Climate Spiral [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#31

Post by alfor » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:31 PM UTC

veltas wrote: post #29

This visualisation is misleading because the visual area covered increases quadratically as the radius increases, and (less misleading) the velocity of the 'pen' increases linearly too. But it's measuring a difference (not an absolute quantity): so velocity and (especially) area are arbitrary. I could take the same graph and apply it to the period between 1890 and 1945 and it would seem just as concerning, with a dif…

The change of color also and the fact that it’s temperature anomalies, not average temperature.

I wonder what is actually behind ’temperature anomalies’, what does it mean, how is it calculated?

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#32

Post by LoveGracePeace » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

Cool graphic from NASA. The Earth has been around for 4 billion years. When we have 1 million year's worth of temperature measuring, we might then be able to comprehend the Earth's environment on a geologic scale as well as human impact, if any.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#33

Post by veltas » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:35 PM UTC

alfor wrote: post #31

veltas wrote: post #29

This visualisation is misleading because the visual area covered increases quadratically as the radius increases, and (less misleading) the velocity of the 'pen' increases linearly too. But it's measuring a difference (not an absolute quantity): so velocity and (especially) area are arbitrary. I could take the same graph and apply it to the period between 1890 and 1945 and it would seem just as concerning, with a dif…

The change of color also and the fact that it’s temperature anomalies, not average temperature. I wonder what is actually behind ’temperature anomalies’, what does it mean, how is it calculated?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_anomaly

As I understand it, this is a more useful number when trying to measure changes of average temperature over time.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#34

Post by turtledove » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

alfor wrote: post #31

veltas wrote: post #29

This visualisation is misleading because the visual area covered increases quadratically as the radius increases, and (less misleading) the velocity of the 'pen' increases linearly too. But it's measuring a difference (not an absolute quantity): so velocity and (especially) area are arbitrary. I could take the same graph and apply it to the period between 1890 and 1945 and it would seem just as concerning, with a dif…

The change of color also and the fact that it’s temperature anomalies, not average temperature. I wonder what is actually behind ’temperature anomalies’, what does it mean, how is it calculated?

Here's the data source, which includes links out to papers on how the data is collected and calculated.

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#35

Post by LoveGracePeace » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

turtledove wrote: post #25

dgb23 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate effects are typically delayed by decades.

The post war era saw a huge jump in resource usage, and the discovery of the Haber process resulted in huge agricultural returns, enabling a massive population spike.

The post war era led to the massive population spike, not improved farming. Anyone apart from their honey for more than a week knows that.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#36

Post by piva00 » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

LoveGracePeace wrote: post #32

Cool graphic from NASA. The Earth has been around for 4 billion years. When we have 1 million year's worth of temperature measuring, we might then be able to comprehend the Earth's environment on a geologic scale as well as human impact, if any.

Is it my impression or are you denying that anthropological climate change is a thing and leaning to: only empiricism over a period that is as long as human kind has existed will enable us to know if humans are changing global climate?

Just want to know before assuming too much.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#37

Post by Geee » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:38 PM UTC

It's misleading to imply that this is an exponential process, rather than an S-curve. If we look where all the oil came from, we could deduce that by burning it all we would be just going back to similar environment. I.e. the absolute worst thing that could happen is a tropical paradise.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#38

Post by piva00 » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

0des wrote: post #21

ceejayoz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grassy lawns and lush gardens in dry areas require so much water any water any possible benefit of carbon sequestration is counterbalanced by the irrigation infrastructure required.

Do cashew farms and strawberries next

As far as I know almonds are a major water-guzzler of Californian crops, no?

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#39

Post by LoveGracePeace » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

netsharc wrote: post #24

Wohlf wrote: post #11

Very cool visualization! What are the causes of the rapid acceleration starting in the 80s, I assume globalization had something to do with it?

Probably what sibling comment said, and the economic boom after WW2. This op-ed[1][2] says: > For a few years, I’ve startled people by pointing out that over half of all of the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that have ever been produced in the history of humanity have been produced in the past 30 years — since Al Gore published his first book on warming; since the U.N. established its climate-change body,…

No post body was provided.

Re: Climate Spiral [video]

#40

Post by spicyusername » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

To be honest, for a problem that's only been around for 50 years and that requires major technological and economic disruption combined with global geopolitical cooperation to solve, I'd say we, as a species are doing pretty good at coming together to combat climate change.

Is it easy to imagine going faster, easily. Are we doing absolutely everything we can, assuredly not. Is there still going to be dramatic ecological fallout, definitely. But still... humanity's historical track record for these kinds of changes is on the order of centuries or millennia, not decades.