists and politicians and activists, the largest and most successful conspiracy in history, all to make you pay more at the pump. Good thinking.

Re:SO...

[sycodon]

It's clear that somebody wants energy to be more expensive

And this is Slashdot, where calls to increase the gas tax are ubiquitous.

Re:SO...

[rochrist]

Actually, it's about ethics in game journalism.

Re:SO...

[CauseBy]

I support an increase in gas prices to reduce carbon in the air, not because I want gas to be expensive. If it were no impact, I'd want the cheapest gas possible.

Re:Glad to hear it.

[Ol Olsoc]

I don't like winter, so this is excellent news!!

Just to fuck with the climate idiots I like to take a cigarette lighter to the local weather station. Look we had a record temperature of 500F we're all going to die like Al Gore said!!

I had no idea that Bill O'Reilly posted on Slashdot. You can't explain that!

So exactly how does your attempted arson disprove AGW?

Re:Glad to hear it.

[Ol Olsoc]

Just to fuck with the climate idiots I like to take a cigarette lighter to the local weather station. Look we had a record temperature of 500F we're all going to die like Al Gore said!!

Odds are that if you think you are surrounded by idiots and assholes, you are the asshole.

In this case, I suspect the only people surrounding him are those nice young men in the clean white coats.....

Re:The Problem With Climate Science

[oh_my_080980980]

Actually it has, it just doesn't fit your argument...

Re:Tiny sample size, evolving measurement methodol

[oh_my_080980980]

Yeah, so where suppose to agree with what some moron posts on-line....try again Potsy...

Re:That's weather, NOT (natural) climate change.

[oh_my_080980980]

Climate change is a multiple measurements over time. It shows a TREND. The temperature reading October is one data point. That data point compared to other data points going back to 1891 show October was the warmest October recorded. So you data analysis skills are severely lacking.

Re:The Problem With Climate Science

[TwoEyedJack]

Their "theory" seems to be that if it is indeed getting hotter (note there is no consensus on this point), the only possible explanation is CO2 from human activity. This is essentially an appeal to correlation to prove causation. Correlation never proved causation. Ever. This is junk science, pure and simple. Experimentation on a global scale is technologically impossible. So we are left with modeling. Without a proven model, correlation is fundamentally incapable of proving causation. The model needs to be far more sophisticated than the current weather models that use partial differential equations and are good for pretty much three days then blow up due to not knowing initial conditions well enough. Laymen somehow think it is easier to model climate than weather. This is nonsense. Climate is nothing more or less than the integral of weather, and if you cannot solve for a function, you cannot solve for its integral except in trivial linear systems. Weather and climate are chaotic. Let's face the fact that some things are simply unknowable with our current technology.

The thought police are coming...if we let them!

[CheckeredFlag]

A recent Rasmussen poll states:

But 68% of Likely U.S. Voters oppose the government investigating and prosecuting scientists and others including major corporations who question global warming.

Seriously? 32% of Americans are not opposed to imprisoning scientists having theories that differ from the political establishment?!

Ridiculous you say? It's already happening with a number of climate scientists calling on Obama to bring racketeering charges on skeptics:

The science on global warming is settled, so settled that 20 climate scientists are asking President Barack Obama to prosecute people who disagree with them on the science behind man-made global warming.

Scientists from several universities and research centers even asked Obama to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to prosecute groups that “have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change.”

Have we really not progressed from the inquisition of Galileo? Time to wake up, America!

Re:The thought police are coming...if we let them!

[david_thornley]

We're not talking about skeptics, we're talking about deniers. Many of those deniers libel climate scientists constantly. Also, if companies did know about global warming, and deliberately denied it for their future profits, they have been fraudulent. Nor was there any mention of prison, except by you. (I was unable to access the poll, since it was on what my work filters deem a political site.)

Re:The thought police are coming...if we let them!

[CheckeredFlag]

Penalties for racketeering are up to $25,000 in fines and 20 years in prison so imprisonment is implied.

Science has always progressed through rigorous debate of differing theories. However, these debates should be done in the labs -- not in courtrooms with the intent to destroy any opposition.

Re:The thought police are coming...if we let them!

[david_thornley]

There's a difference between having a difference of opinion and knowing something and advertising something contradictory. It appears that Exxon knew about global warming while it was denying it I don't know that RICO is the correct remedy here, but there should be some way to go after frauds. (Someone who has no opinion about AGW, or has an opinion and is willing to look at evidence is a skeptic or, I don't know what the right word is, someone who has an opinion based on the evidence.. Someone who denies it categorically is a denier. Someone who knows it's happening and lies to customers about it to increase profits is a fraud. One of these three is doing something potentially illegal.)

Let's wait and see

[blbordelon66]

Let's wait and see if October 2016 is, in fact, significantly warmer than any other on record. Personally, I think predicting something like that almost a year in advance is just bad science :)

1880...

[TonyXL]

Can they explain the millions of warming cycles that occurred when humans weren't on earth yet?

Re:1880...

[iggymanz]

The data from 1880 are useless, "weather stations" at the time would often write "morning" and "noon" and "evening" and then a temperature from an unknown thermometer which could have been replaced many times, with gaps of a decade or more in record......truly useless data for any serious purpose, but dweeb types imagine "oh but but but statistics!" could make something useful from such rubbish.

Re:1880...

[ssam]

Isn't that what the Berkeley Earth study tried to show http://berkeleyearth.org/about...

Re:Head height thermometers

[budgenator]

A little less than 7.5% of the surface stations are situated well enough to expect a temperature measurement error of less than 1K, a little more than 6% of the stations are situated so poorly that an error of up to 5K can be expected. The recently installed stations are sometimes connected via ethernet cable, making it impossible to locate them far enough from buildings to get a good siting.

Re:The Problem With Climate Science

[Stephan Schulz]

Their "theory" seems to be that if it is indeed getting hotter (note there is no consensus on this point), the only possible explanation is CO2 from human activity.

Counterfactual nonsense. Arrhenius gave a first theoretical treatment back around 1896, and a reasonable quantitative analysis in 1908, long before we could measure an effect. The basic physical mechanisms are well understood and can be and have been demonstrated in the laboratory. Of course, Earth is a large and complex system, so there are confounding factors. But the claim that the idea of causation is due to the observed correlation is plain wrong. The basic greenhouse effect and first-order feedbacks (e.g. ice/albedo and absolute humidity) can be described and modelled very well, mostly from first principles. If you think there is no causal effect, you would need to explain why basic physics is wrong. Yes, birds fly, and humans can organise a room. The first does not disprove gravity, and the second does not disprove the second law of thermodynamics....

Evidence for AGW

[Tenebrousedge]

No, the evidence for global warming is the increased CO2 levels. The effects of global warming are everywhere because, you know, global warming...

If you want to contradict global warming, find some way for the Earth to lose heat by means other than radiation. Or prove everything we know about radiation wrong. Make sure your theory reproduces the existing temperature records/trends perfectly too. And after that I'd like a unicorn -- it should be an easier task.

You can prove the central thesis of AGW in your basement. It's not like it's hard to find CO2 (or H2O, if you want to test the feedback too). It would be nice to live in a world where humans were not emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases, or at least limiting ourselves to something that precipitates readily like H2O. Unfortunately people are stupid. Case in point: you.

Re:You are confusing panic and fear for zealotry

[NetNed]

Sooo the "97%" of the scientist number that falsely classified peer review studies to get that number, along with loaded questions, was them (or just John Cook) trying to "talk science" to get people to understand? Yes, I don't think you understand science. Maybe we should talk about the "2014 warmest year ever" claim to that NASA even said only had a 38% chance of being right and the .02 degrees Celsius higher yet the tolerance was ± .1 degree Celsius? Maybe we can all argue how math works to? But hey, I don't want to be mistaken for a drama queen because math is math and you can't argue it.

Re:The Problem With Climate Science

[TwoEyedJack]

First of all, probably unlike you, I actually have a degree in physics, with minors in math and chemistry. The math associated with thermodynamics is among the most complex that mankind attempts. The real world is almost never linear and straightforward. The "basic greenhouse effect" is laughably simplified compared to what actually happens in the atmosphere. If your assertion were true, the fossil record going back hundreds of millions of years would show CO2 and temperatures in lockstep. It does not. Not even close. What you are saying is that there exists a massive non-linear partial differential equation that determines how hot it will be tomorrow, and the only driving factor we need concern ourselves with is the concentration of a trace gas that responds to the same wavelengths of radiation as water vapor. Only you can't show me the equation and want me to take your assertion on faith. This does not even pass the laugh test.

Re:The Problem With Climate Science

[Stephan Schulz]

First of all, probably unlike you, I actually have a degree in physics, with minors in math and chemistry. The math associated with thermodynamics is among the most complex that mankind attempts. The real world is almost never linear and straightforward. The "basic greenhouse effect" is laughably simplified compared to what actually happens in the atmosphere. If your assertion were true, the fossil record going back hundreds of millions of years would show CO2 and temperatures in lockstep. It does not. Not even close. What you are saying is that there exists a massive non-linear partial differential equation that determines how hot it will be tomorrow, and the only driving factor we need concern ourselves with is the concentration of a trace gas that responds to the same wavelengths of radiation as water vapor. Only you can't show me the equation and want me to take your assertion on faith. This does not even pass the laugh test.

I'd suggest you don't try to pull academic rank on me - for all you know, I could be a dog. Nothing of what you said supports your original statement, namely that our idea that CO2 causes higher temperature is based on correlation. It's not. It's based on theory, and we now find that the observations correlate well (if not perfectly) with the theory. I don't know why you get the idea I would claim that "the fossil record going back hundreds of millions of years would show CO2 and temperatures in lockstep" - no-where have I said or suggested that. By that argument I could claim that "bullets never kill people, otherwise there would be no dead before the invention of guns". Especially over hundreds of millions of years we have a thinks like different continental configurations, differences in Earth orbit, and even an significant increase in the luminosity of the sun, all of which contribute their own long-term trends. That said, we do find a general correlation between warmer temperatures and CO2 in the geological record - again, not a perfect one, but, as you say, the world is complex. "The math associated with thermodynamics is among the most complex that mankind attempts. The real world is almost never linear and straightforward" - and yet, we send people to prison based on the speed with wich a body cools and the path a bullet takes. We never have perfect information, but that does not mean that we do not have good information.

Re:Sorry, all bollocks.

[budgenator]

Hasn't got anything to do with what Watt thinks constitutes as quality siteing, the standards are published by NOAA

Re:The Problem With Climate Science

[Stephan Schulz]

So in the battle between a Physicist and a Windows, MCSE, I'll go with the Physicist.

Whoosh!

And the periodicity of climate events is ....

[fygment]

... unknown. So "records from 1880" may seem long in human years but really, it isn't. And it certainly can't be used to signal a 'trend'.

Re:You are confusing panic and fear for zealotry

[Yoda222]

There are currently 136 February month in the record (1880-2015, included) As there is a high probability (according to you) that February 2016 will be one of the hottest or coldest on record (I assume you want to say that the probability is 1/137 for each possibility?)

If I offer the following bet: you give me 100$ is February 2016 is one of the 10 warmest in history, and I give you 100$ if February is one of the 40 coldest in history. Do you take this bet? (you can change to any month of 2016 or 2017, if you want. We can also bet for 2030 if you want, but then I will probably forget before the date)

Re:Glad to hear it.

[Rakarra]

Does that hold true if you think they're morons?

I guess it's a corollary to the old saying I've heard repeated a few times before: "If you have several bad roommates in a row, then you're probably the bad roommate."

Translation...

[TaleSpinner]

"Once again, we have massaged the data to prove the dubious claim that we have a new winner for 'hottest month' by a statistically insignificant amount in a swamp of data loaded with noise, and we're so proud of ourselves. The 'pause' never happened either, you know, we fixed that, too."