Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

blogs.scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 91 posts

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#61

Post by Certhas »

IncRnd wrote: post #52
f_allwein wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA has one up to 2017. It does not look pretty. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

My first question, looking at that graph, is "how does that graph calculate a global temperature for an entire year?" Do you know the actual source of the global temperature readings going back to 1880? Sure, the webpage says the dataset came from https://climate.nasa.gov/system/internal_resources/details/o... , but where did they come from? These are the first 10 lines of the linked dataset, showing land and sea tem…

We have measurement stations that go back that far, and where we use the same instruments and methods today as back in the 19th century for the express purpose to have a data series that can be interpreted that far back.

A concrete data set:

https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/

This includes the following list of original source data:

https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/crutem4/stati...

So you see, a lot of things go into making that one number for 1880, and there are many stations going back much further than that.

Updating these data sets is a massive, careful, effort.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#62

Post by Certhas »

IncRnd wrote: post #59
SiempreViernes wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be precise, these are global averages , so from this alone it is clear the numbers aren't measurements but rather the output of some analysis. The linked file is simply the analysis output, the source is the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, presumably their GISTEMP dataset (since that's the one about global average surface temperature). The original GISTEMP analysis is documented here: https://pubs.giss.nasa.g…

Thank you for that, but if you look once more, you will see that you didn't answer my question.

They did. As they said, they use (weather) station data + statistics to compensate for missing data. We have temperature records from weather stations going back to the 18th century.

Just quickly googling I found this paper that works to make historical records usable for today:

https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gdj3....

"Daily observations of weather and climate for the province of Québec, Canada, start in the 18th century and continue to the present day. Daily temperature observations from 12 observers ranging from 1742 to 1873 are described here."

That's why the 1880 forward data is different from other reconstructions going further back. These are measurement instruments by scientists recording temperature.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#63

Post by Certhas »

tobr wrote: post #32

We should start talking about actions that contribute to global warming in a significant/active/systemic way as crimes against humanity. That is what they are. Executives and politicians need to know that that is how we will judge them in the future.

Sue. If the true costs of burning fossil fuels were actually internalized, we would have stopped long ago.

https://qz.com/1129028/a-peruvian-farmer-is-suing-german-ene...

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#64

Post by conistonwater »

IncRnd wrote: post #52
f_allwein wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA has one up to 2017. It does not look pretty. https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

My first question, looking at that graph, is "how does that graph calculate a global temperature for an entire year?" Do you know the actual source of the global temperature readings going back to 1880? Sure, the webpage says the dataset came from https://climate.nasa.gov/system/internal_resources/details/o... , but where did they come from? These are the first 10 lines of the linked dataset, showing land and sea tem…

Nitpick: it's not a graph of "global temperature", it's a graph of temperature anomaly. The anomaly for a single site is the difference between the current temperature and the average for a fixed period in the past for that same site. Temperature would instead be the actual value of temperature. Calculating the average global temperature is rather more difficult (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/anomalie...). See https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/dec... which I think also addresses your other questions.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#65

Post by llccbb »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #17

So the history of climate change goes something like: confusion about overall sign in the 1960's, mounting evidence for warming due to CO_2 in 1970's, consensus about overall warming caused by human CO_2 emission in the eighties, and then clarifying in the details since then. The fact that there still isn't mainstream discussion about how society must change, but rather eternal growth society is still the default tar…

I think you are missing out on all the discussion that is occurring... Particularly in the energy sector, which is experiencing a dramatic shift towards low carbon energy sources (and a more dramatic shift away from environmentally horrid coal). I am very confused if you think that solar, wind, nuclear, and coal energy are not mainstream discussions.

As far as the "eternal growth society", I have to completely agree. But I would say there continues to be discussion around the (de)merits of capitalism. As a counter point, there are still about a BILLION people without access to electricity (something that rarely in the mainstream discussion). Advancements in electricity access (~70% in 1990; ~87% now) is a place we can probably all agree that growth is warranted.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#66

Post by sintaxi »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #15
sintaxi wrote: post #7

Looks like the disgraced Michael Mann is trying to save his discredited hockey stick graph. People need to know that this graph couldn't be defended when challenged in the Supreme court of British Columbia. I never thought this graph would ever again see the light of day.

Please stop trying to get us all killed by denying climate change. Thanks!

I'm not joining your anti-human death cult. Please start actually caring about science and facts.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#67

Post by tobr »

southern_cross wrote: post #40
tobr wrote: post #32

We should start talking about actions that contribute to global warming in a significant/active/systemic way as crimes against humanity. That is what they are. Executives and politicians need to know that that is how we will judge them in the future.

So every time you get in your car and start personally spewing excess CO2, that's a crime against humanity? Or you fire up your oil or gas furnace? Or you eat a burger or pretty much anything else produced by Big Ag? Or you build a concrete structure? And so on and so forth. As the old saying goes: "Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones."

As pointed out, this is a rather trollish comment. I though the “significant” qualifier would be clear. Participating in a fossil fuel loving society is not enough; spending big money to systematically delay or silence climate research you know is valid, just might be.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#68

Post by southern_cross »

mturmon wrote: post #44
southern_cross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not biased, so much; more like balanced. (Dare I say "fair and balanced"?) After going through my daily news feeds and perusing so many stories (so freakin' many!) about how climate change (or whatever) is going to kill us all soon enough, I also now routinely head over to WUWT to see what their take on the matter is. Some of what shows up there I think is crap, of course, but much of it is quite thoughtful and remar…

“Some of what shows up there I think is crap, of course, but much of it is quite thoughtful and remarkably clear-headed.” This is a strange thing to say. By claiming X and not-X, it means precisely nothing, but it superficially sounds judicious.

If you bothered to actually read the site, then you'd know that the articles there come from many authors and many sources - some of them even from the so-called "alarmist" side of things, though the site itself is usually tagged as "denialist". (Hence my balanced comment - they do generally cover stuff from both sides.) Comments from the site's owner and from readers about all of these articles can get quite interesting and heated, though.

As an example of crap, a couple of articles were recently posted there about the current Judge Alsup proceedings - articles that were quite clearly incorrect to those of us actually following the proceedings; the reader comments called out this error. I don't know if the authors of those articles ever actually went back and corrected them, but I'm thinking not - which is bad! Also, I have on occasion seen things quoted there which weren't actual quotes, but rather paraphrases (to put it nicely) - which is also bad! For the record, these days the "legitimate" press is sometimes very bad at doing this kind of thing, too, but it seems that they are rarely called out for it.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#69

Post by southern_cross »

conistonwater wrote: post #45
mturmon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Some of what shows up there I think is crap, of course, but much of it is quite thoughtful and remarkably clear-headed.” This is a strange thing to say. By claiming X and not-X, it means precisely nothing, but it superficially sounds judicious.

It's like the clearest description of confirmation bias: things that you agree with are thoughtful and remarkably clear-headed, others can just be ignored and don't reflect on the quality of the source. Avoiding confirmation bias would require one to give up on this attitude.

No, it's more like much of what shows up there (from either side) should rightly be questioned. And sometimes those questions are answered and the answers are reasonable, and sometimes not so much.

Re: Earth Day and the Hockey Stick: A Singular Message

#70

Post by IncRnd »

conistonwater wrote: post #64
IncRnd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first question, looking at that graph, is "how does that graph calculate a global temperature for an entire year?" Do you know the actual source of the global temperature readings going back to 1880? Sure, the webpage says the dataset came from https://climate.nasa.gov/system/internal_resources/details/o... , but where did they come from? These are the first 10 lines of the linked dataset, showing land and sea tem…

Nitpick: it's not a graph of "global temperature", it's a graph of temperature anomaly . The anomaly for a single site is the difference between the current temperature and the average for a fixed period in the past for that same site. Temperature would instead be the actual value of temperature. Calculating the average global temperature is rather more difficult ( https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/…

Thank you.
Post reply on HN