
Temperature Anomalies by Country 1880-2017 - CLdud
https://www.flickr.com/photos/150411108@N06/30562013098/in/photostream/
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nanis
The historical temperature data sets were not generated by a well designed
sampling scheme. Instead, they are a function of where people decided to live,
travel, measure, record, and store temperature levels. You might want to
repeat my little exercise from a few years ago and see where the most recent
years' measurements come from.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95uvT67bNg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h95uvT67bNg)

The data set is here:
[https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/v3.php](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/v3.php)

IIRC, it took about a hundred lines of Perl to generate that animation of
temperature station locations in the definitive global historical temperature
data set.

When you are watching the animation, note when specific regions of the world
make an appearance in the data set and the relative importance of measurements
from specific countries.

I do not draw policy conclusions from these observations. However, I am
frequently annoyed by official and unofficial visualizations which completely
gloss over the sample selection and observational continuity problems in the
historical record.

~~~
mempko
> The historical temperature data sets were not generated by a well designed
> sampling scheme.

I'm curious where this opinion comes from? my understanding is the sampling
takes a lot into account including the heat island effects. Your blanket claim
does not come with any proof, so I'm curious where it comes from.

~~~
nanis
>> The historical temperature data sets were not generated by a well designed
sampling scheme.

> _I 'm curious where this opinion comes from? ... my understanding is the
> sampling takes a lot into account_

There is no sampling. We have an incomplete census of measured temperatures.
Where humans decided to measure and record temperatures and which records
survived were not determined by a sampling scheme.

Even if the record were complete, it would be subject to selection biases.

Just looking at the locations of temperature measurements in the definitive
historical data set should drive this point home. Two, three, four hundred
years ago, humans did not say "let's figure out a representative sampling
scheme for accurately measuring global climate change." The current record is
a function of where humans chose to live, work, produce, and travel.

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kimikelku
In 20 years the changes are huge. Seeing the data in this perspective is
really scary, I don't understand how can there be countries ignoring this.

~~~
njarboe
It is really a shame that nuclear power was demonized so early in its
technological development by the same people and groups that are now
advocating drastic reductions in fossil fuel consumption. It's not like global
warming was not understood in 1980. If society had another 40 years of nuclear
tech advancement under its belt, I'm sure China and India would be installing
massive nuclear power infrastructure instead of a coal burning power plant a
week (and India is just getting started).

~~~
epistasis
I used to think the same thing, that it was supposedly environmental groups
that stopped nuclear.

However, after investigating the history more closely, it appears that nuclear
construction projects were boondoggles even before Three Mile Island.
Economics, not activism, is what killed nuclear in the US.

Nuclear has always been marketed under a lie, that its cheap, and perhaps too
cheap to meter. In reality, well engineered projects are insanely complex,
requiring huge material and labor costs during construction. And then there's
maintenance.

People always talk about regulations driving up costs for nuclear, but they
never talk about inappropriate regulations that drive up costs, meaning that
the high costs are necessary.

And when you think about the design of the things, there's no reason to think
it should be cheap: the nuclear is merely a heat source, which still requires
the massive amount of machinery needed for steam turbines. The only part of
the thing that's potentially cheaper is fuel, but to handle that fuel you've
got to have massively engineering and equipment efforts.

This history of nuclear is always glossed over by its boosters. It's really
expensive, and if we didn't have better options now, we should build it
anyway. And we _should_ have built a lot during the 80s like France did.

But today, grid storage is far cheaper than nuclear, and it makes no sense at
all to ever build a new nuclear plant. Let's keep existing ones running until
they're replaced with other carbon free sources, but for new investment,
current nuclear tech is dead. New SMR, maybe maybe some day if it's cheap, but
we shall see in a few decades, it's not available today like storage, wind,
water, and solar are.

~~~
njarboe
I would like to read a good book on this issue. Any recommendations?
Preferably a book written by an historian.

My current understanding is that the economics did not work out because: power
company borrows x billion in capital to build a nuclear power plant, interest
rates in the 80's are in the double digits, activists tie up the startup of
the power plant for 5-10 years doubling the cost due to interest, power
company finally drops starting the plant altogether and the public eats the
loss.

Of course there are all sorts of complications to what really happened, like
power consumption rates going up like crazy while AC is adopted and power
companies thinking that the trend would continue forever, which didn't happen.

Have something you want to believe and you can find a narrative to fit it.
This is a really hard trap to avoid and I'm sure I fall in it often.

~~~
epistasis
I don't think you've fallen into any narrative trap, unless you're in the
industry! And I'm sure I'm more susceptible to them than you are, based on
your comment.

While regulation certainly didn't make anything easier, and can probably be
blamed for some percentage of the failures, there's a loooot more to the
story. As you point out, incorrect demand predictions, and long term planning
set during a time of plenty can require cancellations too.

I wish I had a more authoritative book from a disinterested historian, but the
best I've found as a summary is the classic 1985 Forbes article[1], which I
found through Wikipedia's list [2] of cancelled projects, the list that
initially made me think, "huh, TMI can't be blamed for that one, or that
one..."

[1] reprint on a blog, with some weird commentary about Gore on top which can
be ignored: [http://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-
article-r...](http://blowhardwindbag.blogspot.com/2011/04/forbes-article-
reference-nuclear.html?m=1)

[2]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_re...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reactors_in_the_United_States)

Love to hear of any sources you might have too!

------
salimmadjd
What surprised me was that ironically reduction of acid rain aerosol particles
is actually accelerating the effect of global warming [1], [2].

As a result, there are some who are arguing about the use of it for climate
engineering [3].

I would be against climate engineering, but in the case of aerosol, given the
history of volcano eruptions of the past and that we are facing an
irreversible trend, this is something we need to seriously consider before
it's too late.

[1] (scroll to the Aerosol graph)
[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-
wo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/)

[2]
[https://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/cli_aerosols....](https://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/cli_aerosols.html)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injection_\(climate_engineering\))

~~~
matt4077
There was a recent study that concluded that the loss of sunlight under such a
scheme would have a large effect on agricultural yields: even if it succeeds
to stop the rise in temperature, it would be net-negative at least in regards
to food production.

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gilbetron
Even though I was expecting the increase at the end, the severity and
suddenness of the 2000s is shocking.

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tw1010
What if you'd make it so that "normal" (non-anomalous) was defined like it is
today (rather than how it was 1880)? Would that make the animation look like
it's gone from super bad to super good?

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fabricexpert
If anyone is staring at this wondering what it is, it's a video, there's a
play button in the middle of the page.

~~~
bproven
lol - thanks. I actually was confused thinking it was a pretty useless info
graph since it only showed 1880 (duh)

~~~
Izkata
Even more confusing, I noticed the "next" arrow first - there's a second page
with a slightly modified animation (that caused me to first think it was a
series of images).

------
fireattack
It wasn't clear in legend, what is the "normal", average of 1880-2017?

~~~
SiempreViernes
We don't really know what the "normal" temperature is, the climate is a very
dynamic system without any obvious fixpoint.

Here they've chosen to take the average over 1951-1980 and use that as the
reference.

~~~
bequanna
What exactly was the rationale behind picking this period?

~~~
stan_rogers
The middle of that period represents "the good old days" for old farts like
me, I'd suppose.

~~~
SiempreViernes
There was also a sizeable cold anomaly during war2, or it might simply be that
the data-set gets spottier the further back you go.

------
joncrocks
Might be worth a visit here
[https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/](https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/)
if you want some context.

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omneity
Scary. I assume these cannot be attributed to some weather cycle the Earth
goes through.

I'm wondering though, would it be possible to correlate these anomalies with
some other metrics? Say for example human produced CO2?

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ghouse
For people in the US -- NB that this is in celsius, not Fahrenheit. 2°C is
roughly 3.6°F

~~~
DFHippie
It's exactly 3.6°F, right?

------
ghouse
Other visualizations of change in atmospheric temperature:
[https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/spirals/](https://www.climate-lab-
book.ac.uk/spirals/) and [https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

------
sajithdilshan
Looks like anomalies are becoming the new norm

~~~
zeristor
Anormalies?

------
TangoTrotFox
I find data that chooses 1880 to be extremely counter productive. This [1] is
an image of longterm temperature estimations from NASA. When somebody sees
this they're inclined to ask themselves why exactly do these sort of data
start at 1880? It misses the critical cyclical pattern of temperature changes
and starts at the lowest low possible to present a misleading picture
indicating complete clarity of a linear pattern. To be clear I think we're
almost certainly playing a significant role in the current rate of temperature
changes, but presenting misleading data completely removed from context is a
really great way to completely undermine faith in everything you say.

[1] -
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Global_te...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Global_temperature_relative_to_peak_Holocene_temperature,_based_on_ocean_cores_\(NASA\).png)

~~~
kenfox
You think there is a conspiracy to supress detailed global temperature
measurements that were taken before 1880? It's interesting that we have ways
to estimate global temperature before 1880, but that marks the start of modern
record keeping.

It also has the advantage of showing the blip of very high US temperatures in
the 1930s. People also complain about bias if those extremes are left out.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I'm not sure my personal opinion is relevant, but the answer to your question
is no. But understanding the typical patterns of climatic change is absolutely
critical for making an informed opinion. These sort of presentations prevent a
misleading snippet of climatic activity that is taken out of the critical
context of typical patterns. Consequently it seems intentionally geared
towards trying to provoke people into responding in an ill informed fashion.

And while I suspect this is well intentioned, I also think it's more likely to
backfire than to help produce positive change. Poisoning the well [1] is very
much a thing. When information is presented in a way that can be shown to be
very misleading, it tends to make one question the integrity of all other data
even when it is presented in as forthright a fashion as possible.

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

------
mlthoughts2018
What is the color and size scale here? It could be deeply misleading, for
example if it’s a linear scale counting number of anomalies in a bucket (like
number of +2.0 anomaly measurements in a given country).

From the upper right, it seems like it’s I guess the average per year per
country, placed in bins for -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ... except how were the bins
constructed? In reference to global temperature in some specific year?
Country-average in some specific year? Very hard to read or know the
significance of it.

I hate visualizations like this for exactly this reason. The video hits me in
the gut and makes me want to believe the final two decades of data are
alarming, but it’s not clear at all what statistical claim is being measured,
and how unlikely that specific claim would be under some counterfactual
distribution.

I’m not denying (or confirming!) the implication of the data. Just pointing
out that this is sort of like “ooh shiny” shallow attention grabbing, which
IMO does more harm than good.

Statistical visualizations should not feel like they have an agenda in the
idiosyncratic choice of axes, scale, colorbar, etc. It’s just not clear to me
here that it’s not got one.

~~~
mikeash
The intent of this visualization is to hit you in the gut. If you want
something more concrete, there’s plenty of it out there. We can have both
kinds of things.

~~~
allthenews
Manipulating data to "hit you in the gut" amounts to propaganda, of which
people can be (rightly) wary, regardless of the veracity of the ultimate
message.

~~~
yongjik
A lot of things are propaganda. Showing a crying immigrant child is
propaganda. Showing a picture of mourning fireman on the day of 9/11/2001 is
propaganda. In each case we may want to debate what the picture is trying to
say and whether it is appealing more to the emotions than rational debate. Or
not. It depends.

On the other hand, when someone sees the firefighter and says "What a
propaganda. These pictures never bother to present a concrete evidence that
two planes hit WTC," then we kind of know rational discourse is over, which is
what's happening with climate denialism.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
> “On the other hand, when someone sees the firefighter and says "What a
> propaganda. These pictures never bother to present a concrete evidence that
> two planes hit WTC," then we kind of know rational discourse is over, which
> is what's happening with climate denialism.”

Let me state first that I do believe climate change is real and urgently needs
to be given increased attention to find a solution.

But, secondly, your comment falls completely flat, and in my personal view,
you are espousing something that is truly far, far more dangerous than even
climate denial.

You’re attempting to say that a rational analysis of _entire patterns of
propaganda_ is equivalent to no longer participating in the rational debate.
You’re trying to say that anyone who does not agree there is intrinsic
credibility to the data-eliding emotional appeals must themselves no longer
have credibility in the discussion.

This essentially lobotomizes our best and only chance to solve problems like
climate change long-term, which is to use science as a constraint on political
gamesmanship.

When you say, “... then we know rational discourse is over” you’re just
falling right into politicians’ hands, who want to continue politicizing the
issue while not actually doing anything about it that doesn’t happen to also
serve their short-term profit interests, and figuring that if younger
generations have to inherit a wasteland and figure out how to live in it,
that’s not their problem, and they’ll happily consume now, while the getting
is good.

Your type of meta-comment is the most frustrating to me in this whole debate,
because you seem self-aware enough to know better.

