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It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

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Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why listen to the politicians in the first place, instead of to the scientists who have been as united about this as they have ever been about any major subject? There is some fringe but the consensus is extremely clear.

The problem isn't listening to politicians, the problem is listening to talk show hosts with vested interests in the fossil fuel industry. The problem is you can tune into those hosts with a simple AM radio. Getting access to the scientific literature is somewhat more difficult, especially if you are a tech illiterate.

If you are tech illiterate then it doesn't matter if you have access or not to the scientific literature, it is hard enough to follow for people that are tech literate and this doesn't always seem to be by accident.

Almost every paper that I've seen could have been more direct, less obtuse and more transparent, especially when it comes to the presentation of evidence that is in doubt or marginal.

If you read papers from the beginnings of science they are such a breath of fresh air compared to the stuff that is produced today. There are some exceptions but they are few and far between.

Obviously science itself has developed, things have gotten far more complex and so on. But that's not really my point, the point is about the language used itself, which seems to be more related to attracting the next round of funding than it is to moving the needle in a scientific way. And those papers that do end up moving the needle tend to be remarkably blunt and precise in their findings.

There is a parallel here between scientific papers and start-up decks. Those start-ups and those scientists that know they have a live one don't need to fluff it up or polish the numbers, they can just present the cold hard truth and you will know it for what it spells out when you read it without any kind of embellishment.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because plants like CO2 and warmth...

Yeah, I heard about that but was skeptical that people could take that position non-sarcastically until recently when driving on the PA Turnpike, I saw this... https://twitter.com/co2coalition/status/1397912884756107269 The cynical dishonesty of an organization creating a billboard like that boggles my mind.

Haha I drive the turnpike all the time and these ones make me laugh the most. The ones that say "the green new deal is america's off switch" and the ones that were pro coal at least kind of make sense (their message is that people will lose their jobs), but these new pro-CO2 ones are just so absurd.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#233
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the act itself, it’s the fact that there is a segment of the population that will spend thousands of dollars to modify their cars to pollute more, so that they can try and humiliate people driving hybrid and electric cars. That’s a symptom of a much, much deeper problem.

> so that they can try and humiliate people driving hybrid and electric cars I don't think that's really what they're trying to do. It looks more like garden variety virtue signaling. Just like flags in the back of the truck, etc. They're announcing membership in their tribe. I do wish they'd choose something that didn't pollute the air we all breathe.

Ok then, people spending thousands of dollars to make their cars less fuel efficient and pollute more.

It’s the same point. That doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world. It’s ridiculous. But the fact it exists in the country with the largest per-person capita of CO2 emissions points to a huge underlying social problem that is unlikely to be fixed in the near future.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#234

From Wikipedia: The climate of the Jurassic was generally warmer than that of present, by around 5 °C to 10 °C, with atmospheric carbon dioxide likely four times higher. Forests likely grew near the poles...

...and mammals were all 3" or smaller. Not a world we'd want to live in.

who said that the planet needs the mammals?

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#235
post #148
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "it's not man made" and "just a natural cycle" is easily disproven by showing historical temperatures change where it does, by pure accident, a hockey stick trick just last century. Or it would if the audience wasn't resistant to proofs altogether...

50 million years ago, there were forests in the arctic and the earth was much hotter than it is right now. Climate change comes in both man-made and natural varieties, and it's important to acknowledge the difference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene

The rate of change matters, it's a crucial factor. Typically when the climate changes it's over the course of thousands of years. This in contrast is a rapid change.

I'm also not sure what your point even is. "Climate change comes in both man-made and natural varieties?" Ok, and this time happens to be manmade, so maybe we should do something about it.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#236
post #8

Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.

And yet the best solution science has been able to come up with in all that time is that we should not eat meat or drive a car. Maybe the population in general will take it seriously when they're told to do more than engage in Puritanical self-flagellation about the evils of Western society.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because plants like CO2 and warmth...

There is a severely underestimated group of religious people who think that only God controls the weather, His reasons for what he does with it are not for you to evaluate, and that saying that humans can change the weather is blasphemy. It's easy to make fun of, but the most direct experience that people have of a God who controls the universe would be the weather. These people need to be approached theologically; s…

I think it's healthy and necessary to make fun of fundamentalists - I think the issue comes when people make efforts at taking them seriously and give their platform a modicum of respect at a national level. The US has a severe issue with fundamentalist entrenchment in media and government at the moment and it's going to take a while to kick them all out. Evangelism is an extremist ideology that is causing ongoing harm to the stability of America in more ways than just the abortion debate.

As I've aged I think I've drifted more and more toward the french view of religious freedom - rather than freedom of religion, freedom from religion.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#238
post #8

Who still believes global warming does not exist? I am currently listening to audiobook of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998). It has a paragraph on global warming and trying to convince POTUS it is real. And POTUS not wanting to act on it because it would be too large economic drag on US. This book is almost quarter of century old.

About this, what was very puzzling to me was the opinions of the late Michael Chrichton. He was constantly expressing the opinion that the global warming was a frame up, both in his books but also to various talks. He had even written a book on which the bad guys were Greenpeace agents! Now, considering how highly educated (not only he was a great author but he also had studied MD) and smart (this should be obvious t…

For almost every issue you can find at least one highly educated person that thinks otherwise.

If you think something is "controversial" because one person thinks otherwise, we would never land at anything.

Look at their arguments and proofs. If you don't have time to examine those, look at their credentials and motivations.

Michael Chrichton was a writer and filmmaker. Not a climate resarcher.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#239
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XKCD's "Earth Temperature Timeline" is an excellent visualization of this: https://xkcd.com/1732/

It has a lowpass filter until modern times. It doesn't say much. How would the peak 5000BC look with high resolution?

It's not. Ice core isotope evidence gives you resolution all the way down to a year or two. We're seeing a first derivative of temperature that is simply unattested in any of that data. Or any other data source, honestly.

It's true that over thousand year timescales the earth has seen excursions larger than this. We have no evidence anywhere for anything happening this fast in the climate other than large impact events.

Re: It’s official: July was Earth’s hottest month on record

#240

The NOAA currently hosts over over 37 petabytes of 'comprehensive atmospheric, coastal, oceanic, and geophysical data' and was established in October 1970. It sometimes seems the more data we have the more gloom and doom we get. I'm not one to use emotional quasi religious terms like 'denier' but that does give pause for thought. The NOAA started out Surveying the US coastline in 1807 as the 'U.S. Coast and Geodetic…

Maybe what you fear, in this case, is actually real
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