
2014 Was Hottest Year on Record, Surpassing 2010 - gz5
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html
======
joshuahedlund
I wish the NYT article included more data (though there is a chart). Raw data
is available at NCDC[0]

It is true that the data shows a continually warming trend, with 2014 as the
warmest on record. It is also true that the recorded warming is proceeding at
a very slow pace, with the new record anomaly of 0.69 C only 0.04 C higher
than the previous records of 2005 and 2010 and only 0.06 C higher than the
record of 1998.

It is false to say that the globe is not warming, but it also false to say
that the warming is on pace for even a full degree of warming by the end of
the century. The "warmest X years have all occurred since Y" but they are also
clumping together pretty closely and moving up from that clump ever so slowly
(which incidentally makes me quite optimistic about our continuing
technological progress away from fossil fuels)

[0][http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13)

~~~
300bps
Thank you for the data, but it brings up a big question for me. How do they
boil down "Global Temperature" to a single number from 1880 to 2014? In 1880
there were only 38 states and the Statue of Liberty hadn't been delivered yet
for 5 years.

Today they have temperature sensors in Antarctica, the North Pole, Alaska,
Utah, the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the middle of the Pacific Ocean, etc,
etc. Did they have these same sensors in 1880? In 1900? In 1920?

Where is the data that shows the constituents of the "one true number" that
claims to stretch over a period of 134 years?

~~~
ch4s3
You know the phrase "The sun never sets on British soil"? Well that dates to
the 18th Century, and they we measuring temperature everywhere they were.
True, expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic were later, but they also
recorded temperature.

So, the record, while incomplete, is pretty good.

~~~
300bps
_So, the record, while incomplete, is pretty good._

Do you have any evidence of this claim? Specifically, do you know where I can
find the formula used to calculate the global temperature and the constituent
temperature readings, locations and time/dates?

Common sense says that such readings would be spotty at best and also that
they would be incomparable between 1880 and 2014 but since they are comparing
them I'm very curious of their methodology.

 _EDIT_ OK I found what claims to be the source code of the software that
massages the numbers here:
[http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/sources/)

 _EDIT2_ OK I found the underlying data here:
[http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/](http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/)

It's exactly what I thought. Hardly any of the stations go back to 1880 and
the ones that do are unbelievably spotty with sometimes two years or more of
missing data. Oh and they're apparently not even measurements - they're
"reconstructions". And apparently they re-adjust these reconstructions all the
time. (see
[http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/nasas_rubber_rul...](http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/nasas_rubber_ruler.html#ixzz27YZRxqIW))

The environment would be much better off if we stopped pretending we know
things we don't and just agree that it is stupid to squander a finite resource
like fossil fuels and start conserving it.

------
gdubs
Mentioned this in another thread, but I've been reading Stewart Brand's "Whole
Earth Discipline" [1], and it's very interesting. In particular, I feel
persuaded that nuclear power is our big shot at bringing atmospheric levels of
CO2 down to manageable levels.

Brand was one of the first "Greens". His Whole Earth Catalog inspired a lot of
the 70's techno-hippies, like Steve Jobs, and it's fascinating to read how his
positions have evolved over the decades, and how he is championing positions
he wouldn't have expected to be championing when he was younger.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Discipline)

~~~
superobserver
Does he at least consider Thorium as a nuclear power source?

~~~
beat
If thorium was all it's cracked up to be by its proponents, it would _already_
be a major power source. Thorium reactor technology dates back to the 1960s,
but there still aren't any commercial thorium reactors, although hundreds of
other reactors have been built since then.

The lack of market drive to thorium - not just in the tree-hugging US, but in
less sensitive places like China - is a dead giveaway that either a: it's not
nearly as easy as it's made out to be, b: it's not economical relative to
other reactor designs, or c: it's not nearly as safe as claimed. I think c can
be ruled out, based on common sense and the fact that China doesn't care so
much about safety. That leads to either a, or b, or some combination of the
two.

At any rate, the hard reality of the invisible hand tells me that thorium
isn't so awesome after all, or we'd see thorium reactors in commercial use by
now.

~~~
rjsw
Current reactors weren't developed by the invisible hand, they were developed
as part of the effort to make bombs.

~~~
beat
That just suggests that nuclear power is inherently uneconomical! It also
doesn't make sense, because there are many nations that have nuclear reactors,
but don't have or want nuclear weapons - Japan, Sweden, Belgium, and Spain
come to mind offhand.

Think the implications through, in a serious manner. _If thorium is cheap and
safe, why isn 't it being used at all today?_ This is the question thorium
advocates never ask (and will downvote you for asking, as per my example
here), and it infuriates me! I don't have an answer for this question. Thorium
looks good, on paper. What I do have is observation, and observed facts do not
match the written theory. Science says you should question the theory.

~~~
rjsw
The countries without military nuclear programmes still made use of knowledge
and technology that was developed in military programmes elsewhere. As with
the bomb itself, just knowing that it can work will save a lot of time.

Your list of countries doesn't look very "clean" to me.

------
api
At this point it's obvious: CO2, which traps heat by a clearly understandable
and straightforward physical mechanism, is altering the Earth's climate with
unknown but likely mostly negative consequences.

That means we can add this fact to an already _very_ long list of reasons that
we must go beyond fossil fuels.

I personally don't think the CO2 problem is at the top of that list. The top
slot by far belongs to the depletion problem. There is a finite amount of the
stuff that is economically recoverable. We don't know exactly where the limit
is, but when we hit it -- assuming we have no alternatives -- we will begin a
downward spiral toward the collapse of modern civilization. This might also
involve global warfare, possibly nuclear, and a "mass die off" of the human
species. At the very least all economic growth would cease and with it all
opportunity for anyone to advance their condition in life. The pie would begin
shrinking, and this would bring a return to a scarcity mentality in all
things. An "orderly die-back and return to bare subsistence" is probably the
_best_ case scenario.

The fact that our entire modern technological society is _absolutely_
dependent upon a finite source of energy is probably the greatest existential
threat that we face. That this isn't talked about more is likely a result of
denial in the face of a very terrifying problem. A good way to think about it
is to compare it to a planet-killer asteroid that we know is headed our way.

Next up is probably the geopolitical nightmare of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels
transfer massive quantities of wealth from (relatively) liberal open societies
to brutal totalitarian states where people are beheaded for questioning the
dominant religion or dictator. It finances both terrorism and the ideologies
behind it. The only alternative way to still get these fuels would be to
embark upon a blood-soaked imperial crusade to simply seize these fossil fuel
reserves, an alternative that's arguably worse than the existing state of
affairs for many reasons.

I'd put the CO2 problem in the third slot below these. The fourth slot would
probably belong to the _other_ environmental damages inflicted by fossil fuel
mining and use including air and water pollution and the destruction of
otherwise valuable land.

Anyone who argues for the fossil fuel status quo at this point is delusional
or insane. I personally think this is the greatest problem facing our
civilization.

~~~
mollerhoj
"Can we stop arguing at this point? Anyone who still thinks the fossil fuel
status quo is okay is insane."

72%[1] of republicans in the senate are insane apparently.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFOPf0s5u5E#t=54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFOPf0s5u5E#t=54)

~~~
r00fus
They're perfectly sane (they see their constituency as their funders - of
which Big Oil is a big name), but corrupt.

How do you remediate a corrupt system?

------
gz5
Some eye opening tidbits in here:

"The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997"

"Several scientists said the most remarkable thing about the 2014 record was
that it occurred in a year that did not feature El Niño"

Of course all of this is in relation to a history starting only in the late
1800s, so we are looking at a blip on geological time scales, but still even
micro-cycles within macro-cycles can be instructive and meaningful. Would like
to hear from the experts on the macro view.

~~~
jjoonathan
Not an expert, but the wiki page seems pretty accessible
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record)

    
    
        Satellites: 35 years
        Balloons: 65 years
        Instruments: 165 years
        Ice cores: 800,000 years
        Sediment cores: at least 500,000,000 years
    

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#med...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#mediaviewer/File:All_palaeotemps.svg)

~~~
gus_massa
It' not very clear, but the "on record" probably include only the instrument
measurement period, or something like that. The ice cores graph (linked near
the bottom) says that 125.000 years ago the temperature was much hotter
(+8°C).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record#mediaviewer/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record#mediaviewer/File:EPICA_temperature_plot.svg)

~~~
mark-r
The rate of change probably matters as much as the absolute difference. Given
enough time, life can adapt. I'd love to see a chart of both the temperatures
and the rate of change over those time periods.

------
marpstar
I had seen the anomaly graph a month or two ago and it had confirmed my
perception of Summer 2014 in the the upper Midwest USA (Illinois, Iowa,
Wisconsin, Minnesota). We had a relative cool summer; The temperature didn't
even hit 90 degrees until well into August.

It was a welcome change, as our hot summers are always accompanied by brutal
humidity. I'd like to know _why_ it was so cool last year.

~~~
Daishiman
Because as the Arctic warms, the Jet Stream becomes more chaotic and reaches
further south.

------
_xander
"Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in
Manhattan, said the next time a strong El Niño occurs, it is likely to blow
away all temperature records." Terrifying.

~~~
thrownaway2424
That's likely to be either this year or next year. NOAA puts out an update
weekly, and they are currently saying "There is an approximately 50-60% chance
of El Niño conditions during the next two months".

[http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/la...](http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-
status-fcsts-web.pdf)

------
mollerhoj
In the meantime, scientists are struggling to make lawmakers actually believe
in science! Scary stuff. I really hope that the GOP turns on this issue soon
enough. It's hard to believe that this is actually needed:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFOPf0s5u5E#t=54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFOPf0s5u5E#t=54)

------
lumberjack
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Salem_Hypothesis)

No you aren't crazy if you notice that engineering fields tend to attract many
brilliant people with wacky beliefs.

It's very evident in any controversial topic, even on HN as you can see ITT.

~~~
wikithro
Back when I helped edit wikipedia physics articles, it was very noticeable
that almost every crank with an anti-relativity agenda had an EE background.
Not just engineering, but very specifically electrical engineering.

------
mrfusion
Was the cooler eastern US an anomaly or is this an expected long term result?

------
thedangler
2014 was the hottest year. But the summer in my city was complete crap. It was
cold and rainy. Hope its better summer this year :)

------
jayess
Of course, no mention that this is based on the ground-station temperature
record which is continually being "revised" so that the past is cooler and
cooler. I believe the raw station records have now been "revised" three times
so that the original data is becoming meaningless. The satellite record does
not show that 2014 was the warmest.

~~~
jayess
No surprise I'm being downvoted, but here's the satellite temperature record:

[http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2015](http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/to:2015)

[Edit: why would people downvote a link to the satellite temperature record?]

~~~
graycat
Why? Like Galileo, you are a heretic, fighting the orthodoxy, willing to
contradict the true religion! Pope Laureate Guru will send out his acolytes to
deliver his inquisition and excommunication! That's why!

------
InclinedPlane
Ah yes. Always remember, "weather isn't climate", except when it's warmer,
then it is.

~~~
splawn
Weird, I thought this article was about a years worth of global weather data.
Perhaps you don't understand scale?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Let me ask you this, if 2014 were merely an anomalously cold year, would the
reporting and commenting be different?

Maintaining scientific rigor is difficult in the best of times. Unfortunately,
people give in to vain impulses to try to short cut the process and "prove"
their position is correct even though the actual scientific process is slow.

One hot year is just one year, as one cold year would be. It's proof of very
little. Certainly the validity, or not, of incredibly complex climate models
does not rest particularly strongly on one year out of many.

Short circuiting the climate debate when a year is warm is no better than when
a year is cold, and merely legitimizes the practice.

~~~
pistle
Exactly. Let's pick one hot year out of the whole series of hot years so we
can then say, "It's just a data point." Each year is just a data point.
Nothing to see here. I can't live long enough to prove a trend, therefore
nobody can with their climate science based on 100's of measurement backed up
way more history baked into the geology, etc. To argue the science, at this
point, questions the arguers understanding of the process of science or the
grasp of the quality of the science at hand.

Unfortunately, people give in to vain impulses and try to desperately
undermine science in action by parsing data and charts to cast doubt upon
something which has an ever higher likelihood of being true. We can't wait
10,000 years to say, "Yep, the data didn't lie."

What's the real downside to hedging your bets and leading on actions to wind
down the climate impact of people? Disruption to existing market systems?
Painful career changes for fossil energy industries? Increases in the price of
beef? All of that happens without planned change anyways. Who's afraid of
change when you still have a modicum of control?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Climate models are complex. The data needed to validate them is also enormous
and difficult to get right. Validating a climate model is an enormously
challenging prospect, and represents far more work than simply saying "seems
like a couple years recently have been pretty hot."

As for the rest, you seem to be arguing against a strawman that isn't present
in anything I wrote.

~~~
splawn
I didn't realize that the current overwhelming scientific consensus on global
warming is based on "seems like a couple years recently have been pretty
hot.". If thats not the case, does that count as a strawman in something you
wrote?

------
drc37
For the US, it was only the 34st warmest.

To put it in a bit more perspective what the NY Times is saying:

[http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-balk-at-
ho...](http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/01/16/scientists-balk-at-hottest-year-
claims-we-are-arguing-over-the-significance-of-hundredths-of-a-degree-the-
pause-continues/)

~~~
hyperbovine
Ahh yes. Climate Depot. Brainchild of Marc Morano, whose previous career
highlights include
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Morano](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Morano)):

"He began his career working for Rush Limbaugh from 1992 to 1996, during which
time he was known as "Limbaugh's man in Washington".[1] After 1996, he began
working for Cybercast News Service, where he was the first to publish the
accusations from Swift-Boat veterans that John Kerry ... Beginning in June
2006, Morano served as the director of communications of Senator Jim Inhofe."

This is totally the person I trust to get an unbiased perspective on science
reporting.

~~~
viggity
Ahh yes. Argumentum ad verecundiam. Let's bash a guy because he hangs out with
someone you dislike instead of refuting his centrals points.

You're total the person I trust to make logical arguments.

~~~
lotsofmangos
We are talking about someone who doxxes scientists he disagrees with as a
debating tactic and then justifies it on the basis that he receives hate mail,
so why shouldn't they.

------
Shivetya
Political theater,the differences are within margin of errors for measuring
devices, however if we needed more evidence that all models of warming were
wrong and we still aren't, well here you have it.

After all, which models that all the alarmist have been using since the
beginning of the century have modeled what we have been seeing?

I am not saying there is no climate change, mother nature does damn well on
her own. I just find all the alarmist to be, rather like members of a radical
religion

~~~
jnevill
"Within the margin of errors for measuring devices" What is this nonsense?
Yes... a single thermometer will have a known margin of error, but when you
take a measurement across thousands of thermometers, and then look at the
trend of those measurements over decades... I mean... what the hell are you
talking about?

------
SeanDav
Oh great, now we are back to "Global Warming". For years that label was not
working because many areas were experiencing record low temperatures which
kind of made the "Global Warming" advocates all look a bit silly. Thus the
term "Climate Change" was introduced because after all who can argue against
the fact that the climate is changing! I am on the fence as far as "Global
Warming" is concerned but even I must admit that the climate is changing - the
fact that the climate has always changed and always will seems to be besides
the point.

Now we have a warm year and back we go to "Global Warming". Really hard
sometimes to take these people seriously.

~~~
wnevets
what? Are you saying you dont think on average the planet is becoming warmer?

~~~
SeanDav
I am saying we do not know yet if the climate change is within normal
parameters, and even what is the definition of "normal change". The earth has
been much much warmer and much much cooler.

What I find irritating is the rather poor science behind much of this
(statistical modelling being presented as scientific proof for example), and
government agendas and business interests are all clouding the picture.

The UK government for example have raised a huge amount of tax on the back of
these fears.

~~~
beat
I find the lack of numeracy in this criticism disconcerting. It's not just a
question of whether the Earth has been historically warmer or cooler - it's a
question of _how quickly_ the Earth became significantly warmer or cooler. A
temperature change over thousands of years is a tremendously different thing
than a temperature change over a few decades, when it comes to how
temperature-sensitive life forms respond.

Moreover, it's not just a question of temperature. Changing CO2 levels are
also measurably impacting ocean acidity, which affects extremely sensitive
single-celled life forms at the root of the ocean's food chain.

------
graycat
They have some data relatively good for the NYT, e.g., graphs of global
average differences (they call _anomalies_ which is common but, still, wildly
inappropriate value-laden terminology) temperature each year for the past 200
years, etc. Good. Next question has to be, measured how, by whom, and where we
can get peer-reviewed reports because, frankly, I just cannot take what you
publish seriously. Not a chance.

But, then, the NYT, with their usual interest in _drama_ and their _trilogy_
of human transgression, retribution, and redemption, go off on their usual,
talking about extreme values.

NYT, again, once again, over again, one more time, just for you again, and not
nearly for the first time, all your _get 'm up on their hind legs_ drama with
extreme values (what's meaningful, nearly all that's meaningful in this case,
are the averages; without the averages the extreme values would be better than
nothing, but with the averages the extreme values are just mammary glands on a
boar hog and at best distracting) is one of the main reasons all your many,
nearly daily, in my e-mail inbox _offers_ of full access to NYT I just ignore
because I know your real agenda and your main techniques. NYT, occasionally
you publish what at least looks like some good stuff (on big issues but
typically without the evidence that would justify taking your reports on big
issues seriously), but, for nearly all the rest of your stuff, if you take it
seriously then you are just wacko. Instead, about the best that can be said
for your stuff is that it is just light entertainment.

Just want you to know that you are not fooling everyone.

~~~
mturmon
You have been down voted (not by me), which is reasonable given that you say
the report is lying, but offer no counter-evidence.

If you look at the press release
([http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/january/nasa-
determines-2014-...](http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/january/nasa-
determines-2014-warmest-year-in-modern-record/)), you can notice a pointer to
the data and the methods. If you want to be taken seriously, you'd have to
engage that, rather than making empty claims and diverting the conversation to
a referendum on the limitations of the NYT.

I also want to mention that the word "anomaly" in this context is a term of
art for any difference between a value and a mean value -- this is not an
editorial injection by the NYT. It is necessary to use these differences
because seasonal and regional temperature variations make plots of raw
temperature (or precipitation, etc.) fields not very useful. If you were aware
of the literature in this area, you would know this.

~~~
graycat
> you say the report is lying

I never did any such thing. I just said that (1) their graph data was good but
(2) their concern about extreme values was bad. Both (1) and (2) are plainly
obvious and need no "counter-evidence".

I don't trust the NYT, but I didn't say that they were "lying".

> making empty claims

I made no claims except the obvious one that the NYT was emphasizing extreme
values which, clearly for such data analysis, is wrong.

The _argument_ about _global warming_ is totally clear, "settled": No one
knows what the climate will be in 10, 50, or 100 years for any scenarios
having to do with humans.

Proof: Look at the results of the climate computer models; they are in fairly
good agreement and predicted that today the temperatures would be much higher.
They were wildly wrong. QED

Why were the models so wrong? For the technical part, assuming that the work
was done honestly (and I don't really believe that), Freeman Dyson has a
remark, I don't recall precisely, that maybe the problem was the models didn't
do well modeling the effects of the biological responses or some such. So,
maybe they did well enough with the Navier-Stokes equations, Planck black body
radiation, sun spots, etc. but blew it on green leafy vegetables. But, at
least from Freeman Dyson, we don't know.

Why would the NYT emphasize extreme values? That's not a scientific or
technical question and, instead, is about their motivations. My guess about
their motivations, YMMV and no technical references needed, is that they want
to pass out _drama_ to get attention for their ads. Believe it or not. But a
long time ago people saw that truth and the newspapers were not good
bedfellows:

Evidence: An Andy Hardy movie from the 1930s where, clearly, the audience
accepted that newspapers passed out nonsense. More? Sure, _Citizen Kane_ ,
which a lot of people can find believable.

For the sources of the NYT, I didn't see any mentioned. Sorry to say, at this
point, given Obama's political positions, I can no longer take data from NASA
or NOAA very seriously, but that is not a biggie in this case. I didn't claim
that the extreme values were wrong, just that, when we do have average data,
for the data analysis in question here, extreme values add nothing but
confusion. Here I am on very solid ground: Clearly the temperature is a
_stochastic process_ ; commonly we get new extreme values right along even if
nothing is really changing. There are some quite precise results in the cases
of coin flipping, Brownian motion, and martingales. What would be surprising
would be that we didn't get new extreme values -- if we never got more extreme
values, then we would have some bounds for the process that we would have a
tough time believing.

"Anomaly" is still the wrong word. Actually, with a good meaning of _anomaly_
, we should just f'get about them; that is, they are _anomalies_ , and in that
case the whole NYT article is moot.

Yes, I mentioned that it is common in this global warming mud wrestling to say
_anomaly_ \-- it's still the wrong word. _Critical reading comprehension 101_
would have us conclude, correctly in my view, that here _anomaly_ is intended
to mean not really from nature but from humans and their evil CO2, and that is
_value-heavy_. Or, the suggestion is that there is a reason for the _anomaly_
, and their claim of the reason is human CO2. Send your money now to your
favorite green political pressure group.

