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Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

greenash.net.au

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Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#91
This is not actually "indisputable" evidence.

First, do we know that the date cherry trees blossom is controlled by temperature? This question isn't addressed in the linked post, or in the document it links to with the data. They seem to just assume it must be the case.

However, the fact that the dates show very little change until the late 19th century is reason to doubt that temperature controls the date, since there is other evidence that temperatures (globally, at least) varied significantly over that time.

An alternative is that the date is primarily controlled by amount of sunlight, whose seasonal variation has of course not changed over the last thousand years. Presumably, one could resolve this question by looking at actual temperatures in Kyoto versus flowering date, in recent years.

Second, the variability in the date seems to decrease quite markedly in the late 19th century. That happens to be when the Meiji restoration occurred, accompanied by huge changes in Japanese society, including industrialization. It's also when the source of the dates starts to be mostly newspaper reports.

The initial change in the late 19th century is a narrowing of the spread in dates, with no change in mean. Then the mean date starts to get earlier, declining about linearly starting around 1900. One should note that it is generally accepted that CO2 didn't start to have a substantial effect on climate until about 1950, so a decline starting in 1900 is not obviously attributable to global climate change.

Alternative explanations for the decline include local climate change (unrelated to CO2 levels, but perhaps due to industrialization), changes in reporting, and changes in which cherry trees are being looked at.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#92
post #13
post #4

It's a great article. The real problem with evidence like this is that the "believer" must strive for 100% accuracy; that is really hard. The "skeptic" only needs to have one single piece of data turn out to be inaccurate, and then can doubt the entire thing; that is really easy. And, we can hold both things in our heads. I just went to the Newport Aquarium in Oregon. There is a terrific exhibit which shows a paleobo…

You're right, those of us reviewing evidence must strive for 100% accuracy. One of the issues with the cherry blossom data is that it's difficult to be 100% sure that we can accurately keep track of the Japanese calendar 1200+ years into the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_calendar

Japan traditionally used the lunisolar calendar - so if any record says "blossoms peaked at the fifth day of the fourth month," then it means it peaked at the fifth day after some day of the new moon, which can be calculated with very good precision. It should severely constrain potential calendar conversion errors.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#93
post #18
post #4

It's a great article. The real problem with evidence like this is that the "believer" must strive for 100% accuracy; that is really hard. The "skeptic" only needs to have one single piece of data turn out to be inaccurate, and then can doubt the entire thing; that is really easy. And, we can hold both things in our heads. I just went to the Newport Aquarium in Oregon. There is a terrific exhibit which shows a paleobo…

Sure. My issue is that it doesn't help persuade those who agree that climate change is real and happening, but they won't admit that it's caused by humans. The line is "change is constant, the earth is always heating and cooling, there's nothing we can really do about it, you're crazy if you think we caused it and crazier if you think we can prevent it. Better to just adapt." That apathy is extra frustrating for me.

Would you care to ask them what it is that they doubt, specifically?

It's basically down to two choices. One can doubt the CO2 greenhouse effect, which everyone with a basic education should know the basic principles of, and which can be demonstrated in home experiments.

Or one can doubt that humanity burns the amount of carbon that is reported, but these figures are publicly available in many forms, including the amount that is produced and sold by the oil companies themselves.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#94

Devil's advocate response: As I read it, the values here are the date that cherry blossom are first witnessed in the year. There's probably a bell-shaped distribution of when blossom appears on a given tree i.e. there will be a very small number of trees that bloom really early. If you have more people looking for it, then there's a greater chance that someone will spot a really exceptionally early tree. So an altern…

I haven’t dug into the data set, but the title of the graph says “peak bloom”, not first bloom, implying that outliers don’t significantly affect the results.

[deleted]

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#95

Devil's advocate response: As I read it, the values here are the date that cherry blossom are first witnessed in the year. There's probably a bell-shaped distribution of when blossom appears on a given tree i.e. there will be a very small number of trees that bloom really early. If you have more people looking for it, then there's a greater chance that someone will spot a really exceptionally early tree. So an altern…

I don't think its "first witnessed", I think its 80% of blossoms are open. https://twitter.com/sayakasofiamori/status/13739565776071311...

Ah you're right, I'm not sure how I got that impression

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#96

We want graphs? How about atmospheric co2 yearly trends as measured at the peak of Mauna Loa, exposed to cross-pacific high altitude winds. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/

Sea level rise doesn't look that concerning: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1506

The near term charts there seem to be operating on a ten to twenty thousand year time scale.

On that scale, of course we're on the far opposite end away from what would be called the last glacial maximum, when a bunch of global water was locked up in ice sheets across North America and Europe.

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

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#97
post #82
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars, asphalt, heating/cooling, industry, and population density increase? "According to the EPA, many U.S. cities have air temperatures up to 10°F (5.6°C) warmer than the surrounding natural land cover." https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/... This "urban heat island" warming has progressed at the same time as CO2-driven global warming, and its measured magnitude (5.6°C) is larger than the es…

(author here) Thanks for the info about "urban heat island" warming, I actually hadn't ever heard that phrase before. It makes total sense. And yeah, even CNN is right, urbanisation is almost certainly just as big a factor as (if not a greater factor than) regional / global climate change, in terms of the cherry blossoms.

Ironically, your title is quite accurate. It is "as indisputable as climate change evidence gets".

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#98
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counterpoint is, good defense (and software) comes from good principles and hard work. Good attack (or hack) on the other hand also requires brilliance and luck to find the exploit. Over time defense will keep improving , attack on the other hand will become more difficult when common issues are no longer a problem ( say memory safety or SQL injection) when best practices become the norm.

On HN this week something like half of the articles (e: from a Google search) about PHP had SQLi in them.

While SQLi is still quite common, the use of good libraries and prepared statements even in PHP has increased a lot say in last 10 years, the % of projects / services on which SQLi was possible should have also reduced.

In that HN thread you talked about someone had mentioned till sometime back even the official docs used to have examples with SQLi, which of course they don't anymore, making it slightly harder for junior devs to make those mistakes, each step is improvement.

I am not saying they already solved, I am saying it becomes harder to hack with some techniques over time as defenses become more standard and best practices become actually common place.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#99

I hate to do this but... cherry trees only live about 15-40 years. They're cultivated and bred for their blossoms, among other things. How can we be sure that we haven't selected trees for earlier blooms?

The author’s post is based on meticulously collected data, compiled with great care. It would have taken a lot of time and effort. This rebuttal is a half baked idea that likely took mere seconds to put together. Great example of the asymmetry of skeptics vs evidence gatherers. Evidence gathering takes a vast amount of work and effort. Whereas skeptics can throw out vaguely plausible hypotheses, to easily sow doubt.

You could at least support your argument by offering some explanation (and evidence) for why selective breeding could lead to that particular curve. Why is it not a straight line - did we only recently learn how to selectively breed? Why does it go up then down? Did fashions change? Did people originally lean towards breeding for late blossoms, but then change their mind?

Why does the curve fit with the changes in climate, is that pure coincidence? Are cherry trees not impacted by the climate, but only by selective breeding?

Etc.

Re: Japan's cherry blossom: as indisputable as climate change evidence gets

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question of the impact of climate change on humans seems to me a separate one from the observable reality of climate change and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, which is a more tangible data question. It seems odd to describe yourself as a "denier" unless you mean you reject the actual science itself. And if you do, the question of whether it "matters" seems not at all important given that you reject it is h…

For me, I'm sure the climate is changing, partly because of human activity. Where I differ is that I think the impacts of the changing climate will be so small and gradual and so easy to adapt to that it doesn't warrant the massive upheaval to economies that are being prescribed.

I'm curious: current trends predict that the temperature increase from the pre-industrial age to 2100 might be as much as it was from the last ice age (look it up, it was a very different time). And this will happen roughly within 200 years, not 20 000. What makes you think this will be small and easy to adapt to ?
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