
UK Met Office Climate Dashboard - thibaut_barrere
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/monitoring/dashboard.html
======
mistermann
This is brilliant. If you ask me this is exactly the type of approach that has
been missing from the climate discussion. As a natural born skeptic, the
current approach of simplistic, repetitive, and often technically incorrect
news articles and half-informed scolding by politicians, celebrities, and
internet armchair climatologists smells way too much like propaganda or a
cult.

> The front page shows the main indicators. Beneath each one there is
> _additional detail, drilling down into why the indicator is important, how
> it has changed and how it was calculated_. The pages also _link through to
> the data_ so that you can explore it for yourself.

Just the facts (well, it's a start anyways) presented visually (presumably
honestly) so the the meaning is obvious, with the ability to drill down to
learn _why_ the numbers are important, where the data comes from and how to
get to it yourself, as well as links to where to learn more. Beautiful.

Under democratic governments, people need to largely align their opinions
before we can finally start doing something about this problem, and I believe
this is a crucial part of the type of persuasion it is going to take. I think
there is still room for improvement, but I haven't seen this approach taken
before and hope it becomes more popular. In fact, I believe the "pro" side
should team up and produce one single authoritative website, and advertise the
hell out of it - the fact that such a resource doesn't exist has always added
to my skepticism.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> the current approach of simplistic, repetitive, and often technically
> incorrect news articles and half-informed scolding by politicians

That's not "the" current approach, that's your selective perception and/or
framing. Democracy restrains governments, not people. At some point "failing
to convince" has to translate to "shun and withdraw support from". We can't
possibly throw away the human species because "some people weren't convinced
there is an issue", as if they were children and the others adults with a
burden of convincing, which does not exist. Climate change has been warned
about since I can remember, it's certainly been a topic in the last 20 years.
At this point, no adult has a solid excuse anymore.

~~~
mistermann
So why is nothing being done? I think we both want something done, and yet
here we are.

Democracy doesn't restrain people, really? The issues are numerous, but each
person gets one vote for one party/person, effectively they are approving all
of the subsequent decisions of the party they've voted for, when what they're
really doing is accepting the _aggregate_ of their _promises_.

Shun and withdraw support all you want, is that producing results, or not?

If your approach isn't producing results, am I crazy for suggesting we think
more deeply about strategy?

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Democracy doesn't restrain people, really?

Not socially, not when it comes to the individual relations. I didn't mean
convicing or voting are pointless, but it's not the end-all, be-all. It works
for the lucky cases, but the bulk of the problem will require stepping on toes
and deciding between mutually exclusive things.

Nobody who denies climate change actually wants to grow up in a refugee camp
in 100 years and die at age 10, after 10 years of horror, to name just one of
the consequences. Or in a society ravaged by Neonazis (unless they're
Neonazis, then fuck what they want). So it's up to their betters to enforce
their lack of consequence and intellectual integrity on them. They can't
_leave it at_ "failed to convince". Which, by definition, contains prior
attempts to convince, just not an infinite number of them.

> If your approach isn't producing results, am I crazy for suggesting we think
> more deeply about strategy?

Who will "convince Trump", for example? You are simply are assuming good
faith, functioning humans on the other hand without mental health defects, so
what's your answer to where that isn't the case?

~~~
mistermann
>> Democracy doesn't restrain people, really?

> Not socially, not when it comes to the individual relations.

My democracy has produced a very long list of laws that I must follow or they
will put me in jail.

> I didn't mean convicing or voting are pointless, but it's not the end-all,
> be-all.

I absolutely agree with you on this. As I see it Democracy _as it is_ is
largely a fraud, when compared to how it is advertised to be.

> So it's up to their betters to enforce their lack of consequence and
> intellectual integrity on them. They can't leave it at "failed to convince".

Oh but they can leave it at "failed to convince", is that not more or less
precisely where we are at, with little sign of a likelihood we'll be moving
beyond it any time soon? This is the point I am trying to make, that no
climate change enthusiast one seems willing to even consider. The irony of the
situation is delicious.

> Who will "convince Trump", for example?

It's not Trump that needs convincing, it is the public. Understanding in
detail why people voted for Trump in the first place would have yielded very
valuable knowledge that could have been used towards persuading people to
support fighting climate change, but instead we seem to have chosen to use our
imaginations to decide why people voted for him. People who behave this way,
which is mostly everyone I've encountered, are unintelligent in this respect,
and the same style of thinking seems to be what is being deployed in the
public relations campaign against climate change. I wish you luck, but it
doesn't seem to be producing much change, so I will continue to advocate for
improvements in strategy.

> You are simply are assuming good faith

Incorrect, I am assuming nothing, except where I have explicitly noted. You on
the other hand, *seem to be assuming bad faith. You may be right, but I would
recommend studying the matter to find out for sure.

> so what's your answer to where that isn't the case?

As always, I recommend studying the situation: find out the detailed reasons
why people do not support climate change, study what the failures seem to be
in why the current messaging is unsuccessful, make iterative changes to the
strategy, and measure results as you go. If people thought of the situation
more like playing a video game, perhaps that would diminish the sense of
identity involved and result in the ability to think more clearly (for
example, thinking of people as having mental health defects).

~~~
PavlovsCat
> for example, thinking of people as having mental health defects

I asked you how you would convince Trump, as an example of a specific
individual we both "know". Your answer is to study someone else, to just
assume I haven't thought or observed anything, and that I just declare people
as evil or deficient because it's easier. I am not a "climate change
enthusiast", my identity in this is zero. You might say I think I see the
writing on the wall about forcing humanity through the eye of a needle into
endless totalitarianism, and hey, I write a lot about that, but if all that
just resolved itself, I would be _so glad_ that I could just sing and hum and
take nature photographs all day.

That not all of this is based on misunderstandings and able to be resolved
peacefully is not a happy insight, but it's what my data points to, if you
will. Just take the stories about (not always) elderly relatives being
radicalized by some fake news on FB: these may be well meaning people, but
they are in the clutches of not so benign people. Confront and overcome those,
and then we'll see how much remaining confusion even exists.

Last but not least, if someone gives their child poison because they're
_either_ too ignorant or too evil to know better, do you a.) first try to
convince them b.) take the child away by force, then explain to them why you
did it? What if it is _your_ child? Yes, it's not a clear cut imminent threat
with climate change, but we'll get there. It's not _just_ about the people who
"have a right to arguments that are sweet to their gums to make them stop
destroying our future voluntarily", it's also about the people after them.

~~~
mistermann
(meta: holy smokes, I'm getting a particularly strict timeout for posting "too
fast" today)

> I asked you how you would convince Trump, as an example of a specific
> individual we both "know". Your answer is to study someone else, to just
> assume I haven't thought or observed anything, and that I just declare
> people as evil or deficient because it's easier.

Ironically, you are assuming a fair amount of detail about my beliefs about
you.

What I said was: "It's not Trump that needs convincing, it is the public." I
mean, if you think energy should be invested in changing Trump's mind, knock
yourself out, but that seems like an incredibly ambitious task, and he might
be out of office soon, replaced by someone else who may pay a lot of lip
service to climate change, but continue kicking the can down the road when it
comes to action.

I do recommend studying public opinion in depth though, I'm not sure if you
are disagreeing with this idea or not. Hopefully not.

> That not all of this is based on misunderstandings and able to be resolved
> peacefully is not a happy insight, but it's what my data points to, if you
> will.

My data (to be fair, little more than paying very close attention to the
nature and content of individual conversations) suggests that a massive
misunderstanding (particularly: the perceptions individuals have for the
thoughts, motivations, and desires of other people) is at the core of the
gridlock. It's not everything, but it's a key component.

> Just take the stories about (not always) elderly relatives being radicalized
> by some fake news on FB: these may be well meaning people, but they are in
> the clutches of not so benign people. Confront and overcome those, and then
> we'll see how much remaining confusion even exists.

An excellent point. I wonder though, how "radicalized" are these people,
_really_ , as opposed to just frustrated, confused, and illogically angry in
general about a complicated mixture of this and that? If it was me, I'd put
some effort into finding answers to questions like these, rather than guessing
(which typically takes the form of assuming the worst).

> Last but not least, if someone gives their child poison

I would advocate for taking the child away. If it was my child, depending on
the circumstances that person may suffer extremely negative consequences that
may not be proportional to the harm they inflicted.

On the scale of the population of the planet, or at least the individual
citizens within democratic countries, you can't just take these people away or
execute them, you have to _persuade_ them, within the incredibly flawed
framework of governance that we call Democracy. I am simply saying that the
current approach doesn't seem to be successful, and we should expend some
effort in figuring out why. That this idea seems so offensive to so many
people to me seems more like a symptom of the problem I'm describing, rather
than a problem with my idea. I believe there is a strong but unrecognized
element or tribalism at play in this debate, on both sides, that is holding
back progress. On the right, this manifests as people saying utterly idiotic
things about climate change, and on the left this manifests as things like
getting angry at or downvoting someone for suggesting we stop mistaking our
perceptions of reality for reality itself, and think and study the issue more
deeply.

But of course, all of this is just my personal opinion based on observations,
it's completely possible I'm wrong. But it seems worthy of some thought and
investigation, considering the gravity of the situation and the current state
of gridlock.

------
pengstrom
How do you approach people who doesn't have trust in science? It feels so
surreal that the science is settled, but some people still don't believe
climate change is real.

~~~
simonsarris
> It feels so surreal that the science is settled

????????

Is the global mean temp for the earth hotter:

1\. Right now

2\. During the Bronze Age

?

What parts of the entire field of psychology from the last 50 years have _not_
failed to replicate?

What parts of nutrition science from the last 50 years are useful, or at least
predictive?

What assumptions were we _certain_ about in anthropology and history 50 years
ago that we now know are completely wrong?

It feels so surreal that people think science is something you settle, at all.
I cannot imagine the confusion that would lead an educated person into in
thinking that.

~~~
andrepd
This is not a discussion about nutrition, or psychology, or anthropology. It's
a discussion about two very concrete questions:

1\. Is global warming happening right now?

2\. Are humans responsible for it?

The answer to those two questions is absolutely unreservedly settled: it's
"yes". It's as settled as any question in science can be, it's as settled as
the fact that electrons exist.

~~~
rubbingalcohol
There's nothing "settled" about question #2. The extent to which humans are
responsible for climate change, comparative to external factors (such as the
sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life), is very much
debatable.

You can use adverbs like "absolutely" and "unreservedly" but that doesn't make
your statement greater than an opinion.

~~~
kaybe
You know, people use that as some kind of defense, but I would find it even
scarier if humans were not responsible for it.

Being responsible for about all of it makes it possible for us to be in
control. Not being responsible would make the situation akin to being hit by a
meteorite.

Some people might find that preferable, since they do not have to change, but
I find it far scarier.

~~~
epistasis
And there you find why people make up ridiculous claims and become "skeptics"
when they are not that way about any other facts of their life: because if
they acknowledge the truth, then they commit themselves to doing something
about it.

And when you have decades of fabricated political identity that says that we
can't switch from fossil fuels and we can't change any aspect of our life that
threatens the profits of a few very wealthy corporations, acknowledging these
facts also means going against one's own identity.

The very same propagandists that let tobacco companies persist with false
claims about smoking and cancer came back for fossil fuel companies' defense
with a highly honed bag of tricks.

That's why we see massive anti-science responses in these comments, just like
every media mention of climate change brings out hoards of denialist a to
barrage the media outlet and scientists that show up: people perceive it as a
personal attack on them and act accordingly.

------
aglionby
Interesting graphs, but it's a little confusing that all but one of them use
difference of the metric (i.e. relative values) instead of absolute values --
what and when are the differences relative to?

~~~
roter
The titles indicate the baseline for each graph. e.g. "Global mean temperature
difference from 1850-1900"

They are plotting the anomalies which tend to be much more useful for climate
studies than the absolute values. e.g. [0,1]

[0] [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-
references/dyk/anomalie...](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-
references/dyk/anomalies-vs-temperature)

[1]
[https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/abs_temp.html](https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/abs_temp.html)

~~~
aglionby
Right, so what is plotted is the deviation from the mean reading in the time
range given? Thanks for the links, those are insightful.

------
driverdan
All of the charts should use the same time scale. It's confusing and
misleading to use different scales for each.

The argument for doing it is likely because that's all the good data we have
for each, but it would still be better to scale them the same way.

~~~
Bantros
I wonder why the chart for CO2 concentration starts at 1960 vs 1850 for the
global mean temperature difference

~~~
kohanz
Without knowing, my guess would be that's when we started measuring &
recording those things?

~~~
kaybe
That is the right answer.

------
powerbroker
I like the facts-based graphs, with multiple data-collecting sources. However,
I think somewhere among these graphs should be some kind of 'speculative'
graph that shows potential remedial efforts impacts on one or more graphs.
Even something as simple as a "when we are gone" graph that predicts what
would occur if all industrial, agricultural processes stopped... just so
people can see what is the realistic asymptote of moderating conditions we can
expect, under an extreme condition. Or, perhaps, put in a more optimistic
tone, a 'magical-antimatter-grid-power-source-without-co2' scenario.

~~~
kaybe
The IPCC has many of these, for example here:

[https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/](https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/graphics/)

The older reports have even more of them.

I find this one especially informative:

[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/FigSPM-10.jp...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/FigSPM-10.jpg)

There is historical data and the results for different emission pathways
(timelines of human emissions).

------
breck
What about charts for the positive counter-cyclical measurements? Off the top
of my head, if there's more CO2 there should be more plant growth, right? Is
there a chart for that? The problem with these current charts is while
momentum is usually a good predictor, if you aren't looking at the full
picture you might miss key indicators that could drastically change the future
(ie. if you just looked at charts that showed the WeWork narrative you want to
present, the future would look predictable until a couple months ago).

~~~
kaybe
More CO2 might not be a good thing for plant-based carbon sinks: Some plants
with less stored carbon might outcompete others, lowering the sink storage.
This issue is quite involved.

[https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-strange-case-of-the-
liana...](https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-strange-case-of-the-liana-vine-
and-its-role-in-global-warming)

~~~
breck
Interesting. Thanks for the link. More reason to have more charts on this
dashboard tracking countercyclicals like plant density, green acreage, etc

------
ekianjo
How do you measure the level of the sea at the mm precision? It is highly
doubtful we are able to do that with any kind of instrumentation, more so
around the whole world at the same time.

EDIT: they say they measure everything with satellites, but that does not mean
there is no incertitude in the measurement. No measurement is 100% accurate,
and I'd certainly like to see the error range of satellites, when even GPS
can't do better than +/\- 30 cm precision.

~~~
teraflop
AFAIK, satellite sea level measurements are only really accurate to a few cm.
But when many measurements are averaged over long periods of time, that's
still good enough to observe trends on the order of a few mm per year.

A bit more information about the measurement process:
[https://research.csiro.au/slrwavescoast/sea-
level/measuremen...](https://research.csiro.au/slrwavescoast/sea-
level/measurements-and-data/sea-level-measurements/#SatAlt)

~~~
superqwert
That is very interesting! how do they know that a difference in a satellite
measurement is not due to slippage in its orbit?

~~~
teraflop
The nice thing about satellite orbits is that they are extremely steady and
predictable. Over long time scales, a satellite's orbit drifts due to many
effects, such as non-uniformity of Earth's gravity. But over short timescales,
its motion is very precisely determined by its orbital parameters.

In particular, there's a precise relationship between a satellite's orbital
period and its orbital radius (technically, its semi-major axis). A one-
centimeter variation in altitude would result in a timing error of several
hundred microseconds per day, which is enough to be detected using precise
clocks and Doppler effect measurements.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
> A one-centimeter variation in altitude would result in a timing error of
> several hundred microseconds per day

Source or math for this? Because for any signal in the MHz range, I’m not sure
I believe it necessarily.

Several hundred microseconds of a 150Mhz wave is several thousand cycles. That
seems... questionable.

I did a check on a decibel calc with a 150Mhz signal and a 1 meter change was
approx .01db... which is effectively undetectable to a real world application.
Signal strength isn’t the same as propagation delay, I know. But yea...

I look forward to being corrected, but I can’t say that claim seems legitimate
on its face.

EDIT: Nope. Did some probably bad math on this on my own, claim is very
nonsense. Esp because the delta distance is in space where radio has the speed
of light.

~~~
teraflop
I don't understand what you think is nonsense about this claim. Can you
elaborate?

The timing numbers I quoted are purely based on the orbital motion of a
(hypothetical) satellite, and have nothing to do with radio signals. Kepler's
third law states that a body's orbital period varies in proportion to the
1.5th power of its semi-major axis. A 1cm altitude difference for a satellite
in LEO corresponds to a change of about 1.5 parts per billion, which
translates to a 2.2 ppb change in orbital period. As I said, this amounts to a
cumulative difference of a couple hundred microseconds per day.

And it's actually much easier to precisely measure frequency differences than
amplitude differences, if you have sufficiently accurate clocks. If you have a
150.000000MHz reference signal and a 150.000001MHz doppler-shifted signal, you
can simply multiply them together to get a 1Hz beat frequency. Using this
technique, you can measure phase differences that are considerably less than a
single cycle of the original signal.

A major limiting factor, of course, is the stability and precision of your
reference clocks. Apparently, the Jason-2 satellite that (until recently) was
responsible for a lot of these measurements had a high-precision quartz
oscillator that was stable to roughly one part per trillion:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30004875](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30004875)

Measuring the absolute position and velocity of a satellite is comparatively a
lot more difficult. But with sufficiently precise Doppler relative-velocity
measurements from multiple points, you can solve for both the orbital
parameters and the slowly-varying perturbations with a high degree of
accuracy.

------
ntzm
Glad to see climate change denialism has spread HN, what the fuck is
happening?

~~~
dageshi
Lot's of low effort contrarianism in just about every thread is what's
happening.

Genuinely, I think HN is now worse than reddit, only reddit has some actual
funny/entertaining comments while HN is just... I don't know low effort tedium
pretending to be insight?

Maybe HN got too popular?

~~~
enraged_camel
Honestly, it is really, really bad.

The worst comments are of the "just asking questions!" type. The asker will
preface it with an apology about them being "genuinely curious", and then
continue by stating their "concerns" about how the established and agreed upon
consensus was reached, and say they "couldn't help but notice" how the "other
side" gets "suppressed/censored".

This type of concern-trolling is straight out of grassroots propaganda
rulebook (which the asker is either consciously following, or has been a
target and victim of themselves), and it's quite depressing how many posters
here fall for it and engage the asker in good faith.

~~~
NoodleIncident
> "just asking questions!"

I recently learned that some people call these comments and posts "JAQing
off"; such a term isn't going to change anyone's mind, but at least there's
something to sadly smirk about when I see the same bad-faith questions posted
for the umpteenth time.

------
jackpeterfletch
awwww shit

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

------
xvx
Nothing that the earth hasn't been through before, at much higher degrees.The
earth will be fine and will recover. Humans, hopefully, will not.

~~~
ptah
the rate of change this time is ridiculously high. that is the problem, not
the actual temperature

~~~
black6
I hear the rate of change argument a lot, but I haven’t been able to
comfortably arrive at how the comparison is made. Historic temperatures (pre-
nineteenth century) have to be inferred from proxies—ice formations,
fossilized tree rings, et cetera. Those, in turn, must be put into a date
range based on some form of (I assume) radiometric dating. Carbon dating can
get you +- 80 years. The other common techniques have even less precision.
Uranium-lead dating can peg down a 2 million year window, for example.

How can researchers say that the rate of change is so much greater now when,
not even counting propagation of error, the granularity of measurements pre-
nineteenth century is, at best, of the same order-of-magnitude as the WHOLE of
the era of modern precision measurements?

EDIT: I realize my question is inconvenient, but downvoting without meaningful
response is no way to counter skepticism. This topic gets more religious as
time goes on.

~~~
ptah
this is how science works. it is the best model and projection using current
data. if you can improve it, please go ahead

~~~
superqwert
You aren't addressing the arguments at all here. With the error bars that
black6 suggests, we cannot possibly infer anything of meaning over long
periods of time.

------
lopmotr
Why can't people just make honest graphs? If you're trying to convince a
skeptical person, the last thing you should do is use known dirty tricks for
deceiving them.

CO2 and arctic sea ice graphs' vertical axes don't start at zero, making the
change look worse than it really is and meaningless without something to
compare PPM or km^2 to.

Other graphs use a sensible difference for the axis because there's no
meaningful absolute zero.

It would be nice if they aligned the time axes on all of them for extra
readability.

The different start dates are a red flag because they might be cherry picking
the start date to avoid something embarrassing before that. I guess they just
used easily available data which is fine if they don't have the resources to
do it more thoroughly, and they explain that for sea level. But it would be
more transparent to show a longer history with clear explanation of how start
dates were chosen.

Actually, sea level really needs a longer history because it has been rising
since the ice age and it's important to separate that natural increase from
the anthropogenic one.

