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A graph that should be front-page news

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Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#441

Post by RetroTechie »

qsera wrote: post #429
RetroTechie wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common sense?!? That applies to things you're experiencing on a daily basis. That you're intimately familiar with. Not to things occurring when your great-great-great-great... (repeat a couple 1000x) ...great-great-great-grandparents were around. Maybe you'd be so kind & at least check part of a Wikipedia article? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#Reconstructin... 10min to go from clueless to "I've read…

> That applies to things you're experiencing on a daily basis. That we cannot accurately look into the past unless we explicitly record it, is something that I experience on a daily basis. Seriously, if you are so convinced, then why don't you just give me an accuracy measure and reasons to support it? I am not interested in anymore articles that does not contain an explicit accuracy claims and reasons to support the…

> So please understand this. It is not that I am questioning the existence of such techniques. I am questioning their accuracy/reliability..

That is fine. Scientists do the same, all the time.

> we cannot accurately look into the past unless we explicitly record it

Please allow me an opportunity to enlighten you:

We cannot look into the past unless it is recorded somehow.

Note the absence of "we" in the recording part. Also note "somehow" may happen in many different ways.

Sensor data, satellite measurements, ice cores, fossilized creatures captured in stone, slices of tree trunks, samples of minerals whose radioactivity decayed over millenia, history books or landscape features, are just different types of records. Each with their own set of properties (accuracy being 1 of them).

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#442

Post by dwaltrip »

quantummagic wrote: post #440
dwaltrip wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the classic case of additional independent evidence making the claim less likely! How could I forget…

See, you're part of the problem. This perfectly demonstrates the point of confirmation bias. You've already decided what the evidence shows, so you don't need to analyze it independently and objectively. "We already know what it means! Stop thinking!"

I don't feel you are engaging me in good faith. You are misinterpreting what I'm saying. Good luck to you.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#443

Post by tenthirtyam »

leereeves wrote: post #383
tenthirtyam wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a 3.5-sigma event being a 1/1000 probability is only under the assumption of random data - a constant climate would deliver more-or-less random data around some mean. The appearance of two 3.5-sigma events suggests that the data is no longer being randomly generated around that mean, but is instead drifting away from that mean. More concretely, if all the data were within 2-sigma, then you could invoke the nu…

> The appearance of two 3.5-sigma events suggests that the data is no longer being randomly generated around that mean, but is instead drifting away from that mean. Not if the two 3.5-sigma events are in opposite directions, as in this case.

> ... opposite directions ...

Yes, I'd forgotten that detail. Still, though, chaotic bifurcation could be present with Il Niño and La Niña driving high & low extremes. Same mean, maybe, but with a bimodal distribution?

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#445

Post by qsera »

RetroTechie wrote: post #441
qsera wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That applies to things you're experiencing on a daily basis. That we cannot accurately look into the past unless we explicitly record it, is something that I experience on a daily basis. Seriously, if you are so convinced, then why don't you just give me an accuracy measure and reasons to support it? I am not interested in anymore articles that does not contain an explicit accuracy claims and reasons to support the…

> So please understand this. It is not that I am questioning the existence of such techniques. I am questioning their accuracy/reliability.. That is fine. Scientists do the same, all the time. > we cannot accurately look into the past unless we explicitly record it Please allow me an opportunity to enlighten you: We cannot look into the past unless it is recorded somehow. Note the absence of "we" in the recording par…

>Please allow me an opportunity to enlighten you:

So I am aware. The "we" is important because I said "accurately". When "we" set up the recording, we can make it to record with the required precision. Inferring measurements from incidental things can give the required precision, but it should be justified.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#447

Post by Telemakhos »

WA wrote: post #157
Telemakhos wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US Greenhouse gas emissions are down 18% from 2007 levels. CO2 emissions and electricity generation are no longer linked. You might not like them, but Trump, Musk, Thiel, et al (whoever the et al are) are doing a good job pushing nuclear power as well, which promises a more energy-rich future without greenhouse emissions. The people who truly don't care are not in the US; they're China and India, whose per capita CO2…

Your post is the typical "it's not us, it's them". - Per capita: US has the highest emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita - Cumulative, US has the highest emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?c... As a European, we have the same thing going on, except we're usually saying "let the US and China do it first", but our cumulative baggage is also pretty big.…

An American and a European sit at a bar drinking. Their Chinese friend, who had been detained by business, comes and joins them. After he's started his drink, the bartender warns them all that it's dangerous to drink and drive. The American and European stop drinking and sit around chatting, hoping to pass enough time to sober up before heading home. The Chinese man, however, reasons that the American and European have cumulatively consumed more distilled pleasure than he has, and so it is his right to keep indulging, despite having been warned about the danger that drunk driving poses to himself and others.

In the face of what is advertised as an existential global threat, the argument that the Chinese should be excused for failing to curb their emissions, on the grounds that others in the past also emitted, contradicts the idea that emissions pose an existential global threat.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#448

Post by RecycledEle »

locknitpicker wrote: post #38
RecycledEle wrote: post #34

I make this prediction: In 5 years, we will have learned that the red line was in error, and the temperatures will be in the bottom half of the graph. I know this because every prediction of climate doom turned out to be false. Entire nations were going to disappear under rising sea levels. It has not happened. I'm not saying no land sinks, but sea levels are not rising rapidly enough to prevent Al Gore (author of "A…

You seem to be deep in denial. These are not projections. These are measurements. These are known trends from the past century. The trend is accelerating in what seems to be an exponential pattern. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/... We are experiencing record heat in northern Europe, with temperatures in line with what a couple of decades ago would be expected in north Africa during the s…

> We are experiencing record heat in northern Europe

Nope. They color coded the maps differently, but the temperatures are in line with what is normal for that part of the world.

> Southern Europe is already experiencing massive droughts in major urban centers.

But a quick we search tells me: "Southern Europe is currently experiencing wetter-than-average conditions"

Where is rainfall down so much that there are "massive droughts" in Southern Europe?

> These are not projections. These are measurements.

Please check back in 5 years. The temperatures in the Niño 3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific will be below the 100-year average by then.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#449

Post by tomhow »

Lomlioto wrote: post #437
tomhow wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post flame bait on HN, including population-wide swipes like “the ignorance of the common human being”. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

But in this particular case its true and the fundamental issue we have? "Ignorance is the fundamental lack of knowledge, information, or awareness about a particular subject." Its not even an evaluation of my side. I'm fine with accepting that people have to work, are busy with other things, struggle in live etc. But the sentence in itself is not bad? And it directly references op.

If it's true “in this particular case”, it's true of every other case too, and thus it's not really a substantive assertion. It's just a fact of life that affects everything, and pointing it out in this particular instance reeks of “shouting into the void”. Sure it might be cathartic but it doesn't move us any closer to a solution, and serves only to make us more miserable. In HN guidelines terms it can be seen as fulmination or curmudgeonliness, which we're specifically trying to avoid here.

It would be much better to think about novel ways of overcoming the issue and sharing that in the spirit of curious conversation, which is the primary ethos of HN.

Re: A graph that should be front-page news

#450

Post by cratermoon »

holowoodman wrote: post #404
pocksuppet wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is wrong, by the way. Most animals multiply until they exceed carrying capacity, then die off in massive numbers, then repeat. They may find a long-term equilibrium. The current boom in human population, and a subsequent die-off that has not yet happened, were predicted back in the 1970s.

It is also probably BS to assume a periodical die-off for humans in the near future. At the moment, humans are not showing any signs of a die-off, they are just not multiplying anymore. Humans do have something that animals do not, a culture. And this culture seems to have induced a downward variation in population.

We call human die-offs "war", "genocide", "drug epidemics", "pandemics".

There was a spike in 2021, of course, but the world death rate has been edging up slightly every year since then.

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