
State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019 - perfunctory
https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-heat-across-earths-surface-and-oceans-mark-early-2019
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magnamerc
Last weekend I overhead two older gentlemen talking about climate change. They
were both agreeing with each other that it's all 'cyclical' and that clearly
there are businesses that stand to benefit from climate change research. This
is in Canada btw.

I don't know how you convince these people. Luckily, they're on their way out,
but they still represent a large portion of the voting population for at least
the next decade. Do we need more intense floods and forest fires every single
year until they finally admit that maybe there's something to this climate
thing?

~~~
dexen
Here's a snarky reply, because I've laughed out loud upon reading your _"
they're on their way out"_ and the _" we need stronger policies that cannot be
swayed by public opinion"_ posted in one of responses.

 _> how you convince these people._

Four easy steps:

\- show them the hockey stick graphs from models,

\- show them the graphs from actual measurements,

\- point out 2019 is colder than 2016, and probably than 2017, as per the
article,

\- point out the graph looks pretty close to a cluster of sine waves when
watched at any scale

Congratulations, now they are _convinced_ for life. You can celebrate that
with them by watching the 2006 _An Inconvenient Truth_ for all the beautiful
animations.

Snark aside, the gist is: people who have been following news for some two
decades or more don't generally get alarmed that easily.

~~~
yongjik
> \- point out the graph looks pretty close to a cluster of sine waves when
> watched at any scale

Is this some kind of backhanded admission that you will never admit global
warming ever, whatever happens to the global temperature? Any graph can be
arbitrarily closely approximated by a series of sine waves, that's the basic
idea of Fourier Transformation.

------
perfunctory
> Ocean heat content (OHC) set a new record in early 2019

> In many ways, OHC represents a much better measure of climate change than
> global average surface temperatures. It is where most of the extra heat ends
> up and is much less variable on a year-to-year basis than surface
> temperatures. Most years set a new record for OHC and 2019 has been no
> exception so far, with the first three months showing the warmest OHC since
> records began.

> Changes in the amount or rate of warming are much easier to detect in the
> OHC record than on the surface. For example, OHC shows little evidence of
> the slowdown in warming in the mid-2000s, seen in surface temperature
> records.

~~~
southern_cross
Have you seen recent claims that scientists can detect temperature changes of
as little as 1/1000th of a degree in the deep ocean, occurring over a period
of several decades? Are you gullible enough to believe such claims? I'm not.

~~~
perfunctory
> Have you seen recent claims

No, I haven't.

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inflatableDodo
Great. Well, if we aren't going to restrict CO2 and methane emissions any, can
we at least agree to legalise all drugs for the going away party.

edit - I am only half joking. The war on drugs is not noted for its logical
underpinnings, but if it has any, they are largely predicated on worrying
about future consequences. If our official political stance is going to be
'yolo, fuck the future consequences', we may as well be consistent.

