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2016 Was Second Hottest Year For US In More Than 120 Years of Record Keeping (climatecentral.org)
Last year was the second hottest year for the United States in more than 120 years of record keeping, according to the National Climatic Data Center, marking 20 above-average years in a row. While Georgia and Alaska recorded their hottest year, every state had a temperature ranking at least in the top seven. Climate Central reports: The announcement comes a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the U.S. data, and NASA are expected to announce that 2016 set the record for the hottest year globally. Both the global record and the U.S. near-record are largely attributable to greenhouse gas-driven warming of the planet. In addition to the pervasive warmth over the last year, the U.S. also had to deal with 15 weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damage. Together, they totaled more than $46 billion in losses and included several disastrous rain-driven flooding events. These events, along with continued drought, lay bare the challenge for the country to learn how to cope with and prepare for a changing climate, said Deke Arndt, the climate monitoring chief of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. The temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average for 2016, displacing 2015 and ranking only behind 2012, when searing heat waves hit the middle of the country. More notable than the back-to-back second place years, Arndt said, was that 2016 was the 20th consecutive warmer-than-normal year for the U.S. and that the five hottest years for the country have all happened since 1998. Those streaks mirror global trends, with 15 of the 16 hottest years on record occurring in the 21st century and no record cold year globally since 1911.
No one says that. Scientists say that climate change is a significant contributing factor.
What scientists say that? There was a story here on Slashdot not long ago analyzing quite a number of extreme weather events, and deciding that none of them could be attributed to AGW.
Furthermore, things like the current California storm are primarily a result of El Nino, and it's not clear at all how AGW will effect El Nino.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yes, better calibration helps getting more accurate results with less uncertainties, but it's highly unlikely that all calibration errors were in the same direction and skewed over time into the opposite direction.
Good lord folks -- I'm tired of this discussion coming up periodically and people talking out of their asses.
Look: thermometers dating back the mid-1800s were highly precise and did not need frequent calibration. They had perfected glass tubes of mercury and could make very even marks on them by that point. A late 19th-century thermometer had precision that was easily within +/-0.1 degree. (For specialized applications and laboratory thermometers, there were plenty that were manufactured by the late 1800s to be read down to 0.01 degree.)
And a sealed glass tube doesn't need repeated calibration if it's not disturbed or damaged. The issue here is simply how good the (somewhat permanent) calibration was. By the first couple decades of the 1900s, there were standards organizations which existed that would do standardized calibrations (i.e., where you could get a standard calibrated thermometer or send one away to be checked for calibration). We have actual logbooks when many thermometers were checked for accuracy. We have actual logbooks where thermometers were replaced and the old thermometers were compared with the new ones in terms of their scales and calibration. Etc., etc.
Just because you cannot fathom that people 100 years ago could read a thermometer or manufacture an even glass tube doesn't mean they didn't. They did. We still have many of these thermometers today to prove it. A 1900-era thermometers is about as accurate as a 1900-era RULER.
In fact, in terms of precision AND accuracy, what you should be questioning instead is MODERN electronic thermometers, which DO need frequent calibration and are frequently only accurate to maybe +/- 1 degree even when calibrated properly. But they're used for convenience because they no longer need a human to go look at it and write it down. Ask any meteorologist who knows anything about temperature measurement, and he'll likely tell you that stuff they were using decades and even over a century ago (often accurate to +/-0.1 degree) is more accurate than the stuff weather records are generated with now. (And regardless, that +/-1 degree or whatever is plenty to generate an average over several years to compare temperature records.)
No -- the real issue in dealing with old records is questions of siting and distribution. Historical thermometers weren't always located in the best of places, but again, most were, and we generally have records of those that were. The biggest statistical issue is that we didn't have such even distribution for samples all over the globe, so there's some sampling bias. Again, there's a lot of work statisticians do to take this into account when looking at long-term global averages.
Anyhow, I personally have complete confidence that those statistical analyses are good and reflect the overall trend. But people who are arguing that old thermometers were bad and needed frequent calibration simply have ABSOLUTELY no clue what they're talking about.
Once again you entirely miss the point.
Statistically it proves a rising trend. If there were no trend, we'd expect a 50% chance of getting an above-average year. Now work out the odds of flipping a coin and getting 20 heads in a row (about 1 in 2^20). But with a rising trend, the probability of eventually getting 20 in a row approaches 1.0.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Count of all top level comments taken from page as I loaded it.
People objecting with the first argument they could think of, regardless of validity: 10
Nuts blaming everything on The Conspiracy: 4
Global warming alarmist copypasta: 2
Worthless spam: 7
People discussing the article: 4
Global warming news sure brings out the crazies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy
Actually the reason we laugh at your lot is because you'd be among the first to die.
The people who ACTUALLY have the best odds of surviving are NOT the ones who stocked up on anything, because it's utterly impossible to predict what you would need in an unpredictable scenario. The most likely to survive are the ones most adaptable, the ones best able to fashion equipment and resources out of whatever is to hand.
Because it doesn't matter WHAT he needs- he has a way of finding it - he can make it. The guys who go to maker shows, the engineers, hell even the less sedentary programmers - THOSE guys will survive. The ones who know something about stealth will defeat all the ones with huge assault rifles every time. You can't hit what you can't see. Hell my ancestors won a war against the biggest army on earth by being good at stealth, and damn near did it again 10 years later.
3-5 Guys who are good at stealth, and who will kill somebody with every shot - using single shot guns, could and repeatedly DID kill entire batallions armed with the latest and greatest multi-shot Lee-Henry's.
Imagine being a battalion facing a small squadron of people who all shot as well as the best army snipers - but were about a thousand times better at hiding. Imagine trying to fight back when the only evidence that they are there at all is every few minutes one of your men collapses with a giant hole in his head. And knowing those guys have no supplies, no food, no more water than they can carry...
When they finished destroying your entire battalion without ever showing themselves... they will walk down and take yours. Imagine being part of that, desperately scanning the hills hoping to find a target, knowing you probably won't... knowing that sometime in the next hour - one of those bullets are going to rip through your head too - and there is nothing you can do about it ?
Those are the people who survive- the ones who never take anything much WITH them into a difficult situation because WHATEVER is there, they can turn to their advantage. They'll beet you paranoid nutters every time.
Besides which, the fist major killer in the climate change scenario is likely to be diseases as the heat increases the range of pest-insects, good luck fighting off mosquitos with your AR15 and your crate of canned goods.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Actually, the Ice Age did NOT end 12K years ago. We're merely between Continental Glacial Advances. The current Ice Age started ~2.58 million years ago. And we're due for another Continental Glacial Advance, "real soon now". . . .in geologic terms.
"real soon now" meaning within the next 10-50 thousand years. . .
By the way, that whole "97% consensus" thing is pure organic fertilizer. So not even your claims of consensus hold up to scrutiny.
Did you even read the articles you quoted? The WSJ article is behind a paywall, but the Politifact article rated the statement "Over 97 percent of the scientific community believe that humans are contributing to climate change." as mostly true. The only reason it wasn't entirely true is that over 97 percent of active researchers in relevant fields of the scientific community agree, not 97 percent of the entire scientific community. Considering those are the only people in the scientific community whose opinions hold much weight, its not a big mistake. There was also another researcher who disagreed with the criteria used to determine if the researcher agreed, and independently came up with a 91% consensus. That same researcher then stated "There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans."
So it seems your own Googling backs up his consensus statements quite well.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Can you supply any references for the debunked consensus? When I originally looked into the matter, I found several papers confirming the consensus, but it has been a few years since I looked
Comment on ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
a 2016 survey of american meteorological society members about climate change Initial Findings graph on page 11 shows 33% of AMS members believe the climate change is at least equally or more attributable to natural causes.
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis
Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change
Climate Consensus Con Game
Sorry, global warmists: The ‘97 percent consensus’ is complete fiction
The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up
Global Warming “Consensus”: Cooking the Books
Climategate 3.0: Blogger Threatened for Exposing 97% "Consensus" Fraud
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
First off, if all the ice on the planet melted, sea levels would rise 230ft. I live 15miles from the coast and my current elevation is 775 feet, so yeah, not really worried on that one. (Further, these figures do not account for the exponential increase in dissolved water in the atmosphere with increased temperatures, so the actual rise is somewhat lower). (strike one)
http://www.amnh.org/ology/feat...
Beyond that, NO ONE thinks that all the ice would melt. (If someone tells you that they are full of shit.) The Arctic temperature range is -58C to 30C depending on the time of year and time of day, Antarctic is a bit higher. Changing those temperatures to -53C to 35C is not going to change the fact that for most of the time, most water that hits the polar caps is frozen and will stay frozen. Experts still hotly debate whether or not the elevated temperatures which cause more moisture in the atmosphere would significantly increase the annual snowfall rate on the polar caps, actually significantly increasing the rate of ice accumulation. Sea levels have risen 2.9mm per year since 1993, even with the slight 0.6C warming we have seen since then. From 1870 to 2004 sea levels rose an average of 3mm per year or about 7.7inches over 134 years. Not even a blip of increase or anywhere near a cataclysmic rise or a cataclysmic increase in sea levels like you are asserting. Anyone who tells you that sea level rise is a foregone conclusion with global warming is lying to you. (strike two)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp...
Taking scientific advice from a (even popular) web comic strip written by an ex-software engineer completely lacking in the hard sciences (he even insists on disclaimers as a non-expert on his work because of this) is not helping your cause. He is just regurgitating the erroneous assumptions of the so called "climate scientists" who are as much scientists as my local sanitation engineer is an engineer. (See that last link above, that graph shows just how wildly off these "scientists" were with their models vs reality.) They can barely predict the weather 3 days from now and you blindly trust their models of 100 years from now when they have been consistently wrong for the last 15 years? Sorry, no thanks. (strike three)
You can educate yourself or continue in self righteous PC ignorance, up to you. As you can see here, though, you are hardly batting 1000...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like