
The northern-hemisphere winter of 2019-20 was the warmest ever on land - pseudolus
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/03/28/the-northern-hemisphere-winter-of-2019-20-was-the-warmest-ever-on-land
======
perfunctory
In case somebody is wondering about the significance of a temperature record

[https://books.google.com/books?id=N0FLSOmeFPsC&pg=PT59](https://books.google.com/books?id=N0FLSOmeFPsC&pg=PT59)

Bottom line: records are extremely rare if events occur at random. If new
records become far more common than the harmonic series predicts, then this is
telling us that annual climatic events are no longer independent annual events
but are beginning to form part of a systematic non-random trend.

~~~
EverydayBalloon
So after a few data points, we're already declaring that a huge stochastic
system has now suddenly turned deterministic? smh

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
We have more than "a few" datapoints at this time. Also, I don't think
determinism is relevant to climate change. I.e. whether reality is
deterministic is not what's at issue, it's whether the earth is heating up and
whether human activity is a primary causal factor (yes, in both cases).
There's also no conflict between determinism and systems too large to model
precisely -- stochastic systems, in other words.

~~~
EverydayBalloon
"We have more than "a few" datapoints at this time"

We do? Have we determined the duration where we can declare the climate
process stationary (in a stochastic sense, of course)?

~~~
bjourne
What on earth does that mean?

~~~
anigbrowl
[http://wondermark.com/1k62/](http://wondermark.com/1k62/)

I'm a big fan of the Socratic approach but when people use it as a cudgel
they're usually less interested in the answer than in positioning themselves
as the questioning authority for the emotional impact upon an audience. Watch
a B movie with the sound off or a foreign language film with no subtitles; you
may not be able to follow the plot that well but you can easily tell who is
supposed to be winning or losing each scene by observing the characters'
demeanor. Same dynamic often obtains in internet arguments.

------
sebazzz
This doesn't surprise me at all. In the Netherlands, we barely had any nights
where the temperature was sub-zero (Celcius). We actually had several
mosquitoes in our living room when we left the door open. It is just like the
sketch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where fall directly skipped winter
and directly went to spring.

Given we had very much trouble with the oak processionary[1] last year,
causing itching and even being dangerous to one's eyes, I fear what will
happen this year. Will it be dangerous to let our children play outside?

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_processionary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_processionary)

------
tartoran
What winter? We had a sproll, a combination of spring and fall and folks, at
this pace our kids will not believe us we used to have feet of snow by
Christmas.

~~~
tootie
I bought my kids sleds three years ago after a big snow storm. There hasn't
been enough snow to use them again since. When I was a kid (same part of the
country) we'd get weeks of sledding every winter.

------
tzs
The monthly records continue, too. From NOAA:

> February 2020 marked the 44th consecutive February and the 422nd consecutive
> month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average.

[https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-
climate-202002](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/global-climate-202002)

------
kuon
I hope we are not on an exponential curve with this too. Covid reminded us how
exponential are surprising.

~~~
eloff
It's not a linear trend, but probably not exponential (polynomial?) Still all
the large and scary effects are at the end when everyone alive today is dead.
Our descendants will have plenty of reason to curse our lack of foresight and
stealing from future generations.

However, stating an unpopular but still possibly true opinion: If our human
caused global warming disrupts the repeated glaciation cycles known as ice
ages, maybe tens of thousands of years from now people will have missed a
terrible natural disaster. Not much consolation to the people who live through
the next couple centuries.

~~~
imtringued
This idea that we are doing ourselves a favor by skipping the next ice age is
bizarre. It took less than 300 years to prevent it and the next one was
thousands of years ago before it would happen. Also, the large and scary
effects aren't coming when everyone is dead. They will be there by the time
current college graduates retire.

~~~
eloff
I did a little searching to see if there's anything to my guess that global
warming could postpone the next ice age, and there's a lot of people
suggesting that is in fact the case. One example:
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-f...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-
fuel-burning-postponing-next-ice-age)

Ice ages are actually scarier to me than global warming, so I think that's a
good thing on the whole. It's just we have to deal with the negative
consequences now, whereas an ice age is a much further future concern. One
reason ice ages are so scary, is it would cause much larger mass migrations of
people than global warming, and it would devastate our ability to grow crops
in the northern hemisphere, where we currently produce most of our food.

Global warming may actually enhance our ability to grow crops in the northern
latitudes - with longer growing seasons, for example.

------
yamrzou
Mirror: [http://archive.is/dO21H](http://archive.is/dO21H)

~~~
Fiveplus
Appreciate the link. I didn't expect HN to allow articles behind paywall like
reddit.

------
tinyhouse
I enjoy WFH and agree with what everyone is saying that the current situation
is far from ideal for WFH. However, many people who promote WFH forget
something pretty important. If you have an home office then great. But many
people live in small apartments with other family members and don't have ideal
conditions for WFH. The solution is having many co-working spaces so that most
people have one nearby. But people should be able to have their own desk and
everything.

------
shellbubble
Apart from anything else this could turn out to be extremely problematic in
areas where the average temperature is around 0 degrees C. Lots of melting of
snow (and then refreezing as ice)....

[1]
[https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028642)

------
cryptica
Only a couple of years ago, I spent winter in Moscow (Russia) and it was the
coldest winter in over a century. At one point, it was -27 degrees celcius
(-16.6 Fahrenheit) outside in the middle of the city. There was a meter of
snow everywhere in the city. This winter I was in Germany and it was much
warmer than last year but I wouldn't jump to conclusions on that basis.

~~~
chupasaurus
-27°C happens there once in about 10 years, and the coldest winter in a century was in 1941-42 (because of General Moroz on duty!).

This year Moscow basically didn't have a winter, in my town near Urals it was
pretty similar with 2002.

------
ungerik
Ever, like ever ever? Or ever since we measured?

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Probably a combination of observation records, which aren't that old, and
computed valued from analysis of sources such as ice cores. Obviously this is
not the highest temperature winter in the northern hemisphere over the
existence of the planet but may indeed be the warmest out of those periods
from which we have records, observed or imputed.

------
icedchai
This was definitely the warmest winter I remember in my lifetime. There was
hardly any snow.

------
argumentum
Interesting, if one of humanity's failures (climate change) mitigates another
(lack of pandemic preparedness)

------
ur-whale
[https://archive.is/dO21H](https://archive.is/dO21H)

------
cmrdporcupine
Worst season ever to be a skier in the northeast. Rain, rain, rain, then an
early close due to COVID-19

~~~
lsllc
Yeah, definitely a season to forget, but TBH the conditions in Jan/Feb were
surprisingly good (when it wasn't raining!).

------
leeoniya
> The most commonly cited risks of climate change are natural disasters:
> fiercer wildfires and hurricanes, bigger floods and longer droughts. But one
> of the most striking recent effects of global warming has been unusually
> mild weather in many parts of the world.

maybe if it was framed first as the massive and irreversible ecosystem
disruption which it is, people would take more notice. the result of this
could easily be loss of essential plankton at the bottom of it all, just like
loss of insects and plant pollinators due to pesticides.

it's always sea level rise this and coastal floods that. i'm fucking sick of
this idiotic reductionist rhetoric. there will be far bigger problems which
cannot be solved by relocating 3 miles inland.

Carlin was spot on: "The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas."

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _it 's always sea level rise this and coastal floods that. i'm fucking sick
> of this idiotic rhetoric._

The true picture is closer to "sea level rise, coastal floods, changes of
average temperature -> a chunk of the planet suddenly becoming uninhabitable
-> mass migration -> lots of suffering, starvation, death, possibly war". But
maybe this chain of reasoning has too many steps for a regular person to
follow. Maybe the communication needs to focus on "no more food X in stores
once average temperature in place Y goes above Z degrees"?

~~~
truculent
> _possibly_ war

I like your optimism!

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm usually not that optimistic, but trying to cope with the COVID-19
situation made me significantly less cynical. It's as if my mind avoids
certain patterns of thought that could disrupt my fragile emotional stability
at the moment.

------
teslabox
Most of the cold air was locked up over the Artic this past winter, whereas
normally it is carried south by the jet streams. Some areas of the planet did
have record cold in February. An article about February's snow in Baghdad,
Iraq (the second snowfall in the last 100 years) says the warm winter in
Virginia had to do with the "north atlantic oscillation" [NAO]:

> So why is it that we seem to be in a snow hole?

> Part of it has to do with something called the North Atlantic Oscillation.
> This combines the effect of two features in the atmosphere; the Icelandic
> Low and the Azores High. - [https://www.wsls.com/weather/2020/02/12/baghdad-
> sees-rare-sn...](https://www.wsls.com/weather/2020/02/12/baghdad-sees-rare-
> snow-our-winter-remains-wimpy/)

Having just used the "disable javascript to read the article" trick, I noticed
this Economist article correctly points out the NAO's influence in keeping
cold air locked up in the Arctic, but doesn't mention the snow in Baghdad nor
the blizzards in Turkey [0] nor the record colds elsewhere (certain places in
Canada, eastern Russia, etc)

Wikipedia has this page on the North Atlantic Oscillation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation)

[0] [https://www.ntvhouston.com/2020/02/blizzard-buries-
turkish-v...](https://www.ntvhouston.com/2020/02/blizzard-buries-turkish-
village-under-20-feet-of-snow/)

I read reports of potato farmers in Idaho having to deal with an early frost
last fall, and racing to harvest the potatoes before they were ruined by an
early cold snap. I don't know how much of their crops were lost. I've also
noticed reports of a sugar shortage.

Humans need to work on being climate-flexible, not being "all in" on global
warming.

"A false dilemma (or sometimes called false dichotomy) is a type of informal
fallacy in which a statement falsely claims an "either/or" situation, when in
fact there is at least one additional logically valid option." \--
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma)

The false dilemma presented in this article is that of "global warming" vs.
"the old climate status quo". The third logically valid option is that climate
is now cooling due to the solar cycle. I read a great article about one of the
solar telescopes having measured slight changes in the sun's output over the
last 20+ years... The data is out there, scientists just have to consider the
full spectrum of climate possibilities.

[Edit] I thought the article was about the SOHO satellite, but maybe it was
about instruments on the International Space Station. These pages mention
European solar observatories on the space station:

> The Sun does not always shine with unchanging power: its output varies
> minutely over the period of about 11 years known as the ‘solar cycle’. In
> principle, these fluctuations can affect us on Earth.

\-
[http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exp...](http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Research/SOLAR_three_years_observing_and_ready_for_solar_maximum)

> This is where the Solspec instrument comes in. Part of the Solar package on
> the International Space Station, it was launched with the European Columbus
> space laboratory in 2008 and tracked the Sun until it was shut down this
> year [2017]. It measured the energy of each wavelength in absolute terms and
> its variability – a feat that requires a higher order of precision than
> relative measurements. As an analogy, it is easy to feel a change in
> temperature, but nobody on Earth can sense the exact temperature without a
> thermometer.

\-
[http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exp...](http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Columbus/State-
of-the-art_solar_reference_spectrum)

~~~
scythe
>Most of the cold air was locked up over the Artic this past winter, whereas
normally it is carried south by the jet streams. Some areas of the planet did
have record cold in February. An article about February's snow in Baghdad,
Iraq (the second snowfall in the last 100 years)

The "second" snowfall would mean it wasn't a record. The data showing this
winter was the warmest on record _as a global average_ (not just Virginia)
takes these outliers into account. Nothing about those events calls the
general warming trend into question.

>Humans need to work on being climate-flexible, not being "all in" on global
warming.

No, humans need to accept reality. Carbon dioxide emitted by human activity is
warming the planet and that could destabilize parts of the environment that
humans rely on.

>The third logically valid option is that climate is now cooling due to the
solar cycle.

This is a joke, right? You said it yourself: the period of the solar cycle is
11 years. It cannot explain a phenomenon that has been observed over more than
a century.

~~~
teslabox
The bit in my comment about the period of the solar cycle being 11 years was a
quote. The sun also oscillates in intensity over hundreds and thousands of
years. The sun was (allegedly) slightly less active the Europe's colonial age,
which motivated a lot of people to leave Europe. The sun was slightly more
active during most of the 20th century, leading to the observations behind the
theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Some scientists, who aren't wedded to the anthropogenic theory, have looked at
all the solar numbers and concluded we're due for a couple decades of weak
solar cycles (global cooling) before the warming resumes.

I don't know who to believe, I just wanted to point out that there might be a
reason behind this alleged "warmest winter ever" other than "it's the CO2".
I'm not particularly interested in debating with someone with convictions of
hot-earth environmental catastrophe being more reasonable than cold-earth
environmental catastrophe, so feel free to have the last word.

~~~
scythe
>I don't know who to believe.

You should believe the IPCC.

>Some scientists

How many physicists do you know? For me it's about 30. You know how many of
them accept the scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate
change and it's a problem? All of them.

>I'm not particularly interested in debating someone with convictions

I don't have "convictions". What I have is a degree in physics.

------
state_less
I hope the Covid self quarantining demonstrates that WFH works. We can do more
WFH and cut down on traffic, time lost in traffic and our carbon footprint. We
also might spread less of the flu around too.

~~~
vikramkr
All I'm hearing from friends is that WFH is way worse than it was hyped up to
be and that it's so much worse not being able to work with your coworkers in
person and to have separation of your home and work for mental health.
Everyone is different and WFH is not a panacea.

~~~
theli0nheart
I'm surprised it needs to be said, but WFH during a pandemic is not equivalent
to WFH during normal life.

~~~
thawaway1837
Well, in my case WFH during the pandemic has been far better than otherwise
because now everyone is on an equal footing. Everyone is WFH so I’m not
missing random side conversations or getting ignored altogether.

And it’s still pretty terrible.

There are advantages, but at least for me my productivity is miles higher in
an office environment.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Pandemic WFH is a total disaster. As much as it becomes equal footing, the
floor has fallen off. WFH works when you can actually _work_ from home - not
when every possible place where you could stash your kids is closed. WFH also
doesn't work if forced suddenly on people who, before the pandemic, haven't
given it even a single thought.

This event is going to taint WFH for years to come.

~~~
SuoDuanDao
My experience has been more that it's shown itself to be highly polarising.
There are also a lot of people who knew they wanted to work from home and just
didn't have the option, I think this will be a lively debate in the years
ahead.

From a pollution perspective though, the preferable choice is fairly obvious.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree, and for what it's worth, I've been working from home for almost three
years now. But my productivity has tanked recently because of yet another
factor: the COVID-19 situation is cognitively taxing. Initially I had to
micromanage my parents, grandparents and in-laws, to ensure they're safe and
have enough emergency supplies; then it took me three weeks to stop spending
half of the day following COVID-19 news. From what I hear, this is a very
common situation with everyone now, so whatever productivity drop happened in
companies attempting WFH now, I'm betting most of it doesn't have anything to
do with WFH.

------
ericb
If we don't figure out a way to get past the anti-science types it will be the
death of us all one or the other. We need to develop anti-memetic technology.
Bad memes are killing us.

~~~
bfieidhbrjr
Speaking as someone who did physics in college:

Science, whatever that means, has become sclerotic and harmful to the public.
It's held up as a paradigm of reason and hope but if anything it's full of
politics and lies and has been for a long while. Let's talk evidence:

* It's looking like the last 40 years of string theory has been a boondoggle.

* Pretty clear that most of medicine is based on fraud and regulatory capture - we know that most chronic treatments and even public health advice is just plain wrong. If this is new to you, any book by Gary Taubes is a reasonable introduction.

* Even within climate science, the models aren't as clear cut as we tell the public. If however we do believe the models (which is reasonable to do!) then things are going to be so dire that we can't tell the public or they'll freak out. Buying an electric car or not flying isn't going to do anything - we need to be massively carbon negative to have any impact at all. You should assume the absolute worst climate predictions are a reasonable picture of the future.

* The reproducability crisis. We _know_ most science journals are now full of BS.

My proposed solution is that we have the death penalty for anyone who conducts
experiments that aren't triple-blind. It's the only way to get any real
evidence.

So, you know, science is wonderful. But science-as-done-by-humans is a morass
of sewage and it's not entirely surprising the public don't believe in it any
more, there are plenty of "hard" scientists that don't either.

~~~
ericb
In places, you're conflating the very bad meme problem, to which science
itself is susceptible, with science itself.

For example, the whole "fat is bad, carbs are good" meme was never backed up
by solid science, it itself was a bad meme.

> Pretty clear that most of medicine is based on fraud and regulatory capture

I can't speak for you, but if I have a heart attack or cancer, I'll still go
to the hospital, so it isn't as bad as you're stating.

> Even within climate science, the models aren't as clear cut as we tell the
> public.

Ok, death penalty for non-triple blind is crazy. But if we're thinking of
tough ideas:

* Imprisonment for corporate lobbying.

* Corporate dissolution for political donations or influence

* Corporate dissolution for attempts to "influence science"

* Corporate dissolution for PR campaigns that lied

* No corporate-funded "scientific" studies should be published

* The reproducibility crisis is a bad incentives problem in science and publishing. We need to change the incentives. The system needs to change to reward something like "points" where points come from publishing failure to reproduce as opposed to just the notoriety of "first to find some interesting result"

~~~
bfieidhbrjr
> For example, the whole "fat is bad, carbs are good" meme was never backed up
> by solid science, it itself was a bad meme.

And yet, here we are. How were the public supposed to figure that out? Public
health advice was, and is, pretty clear: eat carbs.

> I can't speak for you, but if I have a heart attack or cancer, I'll still go
> to the hospital, so it isn't as bad as you're stating.

You just haven't done your research. :-)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/placebo-e...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/11/placebo-
effect-of-the-heart/545012/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Metabolic-Disease-
Management-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Cancer-Metabolic-Disease-Management-
Prevention/dp/0470584920)

~~~
chupasaurus
I'd like to invite all the proposers for carbonate-dominant diet to live above
55°N for a few days in January while eating minimum amount of fats.

------
Donald
It’s becoming apparent that the 21st century will be marked by a series of
natural disasters of various severities and speeds that regularly erode global
supply capacity and quality of life.

~~~
chewz
How is warm winter natural disaster? I like it like that.

~~~
falcolas
Fires. Warm winters mean little snowpack. Little snowpack means that
everything is dry and dead come August. All of the plant life being dry and
dead in August means that any fires which occur will be much worse.

~~~
leetcrew
if you live in the western US. we don't really have "snowpack" to begin with
in the east, though I shudder to think of what an anomalously warm east coast
summer will be like.

~~~
tjr225
Typically they result in vast amounts of deaths from heat waves in larger
cities.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Chicago_heat_wave](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Chicago_heat_wave)

------
willis936
I can't read this because of the paywall. The headline is wrong, which doesn't
give me a feeling that it is worth reading anyway.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record)

~~~
gbear605
Okay, add the phrase “in recent time” which is the relevant assumption

~~~
willis936
I’m not the one making an article with a lie as a headline. Why is everyone
okay with prefacing data with deception?

