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Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#22I really dislike the use of the word "anomaly" in climate change circles. It may be technically correct, but it feels like propaganda. All it is is the difference to the average of an arbitrarily chosen time frame. It would actually be strange if temperatures where exactly like the average all the time, so calling it an anomaly if they are different from the average really seems misleading. Again, it may be the techn…
My understanding is that it's changing at a faster rate than previous non human caused shifts. That's the anomaly.
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#23Maybe visualizations like these will finally get the message through to the last bastions of ignorance.
Or maybe not. If at this point you are still pretend to be skeptical about the data, it's probably more to do with willful blindness rather than intellectual rigor and no amount of data will ever convince you otherwise.
Truth is that lots and lots of people benefit from that continued 'doubt' delaying further actions. Even though in the end we'll all suffer the devastating consequences - the political upheavals, the social unrest, the ecological destruction - there are still people that are so obtuse as to think that this will not tough them.
Party 'til the house burns down, I guess.
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#24I really dislike the use of the word "anomaly" in climate change circles. It may be technically correct, but it feels like propaganda. All it is is the difference to the average of an arbitrarily chosen time frame. It would actually be strange if temperatures where exactly like the average all the time, so calling it an anomaly if they are different from the average really seems misleading. Again, it may be the techn…
What are "climate change circles" supposed to be?
You mean the people not willfully blind of the facts? Sure, must be propaganda.
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#25Maybe visualizations like these will finally get the message through to the last bastions of ignorance. Or maybe not. If at this point you are still pretend to be skeptical about the data, it's probably more to do with willful blindness rather than intellectual rigor and no amount of data will ever convince you otherwise. Truth is that lots and lots of people benefit from that continued 'doubt' delaying further actio…
I have a feeling that the climate change charts induce a similar knee jerk reaction as IQ scores or vaccines. Most people have an ideology they subscribe to and will argue using facts and reason in order to support it. I have yet to witness a religious person be reasoned into atheism. I suspect the applies for the above mentioned categories, whatever side of the fence the person happens to be on.
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#26I really like this website. Well presented and informative. I have been daydreaming of creating something similar that enabled testing weather hypotheses that are often thrown around by the media. E.g., "Heavy Vancouver Rainfall Due to Climate Change". It would be great to get rainfall information for that area graphed over the last X years. Does anyone have pointers to useful datasets or APIs that could aid in creat…
Here is one (artic temperatures):
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
It's also quite useful in terms of seeing one aspect of the anomaly, in terms of temperature shift (compare 1958 with anything in the last 5 years)
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#27Maybe visualizations like these will finally get the message through to the last bastions of ignorance. Or maybe not. If at this point you are still pretend to be skeptical about the data, it's probably more to do with willful blindness rather than intellectual rigor and no amount of data will ever convince you otherwise. Truth is that lots and lots of people benefit from that continued 'doubt' delaying further actio…
I have a feeling that the climate change charts induce a similar knee jerk reaction as IQ scores or vaccines. Most people have an ideology they subscribe to and will argue using facts and reason in order to support it. I have yet to witness a religious person be reasoned into atheism. I suspect the applies for the above mentioned categories, whatever side of the fence the person happens to be on.
Charts and visualisations are a great way to trick people. Not only is the source data obscured (and so readily cherry picked) but it opens up all sorts of tricks around visual perception.
I also suspect most people yet to be convinced will immediately think back to Al Gore's infamous hockey stick chart when presented with visual simplifications of deeply complex climate data.
At the heart of the matter, looking at such a chart isn't meant to inform you, it is meant to elicit an emotional response, and they have been trained to respond with skepticism.
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#28Website briefly flashes then disappears on mobile apparently.
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#29I really dislike the use of the word "anomaly" in climate change circles. It may be technically correct, but it feels like propaganda. All it is is the difference to the average of an arbitrarily chosen time frame. It would actually be strange if temperatures where exactly like the average all the time, so calling it an anomaly if they are different from the average really seems misleading. Again, it may be the techn…
It is a comparison of two averages, not of a single temperature to an average. A changing average suggests a change in the underlying factors at play, because while a single observation may not ever match the average as you say, a system in equilibrium should not see the average changing. This is why it is called anomalous: the mean is changing continuously. It’s a crude metric but in the framework of the analysis (p…
I would consider that "anomaly" would refer to something unusual or unexpected, an outlier, or a weird unexplained occurrence contrary to our expectations, or a one-off deviation followed by a return to the norm.
On the other hand, a continuously changing mean or a systematic pattern IMHO is not an "anomaly"; something can't be unusual for long - if something has become or is clearly going to become usual, then it's a "new normal", it's a "trend" or something like that, but not an anomaly anymore; if we're seeing what we expected to see, that can't be called an "anomaly" because that's the expected result.
With respect to climate change we see that the underlying factors have changed, we mostly know why, we observe the consequences now, see their trends and can predict how the mean is going to change - so all the factors are contrary to the definition of "anomaly".
Re: Tracking Crucial Metrics of Earth's Global Warming
#30I really dislike the use of the word "anomaly" in climate change circles. It may be technically correct, but it feels like propaganda. All it is is the difference to the average of an arbitrarily chosen time frame. It would actually be strange if temperatures where exactly like the average all the time, so calling it an anomaly if they are different from the average really seems misleading. Again, it may be the techn…
What are "climate change circles" supposed to be? You mean the people not willfully blind of the facts? Sure, must be propaganda.
The non-purely-materialistic dimension of reality (the part that prevents humanity from actually doing anything substantial about climate change) unfolds according to people's perceptions of reality, not reality itself (which we do not see, even though it seems to be the exact opposite of that). It may be enjoyable to look down one's nose at the unintelligent, but realize that intelligence is a spectrum and the sense one has that they are at the apex of that spectrum is illusory.
Science is a very useful tool, but it is not the only tool we need to deal with this problem, and it is certainly not the best tool for dealing with the most important unsolved (and seemingly not even realized) aspect of it: the human mind.
I think we need to start thinking very differently about this problem - one approach (applied to a different domain) is described in this[1] post, I think it would provide more value than more and more scientific statistics, which seem to be accomplishing very little.
[1] Sociotechnical Lenses into Software Systems