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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.
It's absurd to say that ALL of the weather disasters we encountered are attributable to global warming. You could just as easily say that GW has prevented several massive weather disasters we will never know about...
Weather changes, sometimes to extremes. Over time there will be massive droughts and floods and hurricanes and all other things, just as there have been through the entire history of Earth. So stop with the nonsense of trying to tie all that to GW because it just makes you all look like a bunch of panicked idiots.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the earth is over 4 billion years old and has had icecaps for 20% of the time.
What's the maths on 4 billion vs 120 years?
Well, considering that humans have been on earth for only about the past 200,000 years, I wouldn't want to risk our chances with an earth that has no ice caps. It may be inevitable, but let's slow it down long enough for us to find some other place in the universe to live, m'kay?
And keep in mind that no ice caps means very high temperatures and flooding over most of the coastal areas. Not to mention the loss or migration of other species we depend on to survive.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Of the 4 billion, how many supported human life? What's the maths on how long your grandkids live when the planet can only support a small percentage of the current human population?
You're right. 120 years is a blink of the eye in the context of life on earth. And that's what makes it such a big problem.
It's the current rate of change that scares scientists. Not the amount. The Earth can handle temperatures raising or dropping over millennia, but over mere decades, it's considered a catastrophe.
Trees, for example, can't migrate towards colder areas quickly enough, and then the ecosystems that depend on the trees die too.
And coastal ecosystems can't migrate as fast as the water is rising, and ocean life can't evolve into more acid resistant species quickly enough as the CO2 levels increase and oceans get acidified.
Your back of the napkin familiarity on the subject matter in an age of scientific hyper specialization makes any opinion you have on the matter totally moot.
How on earth do you think you could possibly add any line of thinking that hasn't already been thought of, proposed, hashed over, and sorted out by the people who've been studying these lines of science for decades?
"Old man yells at systemd"
Individual measurements being inaccurate does not change the validity of the trend. 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.
Climate change deniers get stuck on individual errors or error margins, and believe they invalidate the entire research. They need to talk to some statisticians. The trends are still perfectly valid and beyond any reasonable doubt and even unreasonable doubt.
You really don't know what you're talking about. Temperature and pressure (and magnetic field strength and orientation) have both been accurately measured for at least 150+years (it's longer, but for purposes of your post, 150 years works). Just because they didn't have the Internet doesn't mean they were clueless savages. Heck you can also get a gauge of global temperatures using a variety of proxies, Tree rings, O16/O18 ratios, heck Dr. Kim Cobb has been doing some fascinating work using coral growth to reconstruct temperature history. All of these can be correlated together to create a pretty comprehensive Temperature history. If you still have doubts, enroll in a paleoclimatology and paleooceanography class, learn the techniques and concepts involved in temperature reconstruction. It's some really cool stuff.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
How do you reconcile between eras so far apart in both the breadth of measurements and accuracies and methodology between now and then?
By comparing datasets from multiple sources that overlap in the time domain.
I don't think it is possible to any close "degree." Look, people didn't calibrate their thermometers all the time back then, nor did they have the scientific rigor in measurement technique to make sure they had an acceptable "averaging" setup for the measurement on a specific time and circumstance each day.
First of all, people did calibrate thermometers "all the time back then." It wasn't hard. The freezing and boiling points of water at sea level are convenient standard fiduciary marks.
As for "scientifc rigor" -- what I think you really mean is the care taken in measurements. Consider for example, Tyco Brahe. He gathered enormous amounts of data that informed Kepler to create his laws of planetary motion. And he didn't have a telescope. He took extraordinary care to use his measuring instruments to the best of his ability. My point is that data that is "old" is not necessarily lacking in "rigor."
Finally, regarding data quoted to a fraction of a degree -- you need to understand that individual measurements can have a moderate errors, but their average can be highly accurate. Google on "standard error of the mean" for details.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Riiiight. Because it's all been hashed out and no one can contribute unless they agree with the consensus that's been all worked out with no possibility of dissent.
Now you are just being intentionally obtuse. He did not say no one could contribute. He said no one without decades of hyper specialized research could possibly contribute. I only have a Masters degree, but I did choose a research track instead of a capstone project, and the most important thing I learned was how specialized someone needs to be to make meaningful contributions to scientific knowledge.
At least 99.999% of the population has no business postulating about climate science. The only reasonable opinion these people can have (myself included) is the position of the vast majority of climate science researchers. The other 0.001% of the population can continue to challenge current theories.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
That's what your daddy said when people wanted to put cancer warnings on cigarette packages, and when the big librul gubbmit came for your grandaddies asbestos insulation.
It would be more convincing if they had error bars on those numbers.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's the current rate of change that scares scientists. Not the amount. The Earth can handle temperatures raising or dropping over millennia, but over mere decades, it's considered a catastrophe.
Except of course if you look at those same diagrams that are routinely used to show temperature swings, the current warming trend in most cases isn't just within the norms, in many cases it's below those "extremes." Seriously though, coastal ecosystems seem to do just fine. The shore lines in some cases were 12-30mi further out then they are today, and were able to adjust and swing in less then 150 years when those sea levels rose as the last ice age started ending.
Om, nomnomnom...
I think you're at the "ok, global warming is real, but its not a big deal, honest" stage?? But that's at least semi-positive. You've accepted the basic warming, even if you want to downplay the short time scale its happened over by adding in ancient ice cap melts.
The earth will be fine, its not a living thing in and of itself, it's the stuff on the earth that dies e.g. Dinosaurs, Triassic extinction event, trilobites extinction and the biggest of them all, the Permian extinction (96% of life wiped out), life gets wiped out on it's surface, but the earth chugs on.
It's worth looking at the Permian extinction, the great dying where 96% of species died out. A similar style dyout would wipe humans off the planet. That was a rise of 8 degrees celcius, with 2000 parts per million CO2. We've raised the CO2 from 280ppm to 370ppm to the year 2000 and to 404ppm this year and still accelerating.
So we're looking at as much as 1000ppm by 2100, which is really past a point at which we could stop it.
Permian is believed to be a de-oxygenating event of the ocean, so all marine life died out because it couldn't breath, which in turn released decay gasses into the atmosphere and snuffed out the land animals.
That's potentially Trumps great grandchildren dead, so not really a big deal, he'll never meet them, let alone date them.
The earth is in a mini ice age. There's no know method of extracting temperature rates from the geologic record, which is what leads to the scary xckd graph. It is inevitable that we return to a warmer earth. It's also inevitable that people reliant on government^H^H^H^H^H corporate funding publish what their government^H^H^H^H^H^H corporate overlords expect.
Funny how quickly you were down-moded. I suspect maybe I will be too, though maybe not.
You have a point of view that represents a significant number of people. If I disagreed with it and was certain (with proof) that I was right, then I would falsify your statement with references, right then and there. For (sarcastically) "bonus points", I would explain how one comes to be misled into such a position as yours. The weight of evidence and general "that makes sense!" power of my objectivity would propel me. Nothing else I could do would gain more credibility for my position than a slam-dunk disputation in a public forum. Others are less likely to believe an alluring falsehood, if they firsthand see it tried and see it fail.
If I couldn't do at least some of that, and if I am a die-hard "true believer" utterly convinced of his own right-ness, well then I would demonstrate the "certainty" of my belief by down-modding you. After all, if I can't even answer your charge at all, when so many different responses are available, then "clearly" it must be unworthy of my time.
You're one of those "others" who does not see what I see. Clearly you are unworthy of discourse. A down-mod is my nice, easy, comfortable, anonymous "screw you" that faces no danger of me being personally questioned for choosing it. So there. Ha-ha!
-- Cowardly Slashdot Editors and Moderators Everywhere
Your back of the napkin familiarity on the subject matter in an age of scientific hyper specialization makes any opinion you have on the matter totally moot.
Strange, I've read scientific papers who argued in favor of phrenology and eugenics, and the detractors using the same language against critics.
Om, nomnomnom...
It is entirely reasonable that calibration errors tended to one direction over the other if the same methods of calibration were used.
But that doesn't matter. What matters are the trends. If all slashdotters buy crappy thermometers from the same manufacturer and they all show 1-3 degrees less than they should, and our average is lower this year than next, we can still say with fairly high certainty that the temperature has increased.
And if we then all buy crappy thermometers from another manufacturer and they all show 1-3 degrees more than they should, and our average continues to increase, we can still say that our average has increased.
What is measured is the same thermometers against the same thermometers. If recalibrating or swapping out the equipment, measuring starts again. If a measuring station shows 15C one year, 16C the next, and then swap thermometers and show 13C that year and 14C the next, the data doesn't show that the temperature has dropped from 15C to 14C - it shows a 2 degree increase. Combined with other measurements that show a similar increase, it becomes significant and gives high certainty for a trend.
If I disagreed with it and was certain (with proof) that I was right, then I would falsify your statement with references, right then and there
Why bother going to all that trouble for someone who made some pretty bold claims without references themselves. The most likely outcome would be that when the next climate-related story comes out the OP will simply ignore any evidence posted to the contrary (since all scientists are corrupt frauds) and repeat the same nonsense again.
A down-mod is my nice, easy, comfortable, anonymous "screw you" that faces no danger of me being personally questioned for choosing it. So there. Ha-ha!
Says the Anonymous Coward. Nice one.
He was downmodded for (obvious) trolling, not because of some grand political conspiracy against people who confuse science with politics.
You just proved his point. You believe your opinion is as relevant as someone who has spent a greater part of his life learning about climate science.
If you truly believe what you're saying, YOU need to go through the rigors of education the researcher you're equating yourself with before you can argue against the consensus.
The "smell test" is fine for localized things that don't matter much, but the reason the science fields exist is to perform research and analysis that the average layman cannot.
You can decide to personally accept the scientific community's consensus, or not, but it's analogous to deciding that 99% of medical doctors don't know how to treat a 20 year old disease, or that 99% of architects dont know how to build skyscrapers, or that most successful businessman don't know how to run a business.
Deciding that an entire field is incorrect in spite of the aggregate expertise of the members of that field is an extraordinary claim, and you'll either need to prove a vast conspiracy or perform repeatable science to properly refute the science. You went be successful at either, but you're welcome to try. Sadly, intelligent yet arrogant folks like you can convince fools of your beliefs, and they adopt them. We are seeing a revolt against expertise, and it's frankly astounding and perplexing in the extreme.
99% consensus on phrenology eh? Tough to believe, but even so, phrenology wasn't debunked until someone debunked it. Simply stating "nuh uh" is not science, and it definitely is not a refutation worth consideration.
Unfortunately the country is filled with impressionable people who desperately want to believe their way of life never needs to change, and cling to folks like you as a lifeline instead of critically thinking about ways to improve their situation when the inevitable comes. Interestingly this applies as much to who we (society as a collective) vote for, who we (individually) decide to socialize with, and how we (as communities) determine responses to risk.
I would like to see the papers and the critics. If the critics were some internet randos who are not scientists in the field, then yes, criticism is most likely moot. If the criticism is about some specific aspect of the paper (for example, pointing out problems with statistical methods), then it can be valid so long as the critic understands the aspect he/she is criticizing. If the authors of the research are making policy suggestions, then basically everyone can be a critic (e.g. you if prove that black kids are doing wore in school than white kids, it does not mean that the *right* policy is to concentrate teaching resources on the white kids *or* to attempt to equalize education outcomes).
As for GP case, it is really silly to expect that rather well established field will be overthrown by “that particular thing looks fishy”. Is is like expecting to disprove gravity by pointing to birds.
None of that is really relevant. Yes, there will be winners and losers - that is what evolution does. The big problem, as far as humans are concerned is that WE are likely to be one of the losers given our location at the top of the food chain.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If your conspiracy theory was right- all the scientists would be publishing climate denial papers and a few crazy kooks would be publishing papers saying the theory is right. The exact opposite of what actually happens - because the biggest corporate funders have a massive vested interest in climate change being false.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The 99% claim is typically misconstrued and misused. While there exists a poll that shows that 99% of scientific respondents believe there is AGW, there is nowhere near that same consensus on the extent of the problem. There are many in that 99% who believe that AGW is not necessarily catastrophic, and there are many who agree that our models are not good enough to make accurate predictions.
I just wish those that constantly scream '99%' add that type of clarification. Otherwise, its just as mindless as denial itself.
But that 99.999% of population has a right to decide whether they want to fund the fight against climate change or not.
That is absolutely true. The climate scientists aren't the ones who should be deciding whether coastal cities are worth saving, for instance. That is the responsibility of the general public. The general public certainly has the right to say they simply don't care, or aren't willing to make sacrifices for future generations. They can even let some amount of uncertainty about the negative effects of climate change enter into their risk management, such as using a predictive model where there is a 10% there are no negative effects.
But the current strategy of claiming the science isn't solid enough to be taken as "fact" by non-experts is indefensible.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
No, it actually is exactly that.
The communist promise is "work hard today, and one day we'll all be living in paradise where everyone can be living well". In turn that means, though, that if everyone but me is working hard, we'll all be living comfortably, so I don't really have to pull that hard, do I? And if it fails, we're all to blame. In other words, when that fails, "the system" is to blame because, well, what can a single person do?
The capitalist promise is "work hard today and one day YOU will be living in paradise where YOU can be living like a king". It's much more personal. The weight of that is squarely on you, if you fail, you're to blame, the system works because, look, there are people who got rich and live like a king. You failed.
That's why one lie works while the other one was far easier to see through.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know if a roulette wheel will pay out on the next spin, but I DO know how fast I'll lose money if I continue to put my money down on black.
That's the difference between weather and climate. You don't need to predict the next 5 day's weather to know that 100 years from now we're fucked if we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere... and we may be fucked even if we manage to reduce greenhouse gases dramatically in the near future.
The data HAS been verified. For instance, look at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. This was a project funded by right-wing activists who doubted the climate science. They specifically objected to use of satellite data and felt that terrestrial weather stations were not being vetted correctly. (For instance, showing pictures of temperature stations a few feet away from buildings or barbecues which they said tainted the results.) The Berkeley guys were led in part by Richard Muller, who has been a long-time skeptic. They went and got original raw data, and did a thorough job vetting each data point.
The result is that their data agrees completely with the climate change models. Muller's public summary is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07...
There are other contrarian opinions, but very few of them work with large data sets in any honest way. Nearly all the contrarian viewpoints can be linked to right-wing money and other professional gains that their mainstream colleagues do not enjoy.
But mostly, the arguments they make are trash - which is why they aren't published. They're dumb ideas, easily seen through. Science works by honest appraisal of ideas and data, not opinion or groupthink as you seem to believe. It's not perfect - lord knows I disagree with a lot of scientific colleagues' approaches - but by and large good science tends to win out over bad science.