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What's Really Warming the World?

bloomberg.com

1–10 of 549 posts

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#3
Cool visualization.

It's worth keeping in mind that the modeled data lines up with reality because it's supposed to. That's how you calibrate your model, by making sure it fits reality.

The real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future. As in, if you feed it data up to, say, 1990, will it correctly spit out 2015 temperatures that fit the reality of 2015, or will it spit out crazy 2015 predictions like the models that were built in 1990 did. And, the bigger question: How will its predictions for 2040 (given 2015 data) match up to the reality over the next 25 years.

We seem to be getting a lot better at the modeling side. That's a good thing, since the first couple decades of watching people panicking and fighting each other over whatever scary results came out of the first generation climate models wasn't any fun to watch.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#4
i read an article a while back on the economist which suggested that if you look at a longer span (much longer than 1880) you will find that this is a natural cycle that the Earth/Sun go through. We just happen to be at that point in the cycle. i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way. An interactive colourful plot doesn't convince me.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#5
post #2

It would be a really nice visualisation of the factors if it worked properly. It was impossible to read and navigate for me.

Same here. I can't seem to get it to scroll and show headers at the same time. I tried scrolling really slowly and it still stops showing headers after third graph. For a venue as big as Bloomberg you'd expect them to test it thoroughly before publishing.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#6
The deforestation graph only seems to account for the difference in emissivity between forest and grassland.

Surely the CO2 absorption and the effects of forestation on cloud cover would have a non-negligible effect.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#8
In climate 130 years is not a long time. I wish these articles showed graphs with historical data that go back thousands of years so that I could see how, in a historical context, greenhouse emissions are affecting the world. I've only ever seen data from the 1900's, and it looks pretty hockey stick, but would be interesting to see fluctuations with the ice age(s) and local highs included.

Edit: historical data is of course not available, but approximations must exist?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#9
post #4

i read an article a while back on the economist which suggested that if you look at a longer span (much longer than 1880) you will find that this is a natural cycle that the Earth/Sun go through. We just happen to be at that point in the cycle. i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way. An interactive colourful plot doesn't convince me.

Fortunately, it turns out that climate scientists have actually thought about the history the system they study. They've probably even collectively thought about it more than a person writing an article for the Economist!

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#10
post #5
post #2

It would be a really nice visualisation of the factors if it worked properly. It was impossible to read and navigate for me.

Same here. I can't seem to get it to scroll and show headers at the same time. I tried scrolling really slowly and it still stops showing headers after third graph. For a venue as big as Bloomberg you'd expect them to test it thoroughly before publishing.

Does it work better if you click the black arrow at the bottom of each slide?
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