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NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal Record-Shattering Global Warm Temperatures In 2015 (nasa.gov)
vikingpower writes: Earth's 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Globally-averaged temperatures in 2015 shattered the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit (0.13 Celsius). Only once before, in 1998, has the new record been greater than the old record by this much. The British Met office also reports on the same phenomenon, even forecasting that global temperatures are very soon going to reach the one-degree-Celsius marker. According to Stephen Belcher, Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre, "We've had similar natural events in the past, yet this is the first time we're set to reach the 1 C marker and it's clear that it is human influence driving our modern climate into uncharted territory."
This has been discussed here so often that even I have heard about it.
You have 100 100-year-old monitoring stations. You have new ones that were started more recently. To examine 100 year trends, do you
[a] ignore the more recent stations and do not correct for anything, even though this will bias your results towards more warming due to urbanization
[b] ignore the more recent stations and adjust the historical temperatures based on ???
[c] use all available data and try to correct for as many effects as you can think of
Doing anything, or not doing anything, has the potential to throw your numbers off. Unless you have some specific evidence that what has been done is not statistically rigorous do shut up. That also goes for the case where you don't have data to say one way or the other. There is not some massive conspiracy to fuck with the numbers here.
All politics aside, I've reached the point where I'm not sure who to believe anymore. On one hand I see stories such as TFA describing compelling AGW evidence that seems convincing, but on the other hand I see anti-AGW information that seems even more convincing. Could some objective person please take a look here and tell me who is actually lying?
When I read stories about data manipulation I get concerned. There appears to be clear evidence that the surface temperature records have been undergoing continuous retroactive modification. I understand that there may be some scientific rationale for making such modifications, but I don't have enough details to form a rational judgement. Were the error bars in the original data wrong? If not, then why do the adjustments exceed them by more than a factor of three (in many cases)? Why doesn't anyone point out that the unmodified data shows a completely different trend? Is the satellite temperature data wrong? If so, why, and why does it agree so well with the unmodified surface record? Why is it that none of the existing climate models produce accurate predictions based on historical data? Why should we trust those models to predict future trends when they can't reconcile historical data?
I know I'll probably get flamed for posting this, but I've decided to not post it anonymously anyway. Please leave the personal attacks out of your responses.
Thank you.
Before anyone decides to mod me down as a troll, consider that teh denialists still deny when even one of their stalwarts of denial - Exxon - has known for years that AGW was real, but decided on a tactic of "sowing doubt" http://insideclimatenews.org/n... while their own researcers concluded AGW was real.
Not being able to produce credible research to prove their denialism, they are left with a smaller and smaller set of cherrypicking data, character assassination, and the always popular "I looked out the window and its cold today - so much for global warming!"
So in moves remarkably similar to tobacco idustry lawyers managing to deny that there was proof that tobacco caused cancer when there was ample evidence in the 1800's, or creationists claiming that dinosaurs and humans romped merrily together - but nol earlier than 4004 b.c.e. - based on long discredited fossil tracks in places like http://www.talkorigins.org/faq... Paluxy, Texas - Indeed, Ken Hamm's Creationism museum has that as biblical proof of young earth creationism - the denialists are getting backed into a smaller and smaller corner, soon to be left only with fingers stuck in their ears, and chanting "Neener never never - I can't hear you!"
So if anyone has the disproving research I'd love to see it. If not, just mod me down to oblivion, and prove what I just wrote.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Ever notice how you human-made climate change morons never have any evidence to backup what you say?
Ever notice how you just coveniently ignore any evidence presented to you about anthropogenic climate change?
[D] Use all available data as-is and track trends only across the same groups of instruments. [E] Be an actual scientist and control your variables. If you want long-term studies you need long-term data so you need to make sure all measurements are taken reliably and in the same way from the same type of device, if possible.
If you want to be called a "climate scientist" you NEED to do E. If you want to be called anything other than a charlatan you need to at least do D.
Of course, Berkeley Earth did take all the available raw data, automatically detected discontinuities (i.e. unexplainable jumps, especially if they conflict with overlapping neighbouring records), automatically cut series there, and then automatically realigned and reassembled all the snippets, in essentially the same way we do DNA reconstructions from fragmented DNA. And their result is indistinguishable from the more conventional reconstructions. The fact that several independent groups using at least two very different mechanisms come to the same result is either evidence for the reliability of that result, or, of course, for a big global conspiracy of scientists. Of course, the Berkeley study was mostly financed by the Koch brothers...
Stephan
I'm curious how the data can be compared reliably seeing as even assuming that all the thermometers used at the turn of the century were perfectly crafted, properly calibrated, cared for properly, placed properly, and recorded properly they STILL would have had an error rate of +-0.5 degrees Fahrenheit. In reality you can almost certainly at the very least double the error rate. Which means that any trends prior to more accurate recording devices aren't possible to compare.
See the law of large numbers. It is possible to get arbitrarily good estimates by combining sufficiently many fuzzy individual measurements. This is not an invention of some communist cabal of climate scientists, but was formalised by Bernoulli and Poisson in the 18th and 19th century. And it is, of course, used in every modern tracking radar system, wether to keep moving bodies apart or to bring them together.
That being said, even assuming arguendo that CO2 driven AGW is occuring, the solutions still have jack all to do with renewable energy. There are three possible solutions to the problem of large impact AGW, they are slaughter 90+% of the human race, try to chemically engineer the weather with various geoengineering attempts, or figure out a way to sequester carbon on a VERY large scale. Any other options are the fucking definition of whistling in the dark.
Thank's for your well-considered opinion. I'm sure both I and the world will give it the attention it deserves.
Stephan