
NASA's interactive climate time machine - cryptoz
http://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine
======
dev1n
So I initially wasn't too interested in the temperature changes. It seemed
like fairly considerable changes but I didn't know what to reference each
change from. Was it the delta YoY? Maybe I missed the info explaining that in
the page.

When I looked at CO2 ppm I got really scared. Talk about hockey stick growth.

~~~
sparkie
It's interesting when you look at the temperature record that the data sources
are NASA/GISS, but the record goes back way further than these organisations
have existed. So we ask, where does the data come from?

The bulk of the earlier record is from standard weather stations enclosed in
stevenson screens, which are dotted around the globe in cities and remote
areas. The number of these has varied over the timeframe shown here, as some
have been abandoned over the years, and the nations responsible for them have
changed.

A first, obvious question one might ask is: Where can I get the raw data for
all of these weather stations since the recordkeeping began? To which one
might suspect there's probably a freely available corpus for all climate
scientists to look at.

You'd think completely wrong though. There is no data. The data from these
stations is aggregated in national weather organizations, who publish only an
"average" temperature. Most of the raw data archive is lost. What data you can
actually acquire (perhaps you can get more if you have 'credentials'), is
rather limiting, and vague as to what it represents.

This is the main reason I look at climate science with a pinch of salt. All of
the scaremongering depends on this so called temperature record dating back to
1880, but they're comparing apples and oranges. In any science experiment, you
take the variable you wish to measure and attempt to keep everything else
constant. In climate science, the means of measuring surface temperature is
allowed to be variable - it's changed significantly since 1880. The recent
record uses satellite imagery in addition to the surface measurements for
example. Still, climate scientists are treating it as though the data they
have is from a fixed number of weather stations in fixed locations, where any
human activity around them can be considered to have no effect. This reality
doesn't exist.

What is really behind this data of NASAs is "an adjusted view of surface
temperature from 1880 to 2014", where the adjustments are made based on
hundreds of theories and climate models proposed by many other climate
scientists (albeit in peer reviewed works). I want to believe that the state
of AGW is as dire as it is made out to be, but until I have the raw data at
hands reach for any of these publications, and we can start comparing oranges
to oranges, I remain sceptic.

~~~
skew
I'm sceptical that you've ever actually tried to get any data. The first
sentence of NASA's GISTEMP page tells you where they get there data, and a few
more clicks will get you to daily logs for a decent chunks of it.

~~~
andygates
Sparkie also doesn't understand that raw data, especially over long timescales
where collecting methods have changed, is messy stuff. It has to be cleaned up
to be useful, and the people who are best qualified to do that are, gosh,
climate scientists. Temperature dataset papers are routinely published and any
odd assumptions challenged by other people knowledgeable in the field.

In short, demanding "raw data" is a shining example of the Dunning-Kruger
effect.

~~~
skew
I disagree extensively - raw data should definitely be available, and there
are a number of interesting things you can do with it without any special
expertise. For one, evaluating whether those adjustments even affect any
overall conclusions you are concerned about, like this:

[http://forums.sandiegouniontribune.com/showpost.php?p=532360...](http://forums.sandiegouniontribune.com/showpost.php?p=5323606&postcount=32)

If there is incompetence at play here, it's in failing to get ahold of raw
data.

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SCAQTony
Is their really that much ice on Greenland to make the ocean rise 16-23 feet?

"...If melted completely, the Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to
raise sea level by 5-7 meters (16-23 feet)."

Greenland is smaller than Mexico

~~~
MaysonL
See Wikipedia:

 _" It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice
Sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) long in a north-
south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a
latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. The mean altitude of the ice is
2,135 metres (7,005 ft). The thickness is generally more than 2 km (1.2 mi)
and over 3 km (1.9 mi) at its thickest point. It is not the only ice mass of
Greenland – isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover between 76,000 and
100,000 square kilometres (29,000 and 39,000 sq mi) around the periphery. If
the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (684,000 cu mi) of ice were to melt, it
would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (24 ft)."_

~~~
SCAQTony
Thank you, they have a ice elevation map that was helpful.

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dclowd9901
I don't understand... we've been an industrialized world (and by all accounts,
a far dirtier one) for over a hundred years now. Why do the big shifts seem to
happen between 1980 and 2015

~~~
richardw
"We" haven't all been industrialized. Asia. Population growth. More cars, more
everything.

~~~
joakleaf
... and keep in mind that we were 4.5B people in 1980 vs. 7.2B in 2015.

Also think about the growth in e.g. China ([http://indepthfacts.com/gdp-per-
capita-china.html](http://indepthfacts.com/gdp-per-capita-china.html)).

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NDizzle
I was hoping it went back further than the 1800s.

~~~
mkempe
Indeed. It is dishonest to present this data without the known facts about
huge changes in the past.

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

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GlobalChange
Great time machine from 1979: that says nothing and proves nothing. It is a
real shame NASA is part of this UN (IPCC) joke.

Ice and ocean levels will rise and fall as they have done throughout the
geological history of the planet (of billion years, not decades or centuries).
Ocean levels have not had any significant change probably since the formation
of the Mediterranean sea. As for glaciers, they are retreating since the end
of the ice age. So, nothing new, they were already retreating.

I won't even mention carbon because any high school kid should be able to
debunk this ridiculous hypothesis that has already been debunked countless
times and is only used to sell cause sensationalist debates, sell useless
papers, deviate research money, keep peer review journals alive and provide
excuse for expensive meetings in exotic places.

For those who will reply to this I recommend first to spend a night in a
desert with only a tank of CO2 to protect from the cold. If you do get back, I
would love to talk.

~~~
akiselev
》 For those who will reply to this I recommend first to spend a night in a
desert with only a tank of CO2 to protect from the cold. If you do get back, I
would love to talk.

You're trolling, right? I can't imagine what your understanding of the
atmosphere is when you think a tank of compressed CO2 would provide any
_heating_ effect at night.

~~~
labster
GP is likely trolling, but CO2 does work in the night the same as in the day.
It keeps in infrared radiation emitted by the earth and things on the surface,
like you. You won't have a temperature increase, but you'll have less cooling.

In that example, you'd need some structure to keep it in, since the parcel of
air will eventually mix with its neighbors, and you can't breathe in the CO2.
The structure itself would provide a greater greenhouse effect than the CO2
since it basically would be a greenhouse. But if you tested a windowed shelter
filled with CO2 and one with normal air, Mythbusters-style, I suspect you'd
find a measurable difference.

~~~
GlobalChange
Since you mentioned the mythbusters, that episode is really wrong, though I
really love it because it is the only one of its kind I know of that uses more
than two gases. There is a real flaw there, which is the same in all those
kind of experiments actually. And it is a real scientific flaw. If it were to
be done properly, that would be interesting and I would bet it would reveal
surprising results.

As you mentioned, a structure is required. The CO2 is useless. By the way, on
a greenhouse, CO2 has no function regarding temperature.

