Live data from Hacker News

Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

koenvangilst.nl

61–70 of 85 posts

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#61
post #46
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there is some uncertainty. But in reality, we have a pretty complete model of physics, chemistry, geology and biology. Generally, the predictions we made 10 or 20 years ago match with what we're seeing. So of course "science does not deal in certainties" but most of the questions are really at the second or third decimal point. There is an excellent video by David Louapre (of Science Etonnante fame) that explai…

[flagged]

Scientists don't really ask for policies. That's the job of politicians. I'm not sure why they'd apologize for it.

Scientists just provide data and options. It's still true that the measures slowed down spread. That it didn't do it enough to justify putting the measures in place or not is more a matter of policy.

Same thing applies to climate change. Scientists provide the data that the climate is warming up. That it appears correlated with certain human activity, not all human activity, only some. And that the current prediction models show X, Y, Z effects in the coming future if the trend is not reversed.

Then politicians need to take that into consideration, and decide what policies to apply or not. Ignore the data and predictions? And possibly gamble that the harsh consequences will come, or put measures in place, which will affect the short term, but possibly avoid the predicted outcomes, alas also possibly be inconsequential because it wasn't enough or it eas too much, or there were other unknown factors at play that the models had not realized were there. Etc.

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#62
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asimov has refuted this argument more eloquently than I could here: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20...

That seems to be an uncharacteristically poorly thought out argument from Asimov, who I have immense respect for otherwise. He's engaging in a simple strawman! The issue is him (Asimov) being critiqued for thinking we have finally gotten everything, more or less, correct - finally. The critic alleges to Asimov that he's falling for what I call 'the arrogance of the present.' For great minds in past centuries also cer…

> going so far as to literally suggest his critic, refusing to accept any certainty, might believe the Earth could be determined to be a cube next year.

He absolutely did no such thing.

What you seem to have missed is that the entire thing is a thought exercise to demonstrate a point.

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have been downvoted, but it is a good question. Hopefully it was asked in good faith ;) Since around the 1970s, the North Sea became a few degrees warmer. Fisherman more regularly find fish and other creatures that used to be only down in France or even more south. As far as I know, we don't really know what caused this trend of the gulf stream going more up north. For all we know, it might switch back and we get…

> Hopefully it was asked in good faith ;) In what way could this question be asked in bad faith?

The only reason "values corrected for anomalies that are not an effect of human involvement" would be interesting is to find out whether the effect of human involvement is significant or not. It is a valid question, but we already know the answer, so asking OP to essentially re-do a huge amount of climate science comes off as disingenuous.

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#64
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be an uncharacteristically poorly thought out argument from Asimov, who I have immense respect for otherwise. He's engaging in a simple strawman! The issue is him (Asimov) being critiqued for thinking we have finally gotten everything, more or less, correct - finally. The critic alleges to Asimov that he's falling for what I call 'the arrogance of the present.' For great minds in past centuries also cer…

> going so far as to literally suggest his critic, refusing to accept any certainty, might believe the Earth could be determined to be a cube next year. He absolutely did no such thing. What you seem to have missed is that the entire thing is a thought exercise to demonstrate a point.

Quoting the paper, "In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after."

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#65
post #2

Something I've been working on this weekend: visualising climate change in the Netherlands. https://koenvangilst.nl/blog/rising-temperatures I particularly liked the heatmap with monthly temperature data since the 1900s. It's a lot of scrolling, but you can clearly see that climate is accelerating since the '90s.

I like this format for displaying these temporal changes. I have rainfall data for my location that I have tracked for more than 20 years and it currently lives in an Excel spreadsheet. I have a few graphs but these annual difference and monthly deviations from normal will enhance what I already show. I like the format. I am merging my rainfall data with ENSO data about El Nino and La Nina years to look for patterns…

Thanks and that’s really interesting. I wanted to do rainfall next. It’s been really wet here this winter. And the summers have been a lot drier. Can’t wait to see the heatmap for that.

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at that chart, we changed the way we measure temperature in the 1960's with the introduction of digital thermometers. Prior to that we utilized mercury or worse alcohol. The chart itself raises the question(s) I just highlighted. Further, prior to WWII there was not "global monitoring" of temperature; let's highlight this comment: > Remarkably, despite the differences in methodologies used by these independent r…

> If something reads 98.2 one year and the prior reading is 97.3 we have a 0.9 increase in temperature, but in reality it could be the margin of error based on cloud cover or a change in instrumentation. That would be true if we had only two measurements. But it can't explain the trend over the last 40 years (neither can the introduction of digital thermometers in the 60s).

There are a multitude of things simultaneously that need to be considered:

1. The sun naturally has cycles where it increases and decreases in temp

2. The measurement devices we use have changed over time

3. The location of our measurements have changed over time

4. We only have 120-160 datapoints total for yearly averages.. with the above issues associated.

Because of those points it’s hard to make any absolute claims, besides the argument since 1960s the trend is slightly upwards in terms of temperatures , maybe.

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#68
post #44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you test the predictions of climate science models? I have never found a satisfactory explanation. There is insufficient data for backtesting models of that complexity. Arrhenius's original model have help up pretty well, but it is also simple. Some models from decades ago including some that were very widely publicised in the 80s/90s have been badly wrong.

> I have never found a satisfactory explanation. Translation: I have never looked for an explanation. """Time series of global average temperature anomalies show excellent agreement between observations and model simulations (Figure 1b).""" Randel, W. J., Polvani, L., Wu, F., Kinnison, D. E., Zou, C.-Z., & Mears, C. (2017). Troposphere-stratosphere temperature trends derived from satellite data compared with ensemble…

Nice snide comment to start with. I have looked. What I have found does not match what the models need. Most things aimed at the general public are simplistic. I assume the real answers require access to journals.

Are global average temperatures enough to provide data for all the temperature variables in models? Surely only sufficient for a model that predicted only global average temperatures.

Some models may have been right, but some were badly wrong Here is an example of one that got media attntion that is clearly badly wrong.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100212233059/http://www.indepe...

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#69
post #37
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you test the predictions of climate science models? I have never found a satisfactory explanation. There is insufficient data for backtesting models of that complexity. Arrhenius's original model have help up pretty well, but it is also simple. Some models from decades ago including some that were very widely publicised in the 80s/90s have been badly wrong.

Answering that to the detail that I feel it requires to prove beyond doubt, would likely take about as much time as doing a meta-analysis on the topic. Here's some starting points: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/what-eviden... > We know this warming is largely caused by human activities because the key role that carbon dioxide plays in maintaining Earth’s natural greenhouse effect has been understoo…

How does that relate to what I said?

I am not disputing that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will net cause warming. I am asking for the methodology used to test climate models. The same with the fact that pollution is bad: nothing to do with the testing of climate models.

The analogy with medicines where controlled trails are not possible is flawed. You can observe large numbers of people. We can only observe one planet.

From the replies and the down votes, its seems people read even asking questions about climate models as a claim that climate change is not happening, or human beings are not a major cause, or something similar.

Re: Rising Temperatures in the Netherlands

#70
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this format for displaying these temporal changes. I have rainfall data for my location that I have tracked for more than 20 years and it currently lives in an Excel spreadsheet. I have a few graphs but these annual difference and monthly deviations from normal will enhance what I already show. I like the format. I am merging my rainfall data with ENSO data about El Nino and La Nina years to look for patterns…

Thanks and that’s really interesting. I wanted to do rainfall next. It’s been really wet here this winter. And the summers have been a lot drier. Can’t wait to see the heatmap for that.

Bedankt voor deze bijdrage!

> I wanted to do rainfall next.

Wind, please!

Most reports like this focus on temperature, some on rainfall.

But more energy in atmosphere -> wind speeds increasing seems logical. And matches my subjective experiences. Would be nice to see this visualized using hard numbers (both extremes & averages).

Post reply on HN