It's very disappointing this isn't a major story (outside the remaining climate denial outlets, such as Fox/Murdoch/WSJ). I don't recall seeing it covered in the NY Times, for example. Perhaps I overlooked it, but it should have been a big enough story that overlooking it was very unlikely.
What would be the story? Climate change is real? I think that is pretty well understood by most of the NY Times readers. The story is now "This week in Apocolpyse Forecasting." Two things make this challenging, one is that the highest/lowest/largest/smallest in recorded history is like 150 - 200 years usually, and folks know that in human history at least people were living near gaciers and munching on Mammoth and Sabertooth. So clearly there are temperatures that are both "previously experienced by humans" and "not part of the recorded human record".
I think climate change news now that would get coverage would be actions being taken (as opposed to observations being made). What actions will Texas take after this season to mitigate the risk of flooding? What actions will California take to insure reliable water sources across both drought and excess modalities? I think we've reached the "Ok, so what?" phase.
The main problem with that thinking is that if the story is just about adaptation topics, we're going to be fighting a losing war for centuries. Adaptation is urgent to save human lives, yes - but vastly more important is to reduce greenhouse gas output. There is only one story right now for the US News to focus on:
Donald Trump thinks climate change is a hoax.
Ted Cruz also thinks climate change is a hoax.
Hillary Clinton thinks climate change is not a problem and that we should increase our greenhouse gas output as fast as possible.
Bernie Sanders considers climate change to be of critical importance and will act as a leader to curtail our greenhouse gas output. He is also the least likely leader in the race right now.
The story is not just about adaptation. The story is about how the US political leadership is passionate about increasing the rate of climate change and calling the entire science of climate a 'hoax'.
Donald Trump is a problem, yes, although arguably for bigger reasons than just his stance on climate change. Ted Cruz is from Texas, so... :).
I'm not sure where you get the impression that Hillary Clinton thinks climate change is "not a problem". Her website certainly states otherwise: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/climate/
Hillary Clinton profits directly from oil companies. She can say what she likes on her website, but her entire presidential campaign seems bent on doing the exact opposite. She is in favor of creating new technologies and building new infrastructure that will increase our greenhouse gas output. She is in favor of investing our time and money into creating new oil and gas energy systems.
Her campaign finances are a good indicator of how she will act if she is elected - much better than what her website says right now, or at any time. If she wants to really stand behind what that page says, she should stand up and say:
"Oil companies are destroying our planet's life and our health here in the USA. I will no longer take money from them. I will no longer vouch for new oil technologies."
And then she should do those things. Until then, her website is probably full of lies and I do not trust her word at all.
I'm not a fan of the clintons, reading about the whitewater scandal was enough for me to determine there's corruption abound with them; and I also support reducing oil consumption and further taxing of oil companies, but I have to say the arguments you outlined are not that good.
1. New technology leads to greater efficiency therefore reduces carbon output - So what's wrong with that? And Obama proved blocking pipelines does not stop the oil from flowing - right?
2. Taking money from oil companies doesn't mean much other than she's not anti-oil, which as a leader who understands the current dilemma, is probably not all that bad.
Obama came out of his first election pumping money into coal which was just a waste of money. Obama blocked keystone yes, but that just pushed it through via train cars and trucking (which adds more pollution). Also, Oilsands production only dropped by 0.1 percent during the whole price plummet, so not much happened there- did it? So was Obama a good investment on that front?
If you want to change the world for the better we, the people of the world, have to stop choosing to consume so much of it, but no one wants to discuss that, not even in politics.
The question was "why doesn't the mainstream media cover this news?" and my assertion is that it is no longer news to their audiences. That can be global warming it can be Spacex launches it can be dubious dealings at Panamanian law firms.
My thesis is that stories about taking action would be considered "newsworthy" with respect to this topic, the lack of action is not.
But alas do not forget that you are in your own echo chamber. Sadly there are many others who are not as informed as you or have such a capacity for critical thought.
Adaptation is a neural network problem where all nodes need to have the same information so the efforts can be coordinated.
That's a really good point, but to your notion about neural networks, I talked with a Ph.D student who was working on some interesting 'damaged network' ideas vis-a-vis RNNs that have connectivity issues. Their thesis is that most systems work in a partial vacuum and by adding the sort of disconnection in a network you can tease out a more durable network in all conditions. I thought it was a pretty novel field of study.
So do we as a species just give up on every one else because they are incapable of adapting? With that line of thinking we will never be better then the animals that only react to their environment and don't really plan for the future.(save the few specific cases due to evolutionary pressure)
> Hillary Clinton thinks climate change is not a problem and that we should increase our greenhouse gas output as fast as possible.
I'd ask that if we must discuss politics, let's avoid hyperbole and be careful to make accurate statements. All the quote above communicates is that you are angry about her position/actions re climate change, or that you simply want to damage her in others' eyes.
Hillary was for the Keystone pipeline before she was against it.
Dr. James Hansen of NASA has written that the Keystone pipeline would be "game over for climate" [1]
So I think it's fair to say she doesn't really treat climate change as a pressing problem, unless forced to by political expediency.
She also opposes the most sensible solution, a carbon tax.
I think the difference between her recently stated positions, and her actual political DNA, as well as that of her financial patrons, makes her a wolf in sheep's clothing on climate.
Well Sec. Clinton thought the invasion of Iraq, and arming the so-called moderate opposition in Syria and Libya were good ideas.
Even now with Europe at the brink, she still wants a no-fly zone to protect the moderate mujaheddin and to continue the anti-Russia/Assad chessgame she put into action.
She also later decided her initial Keystone support was wrong, and changed her mind.
So I'm going to say her judgement is not very good.
As far as Dr. Hansen goes, his stance is pretty simple. Look at the weird climate effects we are seeing at >400ppm carbon.
Climate was more stable and hospitable at 350ppm, he proposes leveling off emissions and then reducing them greatly by 2050. Pretty basic, rational stance in my opinion.
The amount of carbon the Keystone pipeline would deliver would blow us right past our targets.
Have Trump or Cruz ever used the word "hoax", or is that your reinterpretation of their position?
Have either one of them ever said that there is no such thing as climate change, as your statement seems to imply? Or, do they just question the details of how the evidence is presented and emphasized, the tradeoffs in the proposed responses, and the perverse incentives involved?
I suppose you could interpret these as not necessarily saying "there is no such thing as climate change", if you wanted to be denser than a neutron star.
> CO2 is what every human breathes out; every plant, in turn,consumes CO2
That tweet from Ted Cruz is bizarre. We've removed 3.6 million square miles of forest (from the original 6 million)[1], not to mention the billions of tons of CO2 produced annually through fuel combustion. What does the fact that humans expel CO2 have to do with it?
> Have either one of them ever said that there is no such thing as climate change, as your statement seems to imply?
Cruz:
OK, you are incorrect, actually. The scientific
evidence doesn't support global warming. For the
last 18 years, the satellite data - we have
satellites that monitor the atmosphere. The
satellites that actually measure the temperature
showed no significant warming whatsoever.
...
Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific
theory for a big government politician who wants
more power. Why? Because it is a theory that can
never be disproven.
Neither quote says or implies "there is no such thing as climate change".
In fact, the second one - "it is a theory that can never be disproven" makes it clear that he understands that climate change is constant and has always happened.
I think that environmentalism is more akin to a civil rights movement. People must change their behaviour not just practically, but on an intellectual and emotional level. Actions that seem trivial can impose a horrible burden on other people. Their is a huge reluctance to take personal responsibility for this, even among climate change believers. Climate Change Deniers simply don't want to accept responsibility, and the conspiracy theory is a neat way to do that.
Along with Ocean Acidification Increasing at Unprecentated rates, Top the US aid recipients all practice torture, wiki leaks on the trans-pacific partnership ignored by corporate media, corporate Internet provides threaten net neutrality, bankers back on Wall Street despite major crimes, FBI dismisses murder plot against Occupy Wallstreet as NSA and big business crack down on Wall Street, US media hypocracy in covering Ukraine crisis, world health organization suppresses report on Iraqi cancers and birth defects, wealthy donors and corporations set think tank adgendas, Pentagon awash in money despite serious audit problems, lawsuit challenges nuclear power industry immunity from liability in nuclear accidents, and--accumulating evidence of ongoing wireless technology causing health hazards.
I sometimes think journalists know what's being censored, but figure it's complicated, hasen't been proven, the average reader has too much to worry about just trying to keep a roof over their heads? In other words, "Let's just stick our heads in the sand, and hope for the best?"
I didn't jot these censored topics off the top of my noggin. There's a pretty good book called Censored 2015.
I wasen't going to read it, but it's not fluff. Some of the research was done by College of Marin students. A college I went to, and was a better than my state, and UC school.
(I don't think it censorship. I think it's more like denial, and journalist that are hanging on to their jobs, hoping they won't be fired for low readership, or page counts, but what do I know?)
This particular Flat Earth Society is a satirical group where they entertain themselves with ingenious rationalizations such as the one you linked to. I wouldn't imagine that there is a single true believer among them.
April is looking promising. It was 86F yesterday in Western WA. Some places hit 90+ - Record high. Today and tomorrow look to be 80+ here too. First time Seattle will have three days of 80+ weather in April since records began.
Cliff Mass thinks it'll be better than last summer though:
It's not just record highs that are breaking the records by a few degrees, it's that the records are being broken by 10F. It's one thing to have a warm snap, quite another to take it to a whole new level. I mean, 80s is something SEA might see for a few days in July. Well, used to be, anyway.
Yeah, yeah, weather!=climate; sit down, Captain Pedantic, I'm making a point here. As one who has walked this earth for over 50 years, I've observed that records of course are broken fairly regularly, but not with the frequency I see recently. Seems like every week I wake up to a new record, whether it's monthly, seasonal, or just today. It's a trend? Is climate change real? Dunno, not a climate scientist. But it sure seems like things are getting warmer, not just today, but generally.
Every month and year will be the warmest. You don't need an extraordinary intelligence to see where we'll be 10-15 years from now if we don't do something drastic about it! But I doubt there's much we can do at this stage - it's too late! Just imagine the migration flows of humans and animals from the soon uninhabitable areas like Africa and the Middle East toward the poles. You can foresee pandemics, civil wars, or even a world war. There are already a few tropical diseases that came to Europe like the Bluetongue disease, the West Nile Virus, and others - and this is just the beginning. Our livestock is not prepared, imagine the costs. With this in mind, I think Siberia, Canada, and Alaska are going to be the best locations for my near-future residence...
Not an exaggeration, unfortunately - this is what even some NATO officials have been discussing. That's why the migrant crisis is so important - it's a test and it also shows how unprepared the EU for something like this is!
Frankly I feel physically sick every time I read one of those articles. I believe it is within our power to stop or at least significantly diminish this trend, but everyone prefers to think about themselves and f*ck the neighbours.
Although the trend is global warming, each individual month/year can be more variable. In some places, at some times, it may even get colder. Regional/seasonal variables like El Nino, La Nina, and ocean currents can all come into play.
temperature != climate. This is what all of the same people writing articles like this chirp out whenever someone talks about current temperature changes having anything to do with climate change.
How do global temp avgs not have anything to do with climate?
I must admit though "Global Warming does not mean Global Warming" is at least a new one I haven't heard before, lol.
The thing is when it gets unusually warm everyone cries climate change and when it gets unusually cold it's completely dismissed. That's what OP is pointing out
So he is pointing out that when global temp avgs bust records everyone talks about global warming.. ok, I will give him that. I am not sure that makes much of a "point" though.
Sounds like you're talking about rebuttals to dingbats who say things like, "it was cold today, so global warming is false." That's about local temperatures, which indeed are not relevant (except in aggregate) to climate. Global temperatures absolutely are relevant, though.
yeah, and women getting paid 73c on the dollar is just because male sport stars salary sways the curve... because women are too weak to compete for those jobs. because of institutionalized discrimination. males stopped women from evolving the ability to throw a 100mph fast ball. reparations NOW! THE SKY IS FALLING! WE ALL GONNA DIE(^!#%^(!#%(^
I'm in Singapore (we're right smack on the equator) and it's seriously sweltering here. Really, the hottest it's ever been in my entire life (25yrs). It's unbelievably intense.
That's weather not climate. Be careful of making statements like that, because next year it might not be as cooler, and you'll have seemingly fueling the misguided arguments of the deniers. It's not just you though. Even the damn media gets this wrong, and it's extremely annoying.
I really don't see the point of these "warmest on record" articles. Since we are coming out of an ice age a mere (on the geologic time scale) 12,000 years ago, we should expect increasingly warm temperatures. Also, the "record" in this case only goes back 130 years, and the earth is 4.5 billion years old, so to try and make some sort of global warming generalization based on .00000000028% of the evidence is fallacious.
Another climate change story on HN where the top comment is a denier citing logical fallacies about how statistics and science work. :(
As crass as it may sound, I really wish Hacker News would talk about all the money that can be made by building startups that aim at mitigating the effects of climate change, about the routes to renewable, sustainable energy sources (also worth untold trillions of dollars), etc.
Instead, HN seems to mostly be composed of climate change deniers.
-------------
Edit: HN tells me I'm not allowed to reply to rsync's comment below. Here's my reply:
> You don't have to be a "denier" to be annoyed by hearing that the "most (X) ever" is based on ~150 years of observations.
The post author was not expressing annoyance. They expressed that the climate is not changing due to human activity:
> Since we are coming out of an ice age a mere (on the geologic time scale) 12,000 years ago, we should expect increasingly warm temperatures.
That is not "a reasonable comment and a reasonable sentiment." It's an extremely damaging falsehood that does not have a place here on HN.
Well, technically, "the earth orbits the sun" is precisely nothing more than a "point of view" (or a choice of reference frame, if you wish). The laws of physics tell us it's an arbitrary (though very convenient) choice, and you are free to make any other choice you like, such as "the sun and the planets all orbit the earth". Poor analogy, I guess?
Whereas "the sun and the planets all orbit the earth" has astonishingly little predictive power.
Not a geocentrist myself, but it did have good predictive power.
"To summarize, Ptolemy devised a system that was compatible with Aristotelian philosophy and managed to track actual observations and predict future movement mostly to within the limits of the next 1000 years of observations. The observed motions and his mechanisms for explaining them include:"[0]
Obviously not as good as current models, but it's a bit of historical rewriting to say that geocentrism wasn't a good model for the time, which is one part of why there was push back for heliocentrism. With the tools of the time, the heliocentric model had similar predictive power. Geocentrism at the time wasn't just about god, it actually had predictive power.
"He also argued that his system was more elegant than the traditional geocentric system. However, the predictive power of his model was not substantially better than its competition."[1]
Those models predicted the orbits of the planets because they had been fitted precisely to them - and explained only them; but the models did not and could not predict anything else about gravity, or the motions of other bodies.
Had Jupiter's moons been visible to them, their motion would have confounded their model entirely.
Also, "The change from circular orbits to elliptical planetary paths dramatically improved the accuracy of celestial observations and predictions." Your own link says the predictive power was "dramatically improved."
Saying that the earth orbits the sun is actually a bit more than just a choice in reference frame. When you have two bodies (or more, although it gets more complicated) orbiting where one is significantly larger you can end up with a center of mass of the two objects (barycenter) which will be inside of the larger object. So from either reference frame the barycenter can determine that the smaller object is orbiting larger object.
So while it's true that you can work the equation from either reference frame defining each as orbiting the other, the center of mass will more than likely lie in or closer to one or the other, and with that you can define which is orbiting the other canonically.
> Since we are coming out of an ice age a mere (on the geologic time scale) 12,000 years ago, we should expect increasingly warm temperatures.
No we shouldn't expect this kind of temperature rise. Not like this. This quote is entirely nonsensical, it has no logical backing at all. The rates of temperature rise we are seeing right now are not to be expected based on our last ice age receding. The fallacy here is "made shit up and pretended it was truth".
> Also, the "record" in this case only goes back 130 years, and the earth is 4.5 billion years old
The record is a real record. Putting it in quotes implies that it isn't a record. That's false. Also, this implies that the age of the earth is relevant to how we act today. Does NYC or SF care about the temperature of the Earth during the formation of our solar system? No. It's not relevant.
> so to try and make some sort of global warming generalization based on .00000000028% of the evidence is fallacious.
Nobody is making that generalization, or using that scale of evidence. This is a fallacy because the post author has pretended that the IBM article quoted said that they (Weather Underground) used .00000000028% of available evidence to draw their conclusion. Again, this is false.
Again, you didn't cite any actual facts. Repeating something doesn't make it true. You should reply with a citation proving that the rate of temperature rise is an anomaly. Cause right now you're ironically "making shit up and pretending it was truth", in your own words.
Also, noting the fact that the record only goes back 130 years is merely pointing out how little statistical significance climate models based on "the record" have.
Assuming this reconstruction and others is sound, it is apparent that there definitely is a fair bit of natural temperature variability. But the recent temperature rise in the last 50 years certainly seem like aberration, in terms of rate of change.
No, I'm sorry. After half a century of political abuse of scientific research, the onus is not on us to educate you. We're way past the point where unfounded distractions like the GP's can be attributed to ignorance.
Please let the people willing to do the work work, and put in some effort to educate yourself if you want to get involved.
"Another climate change story on HN where the top comment is a denier citing logical fallacies about how statistics and science work."
You don't have to be a "denier" to be annoyed by hearing that the "most (X) ever" is based on ~150 years of observations.
Plenty of well meaning, properly liberal, progressive thinkers that you would (presumably) approve of are also annoyed by this.
It's a reasonable comment and a reasonable sentiment.
Don't let your emotional attachment to the "us vs. them" narrative or your addiction to righteous indignation blind you to the simple (and obvious, non-controversial) objection (the parent) has.
I'm not denying anything. I accept the data which says global warming is occurring. I accept the IPCC report which says humans "likely" have a small, but statistically significant, effect on global warming. My point is that, on the geologic time scale, 100 years of temperature records are meaningless, and these media stories are really designed to cause fear. The fact is we are well within natural long term temperature variations.
One poster says it's the rate of temperature growth that is important. Agreed, however, that is not in the article.
What really disturbs me is your use of the pejorative "denier". Is a denier anyone who is skeptical of your dogma? Galileo was a heretical "denier" for his theory that the sun was the center of the solar system. Denying a theory is a necessary step in the scientific method.
How warm the plant has been many millions of years in the past is mostly irrelevant for the problem we are facing.
The problem we are facing is that in the last 100 years the temperature have constantly been rising, and the rise seems to even speed up. The consequences of this is at minimum a major shift of the ecological systems. If we are unlucky, even the collapse of some.
In any case we are facing severe consequences for human civilization as we know it. Even if we "just" lose cities like New York it would be bad, but whole countries like Bangladesh with over 100 Million of population are facing flooding.
Well, yes, life on this planet will continue after us, but we should have a strong interest in not making things for us unbearable. Fighting global warming is not about "saving the planet" but about "saving ourselves".
I once discovered that the person I was talking to hated environmentalists, because in their thinking they wanted to protect the ENVIRONMENT, and not humans.
I tried to explain, "I can't speak for all environmentalists, but I want to protect the environment so that it's habitable and enjoyable FOR HUMANS."
I apparently blew his mind - he'd never considered that as a reason to be an environmentalist.
According to you "we should expect increasingly warm temperatures." Your own words.
There are predictions that global warming will cause droughts, floods, water and food shortages, mass migrations of dangerous species, ocean acidification, and sea level changes that threaten millions of people.
So, documenting the fact that every year the Earth is getting warmer should remind us all that we should come up with SOME ways to act to protect ourselves and our fellow man from those problems.
SOME people advocate fighting global warming directly. Whether or not they believe it's caused by mankind in the first place.
But you "really don't see the point" in discussing... ANYTHING... about global warming?
but why should we expect increasingly warm temperatures? like you demonstrate, the difference between the span of a human life and the age of the earth is so vast that we really have no reason to expect any significant change in temperatures during the course of our lives, or even the 130 years for which records have been kept (only .00000000028% of the life of the earth).
Has it? I haven't heard of americanthinker.com before, but do you have a reputable source for that claim, such as an independant study published in an independent journal that has been peer reviewed? Such as [0]. Because other legitimate sources such as Nasa actually state the 97% figure too[1].
Science Council of Japan, Russian Academy of Science, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Royal Society (UK) (PDF File)
http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Maybe the consensus number is only 95%, or 93%, but it's pretty clear that there is broad scientific agreement. Even that 'debunking' only claims that the papers do not explicitly take a position, while virtually every major scientific body who have taken a position say that human-caused climate change is a major issue. There is pretty undeniable evidence now that the world is getting warmer (example: http://www.crystalcruises.com/OfferDetail.aspx?OG=220). So the shift in thinking should be away from "is there anyone who doesn't think this is happening" to "who has the best ideas for how to limit this".
I'm pretty certain that scientists are able to reconstruct temperatures going back thousands of years from various sources, with other information such as atmospheric carbon volumes. Here's one source: https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an...
yeah its sad that not many ppl realize the effects. Even geeks seem to be arguing that there were hotter periods and blabla. This time the heat was added by humans!!
- the normal heating/cooling periods take place over thousands of years, which leaves ample opportunity for species to adapt to the changing climate. The human-added heat works much faster, and could trigger a massive extinction event unless the same humans work to prevent it.
- irrespective of whether the heat was added by humans, the previous "hot" periods did not happen during human habitation of this planet. The change we're facing is unprecented in our history and we must work to prepare for it.
Tell that to up-and-coming countries like China. Go ahead, see if they want to slow their economic growth for the "environment", let alone the breathing air of their people. And after you tell them off, take a trip to Africa (e.g. Nigeria) as well.
By all means, we should work to make it an economical alternative. I suggest that a higher proportion of GDP in first-world countries go towards this type of basic research. But until then, it's not going to happen.
China is adopting solar on a massive scale. In fact it's the Chinese solar industry that broke the grid parity barrier.
And yes, their people are and will demand cleaner air.
And most importantly, new solar is cheaper than new coal plants, even in India.
And as far as countries like Nigeria, I propose that the developed world begins to enact sanctions against reckless polluters to incentivize social nation state behavior.
I think that we will find, just as transnational oil companies have found, that the governments of countries like Nigeria are easily swayed by outside money.
And this idea that controlling carbon will slow economic growth is ludicrous.
What do you think having NYC and Miami flooded will do to growth? What about 100 million refugees from Bangladesh. Look at the problem of Syrian refugees for Europe.
We did one thing right, and we got solar pv cheap just in the nick of time.
Seems unlikely there will be a silver bullet solution, especially one that's considered future technology. We have many low-tech solutions available today like soil carbon sequestration through better land management that can be part of a wide array of solutions.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 97.0 ms ] threadhttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/15/march-tem...
It's very disappointing this isn't a major story (outside the remaining climate denial outlets, such as Fox/Murdoch/WSJ). I don't recall seeing it covered in the NY Times, for example. Perhaps I overlooked it, but it should have been a big enough story that overlooking it was very unlikely.
I think climate change news now that would get coverage would be actions being taken (as opposed to observations being made). What actions will Texas take after this season to mitigate the risk of flooding? What actions will California take to insure reliable water sources across both drought and excess modalities? I think we've reached the "Ok, so what?" phase.
Donald Trump thinks climate change is a hoax.
Ted Cruz also thinks climate change is a hoax.
Hillary Clinton thinks climate change is not a problem and that we should increase our greenhouse gas output as fast as possible.
Bernie Sanders considers climate change to be of critical importance and will act as a leader to curtail our greenhouse gas output. He is also the least likely leader in the race right now.
The story is not just about adaptation. The story is about how the US political leadership is passionate about increasing the rate of climate change and calling the entire science of climate a 'hoax'.
I'm not sure where you get the impression that Hillary Clinton thinks climate change is "not a problem". Her website certainly states otherwise: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/climate/
Her campaign finances are a good indicator of how she will act if she is elected - much better than what her website says right now, or at any time. If she wants to really stand behind what that page says, she should stand up and say:
"Oil companies are destroying our planet's life and our health here in the USA. I will no longer take money from them. I will no longer vouch for new oil technologies."
And then she should do those things. Until then, her website is probably full of lies and I do not trust her word at all.
1. New technology leads to greater efficiency therefore reduces carbon output - So what's wrong with that? And Obama proved blocking pipelines does not stop the oil from flowing - right?
2. Taking money from oil companies doesn't mean much other than she's not anti-oil, which as a leader who understands the current dilemma, is probably not all that bad.
Obama came out of his first election pumping money into coal which was just a waste of money. Obama blocked keystone yes, but that just pushed it through via train cars and trucking (which adds more pollution). Also, Oilsands production only dropped by 0.1 percent during the whole price plummet, so not much happened there- did it? So was Obama a good investment on that front?
If you want to change the world for the better we, the people of the world, have to stop choosing to consume so much of it, but no one wants to discuss that, not even in politics.
My thesis is that stories about taking action would be considered "newsworthy" with respect to this topic, the lack of action is not.
So do we as a species just give up on every one else because they are incapable of adapting? With that line of thinking we will never be better then the animals that only react to their environment and don't really plan for the future.(save the few specific cases due to evolutionary pressure)
I'd ask that if we must discuss politics, let's avoid hyperbole and be careful to make accurate statements. All the quote above communicates is that you are angry about her position/actions re climate change, or that you simply want to damage her in others' eyes.
Dr. James Hansen of NASA has written that the Keystone pipeline would be "game over for climate" [1]
So I think it's fair to say she doesn't really treat climate change as a pressing problem, unless forced to by political expediency.
She also opposes the most sensible solution, a carbon tax.
I think the difference between her recently stated positions, and her actual political DNA, as well as that of her financial patrons, makes her a wolf in sheep's clothing on climate.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-...
Even now with Europe at the brink, she still wants a no-fly zone to protect the moderate mujaheddin and to continue the anti-Russia/Assad chessgame she put into action.
She also later decided her initial Keystone support was wrong, and changed her mind.
So I'm going to say her judgement is not very good.
As far as Dr. Hansen goes, his stance is pretty simple. Look at the weird climate effects we are seeing at >400ppm carbon.
Climate was more stable and hospitable at 350ppm, he proposes leveling off emissions and then reducing them greatly by 2050. Pretty basic, rational stance in my opinion.
The amount of carbon the Keystone pipeline would deliver would blow us right past our targets.
Have either one of them ever said that there is no such thing as climate change, as your statement seems to imply? Or, do they just question the details of how the evidence is presented and emphasized, the tradeoffs in the proposed responses, and the perverse incentives involved?
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26589529219124838...
I suppose you could interpret these as not necessarily saying "there is no such thing as climate change", if you wanted to be denser than a neutron star.
That tweet from Ted Cruz is bizarre. We've removed 3.6 million square miles of forest (from the original 6 million)[1], not to mention the billions of tons of CO2 produced annually through fuel combustion. What does the fact that humans expel CO2 have to do with it?
[1]: http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/habitats/rainforests/in...
Wow. Wow.
Cruz:
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/09/459026242/scientific-evidence-...In fact, the second one - "it is a theory that can never be disproven" makes it clear that he understands that climate change is constant and has always happened.
Much of the climate data goes back thousands of years or more.
I sometimes think journalists know what's being censored, but figure it's complicated, hasen't been proven, the average reader has too much to worry about just trying to keep a roof over their heads? In other words, "Let's just stick our heads in the sand, and hope for the best?"
I didn't jot these censored topics off the top of my noggin. There's a pretty good book called Censored 2015.
I wasen't going to read it, but it's not fluff. Some of the research was done by College of Marin students. A college I went to, and was a better than my state, and UC school.
(I don't think it censorship. I think it's more like denial, and journalist that are hanging on to their jobs, hoping they won't be fired for low readership, or page counts, but what do I know?)
Published today, and showed up at the top of my NYTimes Now app
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?e...
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?e...
The JMA measurements go back to 1891 and show that every one of the past 11 months has been the hottest ever recorded for that month.
http://wiki.tfes.org/Gravity
Cliff Mass thinks it'll be better than last summer though:
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-warmest-april-day-...
Yeah, yeah, weather!=climate; sit down, Captain Pedantic, I'm making a point here. As one who has walked this earth for over 50 years, I've observed that records of course are broken fairly regularly, but not with the frequency I see recently. Seems like every week I wake up to a new record, whether it's monthly, seasonal, or just today. It's a trend? Is climate change real? Dunno, not a climate scientist. But it sure seems like things are getting warmer, not just today, but generally.
edit: source appears to be http://www.noaa.gov/11th-straight-month-globe-was-record-war...
But I will say this: we will have a crisis on our hands in places like Bangladesh. Investing in ways to remedy this will benefit us all.
life finds a way. you're an idiot.
[0] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201603
you're an idiot.
As crass as it may sound, I really wish Hacker News would talk about all the money that can be made by building startups that aim at mitigating the effects of climate change, about the routes to renewable, sustainable energy sources (also worth untold trillions of dollars), etc.
Instead, HN seems to mostly be composed of climate change deniers.
-------------
Edit: HN tells me I'm not allowed to reply to rsync's comment below. Here's my reply:
> You don't have to be a "denier" to be annoyed by hearing that the "most (X) ever" is based on ~150 years of observations.
The post author was not expressing annoyance. They expressed that the climate is not changing due to human activity:
> Since we are coming out of an ice age a mere (on the geologic time scale) 12,000 years ago, we should expect increasingly warm temperatures.
That is not "a reasonable comment and a reasonable sentiment." It's an extremely damaging falsehood that does not have a place here on HN.
Also, the reality of climate change isn't a "point of view" any more than saying that "the earth orbits the sun" is a point of view.
Whereas "the sun and the planets all orbit the earth" has astonishingly little predictive power.
Not a geocentrist myself, but it did have good predictive power.
"To summarize, Ptolemy devised a system that was compatible with Aristotelian philosophy and managed to track actual observations and predict future movement mostly to within the limits of the next 1000 years of observations. The observed motions and his mechanisms for explaining them include:"[0]
Obviously not as good as current models, but it's a bit of historical rewriting to say that geocentrism wasn't a good model for the time, which is one part of why there was push back for heliocentrism. With the tools of the time, the heliocentric model had similar predictive power. Geocentrism at the time wasn't just about god, it actually had predictive power.
"He also argued that his system was more elegant than the traditional geocentric system. However, the predictive power of his model was not substantially better than its competition."[1]
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model
[1] - http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/tharriso/ast105/Ast105week04.html
Had Jupiter's moons been visible to them, their motion would have confounded their model entirely.
Also, "The change from circular orbits to elliptical planetary paths dramatically improved the accuracy of celestial observations and predictions." Your own link says the predictive power was "dramatically improved."
So while it's true that you can work the equation from either reference frame defining each as orbiting the other, the center of mass will more than likely lie in or closer to one or the other, and with that you can define which is orbiting the other canonically.
Plus, it would help undecided people like myself have more data points and logical arguments to consider on both sides.
> Since we are coming out of an ice age a mere (on the geologic time scale) 12,000 years ago, we should expect increasingly warm temperatures.
No we shouldn't expect this kind of temperature rise. Not like this. This quote is entirely nonsensical, it has no logical backing at all. The rates of temperature rise we are seeing right now are not to be expected based on our last ice age receding. The fallacy here is "made shit up and pretended it was truth".
> Also, the "record" in this case only goes back 130 years, and the earth is 4.5 billion years old
The record is a real record. Putting it in quotes implies that it isn't a record. That's false. Also, this implies that the age of the earth is relevant to how we act today. Does NYC or SF care about the temperature of the Earth during the formation of our solar system? No. It's not relevant.
> so to try and make some sort of global warming generalization based on .00000000028% of the evidence is fallacious.
Nobody is making that generalization, or using that scale of evidence. This is a fallacy because the post author has pretended that the IBM article quoted said that they (Weather Underground) used .00000000028% of available evidence to draw their conclusion. Again, this is false.
Also, noting the fact that the record only goes back 130 years is merely pointing out how little statistical significance climate models based on "the record" have.
Your post is rank with hypocrisy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_England_temperature
Beyond that, people have attempted reconstruction from other evidence. For instance I found an attempt at a 2000 year reconstruction using tree ring data here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/moberg2005/moberg2005.ht...
Assuming this reconstruction and others is sound, it is apparent that there definitely is a fair bit of natural temperature variability. But the recent temperature rise in the last 50 years certainly seem like aberration, in terms of rate of change.
This violates the HN guidelines, which we warned you about once already. We ban accounts that do this, so please stop doing it.
Please let the people willing to do the work work, and put in some effort to educate yourself if you want to get involved.
You don't have to be a "denier" to be annoyed by hearing that the "most (X) ever" is based on ~150 years of observations.
Plenty of well meaning, properly liberal, progressive thinkers that you would (presumably) approve of are also annoyed by this.
It's a reasonable comment and a reasonable sentiment.
Don't let your emotional attachment to the "us vs. them" narrative or your addiction to righteous indignation blind you to the simple (and obvious, non-controversial) objection (the parent) has.
One poster says it's the rate of temperature growth that is important. Agreed, however, that is not in the article.
What really disturbs me is your use of the pejorative "denier". Is a denier anyone who is skeptical of your dogma? Galileo was a heretical "denier" for his theory that the sun was the center of the solar system. Denying a theory is a necessary step in the scientific method.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
The problem we are facing is that in the last 100 years the temperature have constantly been rising, and the rise seems to even speed up. The consequences of this is at minimum a major shift of the ecological systems. If we are unlucky, even the collapse of some.
In any case we are facing severe consequences for human civilization as we know it. Even if we "just" lose cities like New York it would be bad, but whole countries like Bangladesh with over 100 Million of population are facing flooding.
I know, I know - I'm the life of the party.
I tried to explain, "I can't speak for all environmentalists, but I want to protect the environment so that it's habitable and enjoyable FOR HUMANS."
I apparently blew his mind - he'd never considered that as a reason to be an environmentalist.
There are predictions that global warming will cause droughts, floods, water and food shortages, mass migrations of dangerous species, ocean acidification, and sea level changes that threaten millions of people.
So, documenting the fact that every year the Earth is getting warmer should remind us all that we should come up with SOME ways to act to protect ourselves and our fellow man from those problems.
SOME people advocate fighting global warming directly. Whether or not they believe it's caused by mankind in the first place.
But you "really don't see the point" in discussing... ANYTHING... about global warming?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-...
Before it was the warmest March on record it was the warmest February:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/february-smashe...
Oh, and it was the warmest January:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/02/17/january_...
Oh and 2015 was the warmest year on record:
http://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-2015-became-the-hott...
Chart of temps from 1880:
http://www.skepticalscience.com//pics/2c-2016-02.png
CO2 is at 408ppm and climbing as it nears it's seasonal peak.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
This is a level not seen in the past 15 million years
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/04/11/hothouse-gas-spikes-t...
Here's a chart that looks at some other greenhouse gases, such as methane.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/aggi.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/02/debunking_the_97...
[0] http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/0240... [1] http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
United Nations IPCC http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm
Exxon Mobile http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/current-issues/climate-po...
NASA http://climate.nasa.gov/
American Meteorological Society https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/about-ams/ams-statemen...
NOAA http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
EPA https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/
National Center for Atmospheric Research http://eo.ucar.edu/basics/cc_1.html
Royal Society of the United Kingdom https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-evid...
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society http://www.cmos.ca/site/ps_pos_statements?a=7
Science Council of Japan, Russian Academy of Science, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Royal Society (UK) (PDF File) http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf
Maybe the consensus number is only 95%, or 93%, but it's pretty clear that there is broad scientific agreement. Even that 'debunking' only claims that the papers do not explicitly take a position, while virtually every major scientific body who have taken a position say that human-caused climate change is a major issue. There is pretty undeniable evidence now that the world is getting warmer (example: http://www.crystalcruises.com/OfferDetail.aspx?OG=220). So the shift in thinking should be away from "is there anyone who doesn't think this is happening" to "who has the best ideas for how to limit this".
They'll be dead.
In the history of Earth there were periods where climate were much hotter, with more greenhouse gases, yet life did not stop.
Yes maybe we will suffer (maybe not so much), but don't over-dramatize the issue because drama does not last.
So what?
- the normal heating/cooling periods take place over thousands of years, which leaves ample opportunity for species to adapt to the changing climate. The human-added heat works much faster, and could trigger a massive extinction event unless the same humans work to prevent it.
- irrespective of whether the heat was added by humans, the previous "hot" periods did not happen during human habitation of this planet. The change we're facing is unprecented in our history and we must work to prepare for it.
Either way, action is required.
There is a way to get us down from 408ppm back to a safe level like 350ppm, and that is Bio Energy with carbon capture and storage:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture...
By all means, we should work to make it an economical alternative. I suggest that a higher proportion of GDP in first-world countries go towards this type of basic research. But until then, it's not going to happen.
Here's why you are wrong.
China is adopting solar on a massive scale. In fact it's the Chinese solar industry that broke the grid parity barrier.
And yes, their people are and will demand cleaner air.
And most importantly, new solar is cheaper than new coal plants, even in India.
And as far as countries like Nigeria, I propose that the developed world begins to enact sanctions against reckless polluters to incentivize social nation state behavior.
I think that we will find, just as transnational oil companies have found, that the governments of countries like Nigeria are easily swayed by outside money.
And this idea that controlling carbon will slow economic growth is ludicrous.
What do you think having NYC and Miami flooded will do to growth? What about 100 million refugees from Bangladesh. Look at the problem of Syrian refugees for Europe.
We did one thing right, and we got solar pv cheap just in the nick of time.