
Visualizing the Warmest August in 136 Years - hochmartinez
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2016/09/12/heres-how-the-warmest-august-in-136-years-looks-in-chart-form/
======
vkou
Fortunately, the world has agreed to do something about this global warming
business...

By entering a vague international agreement with no clear targets, or
enforcement power.

If I were a fossil fuel lobbyist, I couldn't have drafted a better agreement
then the Paris Accord. There's a collective target, there's every reason for
the participants to defect, there's no proscribed steps that signatories must
take, and there is no mechanism for censure of defectors.

~~~
caio1982
While I agree with you regarding all the points you made, let's try not to get
too cynical with age if we can. I was a kid when Earth Summit happened and we
humans managed to stop and slightly reduce the Ozone Hole within a generation
time. And it all started pretty much the same, with politics and all:
something had to be done, if it was an ultimate silver bullet or not it does
not matter because it is all about political momentum, IMHO.

~~~
vkou
CFCs had relatively cheap, equivalent replacements, and did not make up the
cornerstone of many national economies.

The damage they caused was disproportionate, compared to the economic benefit
of using them over alternatives.

The nature of the ozone hole also didn't let people hide behind nonsense like
"The climate changes naturally" and "Well, there are natural sources of
carbon" and "The climate was different in the past."

~~~
roc
It didn't? I distinctly remember the same sort of FUD progression with regards
to the ozone hole.

    
    
      1. It wasn't actually happening/a problem. 
         (It's hippy nonsense. [insert sarcastic comment about saving butterflies])
      2. It was happening, but it was natural, not caused by human activity 
         (The ozone hole grows and shrinks naturally throughout the year! And its been bigger and smaller in the past!)
      3. It was happening, caused by human activity, but there wasn't anything we could do about it 
         (We can't force the other countries to change, and if they won't change it'll keep growing anyway!)
    

There's really no difference in the playbook between it and global warming.
It's just the financial incentives to delay are much stronger with carbon.

Even the "equivalent replacements" for CFCs were widely regarded as overpriced
and far worse at the time. (I still hear people bemoan the loss of freon AC to
this day.) It's not so different from solar/wind vs fossil fuels.

~~~
abawany
Much more recently, the Republican candidate running for the US Presidency
still expressed skepticism that him using hair spray on his hair in his home
had anything to with the ozone hole: [http://www.factcheck.org/2016/05/trump-
on-hairspray-and-ozon...](http://www.factcheck.org/2016/05/trump-on-hairspray-
and-ozone/) .

------
neom
Recently I've been talking frequently with folks about my concerns re: climate
change. The general feedback is along the lines of: "don't worry, the earth
knows how to regulate itself, it will figure itself out, we'll be fine". :(

~~~
simplemath
>"don't worry, the earth knows how to regulate itself, it will figure itself
out

Yep that part is true

>we'll be fine

That part is not

~~~
nerfhammer
First part isn't true, either. There's no reason why the Earth couldn't end up
like Venus or Mars, and it could well do so in a few hundred million years.
Habitability is a confluence of luck, there's no constraint that it has to
last. It's just unlikely that we could cause harm on that scale, yet. Climate
change won't wipe out humanity either, it will just inflict a tremendous
amount of pain.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Earth is a massive (a bit under 6x10^24 kg) ball of iron and some other
elements in comparatively minute quantities. The thin layer of the "biosphere"
is utterly insignificant to Earth. It's massively significant to humans.

------
1024core
Don't tell anyone that in San Francisco. We recorded the coldest August in 74
years: [http://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/Fogust-Coldest-
August-...](http://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/Fogust-Coldest-August-
in-74-years-for-San-9197715.php)

~~~
bhhaskin
Same here in Northern Nevada. It snowed in Tahoe already.

------
HillaryBriss
It's interesting to see that, starting in roughly 1990, the temperature seems
to break away from its previous range. It looks so dire. Temperature increases
seem to be _accelerating._

~~~
gregschlom
Because of the exponential growth of humanity along with cars and CO2
emissions. We're a direct cause of the temperature rises, and exponentially
more of us means accelerating growth.

See also this xkcd comic for a great visualization of this: xkcd.com/1727/

~~~
mikeash
Here's what CO2 emissions look like over the last 50 years or so:

[http://johannes-friedrich.com/emissions/e-reg.htm](http://johannes-
friedrich.com/emissions/e-reg.htm)

There's a pretty big increase since 1990, mostly driven by growth in Asia
(which in turn is mostly due to the huge economic growth in China and India, I
imagine).

------
SamPhillips
Some ideas for positive action:

"What can a technologist do about climate change?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615)

------
forrestthewoods
I like how the Y-Axis shows a 2 degree "difference from annual mean" when the
trend is very clearly a 1 degree difference for every month.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Thanks for point that out. It even says right before the graph _the month also
was 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the mean August temperature from
1951-1980_.

Why would they do that?

------
credit_guy
Silly question here: why are January and December below the average and July-
August above? Aren't the two hemispheres equal in size?

~~~
credit_guy
Answering my own question, just in case anyone was wondering the same thing.
One possible explanation is that the Southern Hemisphere has a lot more ocean
area, and oceans have higher thermal inertia, and therefore the average
temperature will oscillate less than in the Northern Hemisphere. When
combining the two averages that are sinusoids in opposite phase, the one with
larger amplitude will dominate, so the overall effect is that the global
average looks more similar to the average of the Northern Hemisphere. In other
words warmer in July-August and colder in December-January.

------
minimaxir
This blog post is taken from the original NASA source without a link back:
[http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2016/09/...](http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2016/09/12/heres-
how-the-warmest-august-in-136-years-looks-in-chart-form/)

See also Reddit discussion of the visualization by the author:
[https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/52k3gr/earth_j...](https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/52k3gr/earth_just_had_the_hottest_august_in_136_years/)

~~~
sctb
Thank you, we updated the link from
[http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/5216.html](http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/5216.html).

------
celias
[https://xkcd.com/1732/](https://xkcd.com/1732/)

------
blondie9x
May this planet somehow be saved for us and our posterity if Trump becomes
president.

~~~
emodendroket
Please, the problem is much bigger than one political figure.

~~~
blondie9x
You sure about that? Obama has done much work than most individuals to bring
about the first international collective agreement to prevent climate change.
Domestically he has gone above and beyond and risking political backlash to
avoid partisanship in senate and bring about climate change prevention policy.
This can very well be undone by a president who doesn't believe humans can
change the planet. A man who will not acknowledge the comprehensive science
surrounding greenhouse gases.

There is more danger than you realize.

~~~
emodendroket
How could he be risking political backlash if one man alone was uniquely
threatening?

