xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

[ZRod]

Your citing an article from 2014. This study was released in 2015

[cm husker]

 

My links are based on me trying to figure out the risks associated with global warming. When I read them, I see some tenuous conclusions and no examination, or even mention of, the lives put at risk by cutting emissions back.

I also have seen no credible argument about how such restrictions could be effectively enforced.

Probably because engineers are capable of developing new technologies that are more efficient with out major sacrifices. We enforce clean air and water acts now, I'm sure we could find a way to enforce green house gas regulations.

If that were the case, we would already be transitioning because market forces would be pushing it, especially when oil was very expensive. But that's simply not the case.

[ZRod]

 

 

My links are based on me trying to figure out the risks associated with global warming. When I read them, I see some tenuous conclusions and no examination, or even mention of, the lives put at risk by cutting emissions back.

I also have seen no credible argument about how such restrictions could be effectively enforced.

Probably because engineers are capable of developing new technologies that are more efficient with out major sacrifices. We enforce clean air and water acts now, I'm sure we could find a way to enforce green house gas regulations.

If that were the case, we would already be transitioning because market forces would be pushing it, especially when oil was very expensive. But that's simply not the case.

CEOs and Company Presidents aren't always that wise. I think you would also be surprised at how much push back you can get from an industry when it doesn't want to change its ways. Though you really shouldn't be.

[cm husker]

I think you'd be surprised how company employees constantly strive to improve their pnl, spurred by demanding owners like pension funds.

[84HuskerLaw]

The fundamental problem with all the global warming (now termed 'climate change') data is that nearly all of it is just 'estimates' and approximations and guesses. There is simply no truly reliable way to calculate global temperatures even just a few hundred years ago, much less tens of millions of years ago, etc. I believe it is accepted that modern man's first visits to the North and South poles in any kind of scientific expedition were in the past 150 years, for example. Much of the world's oceans are barely mapped, let alone carefully and accurately measured for exact temperatures, etc.

 

We may be able to determine that the planet has experienced significant rises and falls in global temperatures as evidenced by the so called ice ages and so on. The many theories, reasons, etc for the warming and cooling of the planet are reasonable guesses for what happened but it is much more difficult to determine with certainty why.

 

The climate is influenced in many ways by many events, conditions, and activities from the activities and impacts of mankind to those of each and every other species of plant and animal from the past, the present and the future. The environmental systems which are in a constant state of change and evolution influence temperatures and many other factors which in turn impact temperatures. Solar energy is the primary source of heating of the planet - nearly all can agree on this. The sun and its energy emissions change in intensity and duration. Volcanoes, earthquakes, impacts of meteors and asteroids, etc. The release of the so called greenhouse gases and myriad other conditions create circumstances whereby local, regional and global temperatures and climate as a result will vary. We don't know which have how much influence at any given time over the millions and millions of years of the Earth's existence.

[Mavric]

Your citing an article from 2014. This study was released in 2015

I don't think I can read the article. What new data did they find that changed the analysis so much in one year?

[ZRod]

 

Your citing an article from 2014. This study was released in 2015

I don't think I can read the article. What new data did they find that changed the analysis so much in one year?

They're looking at different depths. The article is basically saying that the top 100 meters is cooling, and that the 100 to 300 meter range is still warming. Hence you're not seeing any affect at the surface or at great depths as your article pointed out. Even the article you posted says that the surface cooling in no way puts climate change in question.

Study coauthor Josh Willis of JPL said these findings do not throw suspicion on climate change itself.

They are also using different methods to investigate the anomaly. Looking at "raw temperatures" vs "rising sea levels" due to thermal expansion.

[knapplc]

I think this bears looking into. Every month's temperature in the past 136 years.

[BigRedBuster]

I think this bears looking into. Every month's temperature in the past 136 years.

 

 

Here's a frustration I have with this entire discussion.

 

Scientists act like they know precisely down to the exact degree what the temperature was long before modern technology existed. So....is this graph claiming it know precisely what the temperature was (to the exact degree) in April of 1882???

[Landlord]

I don't know what the exact means of temperature recording are for that graph, but mercury thermometers have existed since the early 1700's.

[BigRedBuster]

I don't know what the exact means of temperature recording are for that graph, but mercury thermometers have existed since the early 1700's.

Of course they have. But, I question deeply their ability to measure down to the exact degree that long ago.

[zoogs]

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_01/

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/35b59q/how_do_scientists_know_the_temperature_of_the/

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/07/past-climate-temperature-proxies

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#Description_of_the_temperature_record

 

"How do they do that?" questions tend to have answers :-)

[ZRod]

 

I don't know what the exact means of temperature recording are for that graph, but mercury thermometers have existed since the early 1700's.

 

Of course they have. But, I question deeply their ability to measure down to the exact degree that long ago.

I wouldn't. Science understood far more back then than what most people realize. All they had to do was establish the freezing and boiling point of a solution and create and calibrate the scale how they saw fit. Fahrenheit invinted his own degree, it's not something that existed. It's also easily reproducible since thermal expantion for a given solution/element will always follow the same curve.

[Moiraine]

We're affecting climate change.

 

That said, it's way LESS important that we're affecting climate change than people make it out to be.

 

We are doing all sorts of other sh**ty things to damage the world. We're hurting the air we breathe. We're causing plants/trees to become extinct. Bees are dying, the ocean is so polluted it's becoming problematic for the fish to live in it. Lead is in our water, even in the U.S. These are things we KNOW we're causing. We should be doing something about THOSE instead of arguing about this. (By "we" I mean the people who can do something. Not "we" in this forum post). And many of the things we could be doing for all of that would at the same time help the climate change problem just in case we are the cause.

 

Not just in China. Here's Salt Lake City. Yes, it's in the perfect location to have problems like this but it's not just places with thick visible smog that have problems.

 

[cm husker]

I think this bears looking into. Every month's temperature in the past 136 years.

 

 

 

 

What's the source of that neat graphic? I'm guessing the underlying methodology is quite suspect. Emissions are generally holding steady during the past decade. But this graphic indicates that global temperatures are jumping rapidly. Is that because temps are actually climbing? Or are we better at estimating global temperatures than we were in 1940? It's this sort of "graphic based science" with no actual detail that makes meaningful discussions difficult.

 

I still remember when global cooling was the fear in the 80s - so I'm really curious if that infographic is even accurate at all.

 

What I do know is that developed countries are already cutting emissions - but we want to hamstring the developing countries by imposing unfair restrictions on them, which will, counter-intuitively, almost certainly raise overall emissions in the long run (because developing countries will slow or fail to develop and will therefore not transition to energy saving methods or alternate energy sources).