
2016 was third consecutive year of record global warmth - hvo
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/reporting-state-climate-2016
======
pmarreck
I'm dismayed that the very environment we all share somehow got politicized to
death. I wonder what would have happened to the Ozone Hole if it too got
politicized at the time, or the link between smoking and cancer if it got
politicized. We trust our doctors; we trust our tech leaders; why don't we
trust our scientists and climatologists? (Is this, sort of, Gore's fault,
combined with a highly-polarizing media? I have to wonder.)

At this point I have almost no faith that until things get dire enough to
cause even the most ignorant layperson to realize there's a serious problem
going on, that anything impactful will be done to stop it, and by then it may
be too late due to runaway multiplicative effects (such as the thawing of
permafrost methane in the Arctic, or the absence of snow cover resulting in
less planet-surface reflectivity)

~~~
chasing
> Is this, sort of, Gore's fault...

How in the holy hell would it be Gore's fault? He has tried to be a
communicator on this issue for decades. He's "highly polarized" because the
great smear machine felt it needed to destroy him for having the temerity to
run for President.

~~~
triangleman
I'll bite. _An Inconvenient Truth_ was so overly political and full of lame
folksy rhetoric that it motivated me to investigate the issue further. And now
I'm a climate skeptic. I'm sure there are others.

~~~
purephase
How? Could you elaborate on the type of investigation you undertook that led
you to become a skeptic? The scientific community is so overwhelmingly on the
side of climate change that you'd have to be really selective to see/read it
otherwise.

The "lame folksy rhetoric" is Gore's way of trying to appeal to the skeptics.
The problem with issues like climate change is that they're so large and
complex that most people feel powerless to affect change, so they do nothing.

An Inconvenient Truth was meant to impart the severity, but also the hope that
small changes will make a difference and that, collectively, there's a chance
to change course. At the very least, lower our contribution in an effort to
change course.

Honestly, blaming this on Gore is beyond comprehension. I'm trying to not to
be hyperbolic, but this type of knee-jerk reaction and selective bias
highlights how this issue is politicized, and will, as evidence suggests, lead
to devastation.

~~~
triangleman
Here is what did it for me:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JIuKjaY3r4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JIuKjaY3r4)

This 6 minute clip made me question the entire thing, because it was so full
of half truths, innuendo, false conclusions, and then topped off with a
politician's favorite rhetorical device--morality.

So when Al Gore started caricaturing the "so-called skeptics" I started
listening closely. Because that's what you do when someone is trying to
bamboozle you. And at every turn, when he laid down reason and picked up
rhetoric, there was an "inconvenient truth" that he knew he could not hide so
he resorted to lame arguments and hand waving.

Al Gore's inconvenient truths, just from that clip:

1:30 - The medieval warm period was actually quite warm, and you can't simply
will it away by adjusting your chart or appealing to humor. Did you notice the
chart goes from big smooth lines to little jagged lines? I did. Apparently
it's a reconstruction where scientists have attempted to compare prehistoric
temperatures to modern ones. I fundamentally reject that this is a fair way to
present data to make your case. Those jagged lines should have error bars at
least. The "hockey stick" has since been removed from IPCC reports out of
embarrassment (see the 'Climategate' scandal and efforts by McIntyre and
McKitrick to reproduce the hockey stick study).

2:55 - "In all of this time, 650,000 years, the CO2 level has never gone above
300 parts per million". First of all this is wrong. The Holocene has seen an
oscillation from 210 to 385 ppm. I don't know where he's getting his numbers.
What he also does not say is that this trend is actually quite rare. In most
of the Earth's history the CO2 level has been many many times higher, from
2000 to 8000 ppm in the last 500 million years.

3:00 - The two charts very clearly fit together because of the opposite
relationship that Gore is implying: A warmer climate means more biological
activity, therefore more CO2. Duh. But somehow he is bamboozling his audience
into believing that the relationship goes the other way. An elementary
scientific attitude would at least say "hey wait a minute, correlation does
not imply causation."

6:00 - After the elevator gag, he responds to "so-called skeptics" with hand-
waving. "If this much on the cold side is a mile of ice over our heads, what
would that much on the warm side be?" The audience is left to conjure doomsday
scenarios in their minds. The answer could very well be "far more economic
growth due to great swaths of land opened up for farming" but no, Al Gore is
sure it's going to be a catastrophe.

6:15 - Then here comes the "this is not politics, this is a moral issue" which
is a politician's favorite thing to say. Love the finger pointing and lowered
tone of voice. Again this is the kind of behavior that makes a reasonable
person question the basis of the whole thing.

I get that Gore really believes he needs to stop Manbearpig and needs to do it
ASAP. But he and everyone else on the political left that wants vast
international control over economies (and that's really what his political
plan is) should have expected some blowback from this kind of rhetoric. And
that's my answer to chasing's question of "how could it be Gore's fault" that
there is skepticism over his crazy agenda.

------
dmix
> the combined influence of long-term global warming and a strong El Niño
> early in the year

I'm curious how strong this El Nino was vs others in recent years? Was it
particularly bad this time?

~~~
bostik
This is a tricky question. (Hell, it could well be a _trick question_.)

El Niño takes place 2-3 times per generation. A stronger than usual phenomenon
is a single data point, and we all know how much validity one should give to
an outlier. In order to quantify the strength of consecutive events, and
especially to rule out freak outliers in both directions you will need a few
distinct data points. Let's say 6-8 data points at a minimum.

So the timescales for measurements will be in the range of 40-50 years.

By the time you can reliably use El Niño as a yardstick to say that it's
getting late to act, it will have been too late for quite some time.

------
jesperlang
More details about the situation in the arctic:
[http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/](http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/)

------
SamPhillips
If you're (rightly) concerned about climate change there is a lot you can do.

Here are three good resources.

Bret Victor's "What can a technologist do about climate change" is wonderful
tech overview [0].

"Drawdown", a recent book which enumerates and stack-ranks the wide array of
techniques we have which return the atmosphere to a safe composition. [1]

Finally, a self-pitch, we just launched our new site, ClimateAction.tech [2]
with a guide for technology employees who are interested in making their
companies more sustainable (feedback welcome, @samp or the email on the site)

[0]
[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)
[1] [https://smile.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-
Rev...](https://smile.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Reverse-
Warming/dp/0143130447) [2] ClimateAction.tech

------
tryingagainbro
After a while we might just see a trend (I mean even the skeptical crowd)

~~~
yahna
Nope. You still have people in this thread posting about how "oh the left is
just too mean so I became a client skeptic" "oh well the scientists get paid
and they don't have 100% of the answers so I'm a client skeptic now"

------
malchow
". . . in 137 years of recordkeeping."

~~~
jefurii
Climate information is also written in the rings of trees, which in the case
of giant sequoias goes back several thousand years. It's also there in the
geological record in the form of layers in sedimentary rocks.

~~~
triangleman
1) It's not clear how to derive a signal from that evidence. Is a thicker tree
ring evidence of a hotter, wetter climate, or a "happy medium" temperature?

2) Such a record of tree rings, if it could produce any temperature signal
whatsoever, would be a _relative_ signal: Each year would be calculated in
relation to other years on the same timeline for the same tree. How you could
map that signal to modern temperature observations in any meaningful way?

Personally if you're talking about a global temperature estimate, I would only
trust the gold standard: Satellite observations starting in 1978.

------
patrickg_zill
Things that climate change discussions rarely talk about:

1\. We have a climate that is greatly affected by the sun. The sun varies in
the amount of light we get from it.

We have truly, absolutely zero ability to modify anything about the sun.

We couldn't even place a probe or device within 10,000 miles of the surface of
the sun, if our survival depended on it.

2\. Even if the USA cuts their emissions in half tomorrow, with China and
India increasing their use of autos and other emissions producing devices,
would that be enough? And how exactly is it that USA spends more on reducing
emissions while others spend zero? How much of a hit to the economy does this
entail, for essentially zero world wide benefit?

How many remember Canada's 180 degree turnaround a few years ago, when they
realized that conforming to the Kyoto protocol meant a 10% GDP hit?

~~~
SamPhillips
1\. 100% of the problem that climatologists discuss is heat from the sun,
trapped, by greenhouse gasses that we release. As you rightly point out, we
can't control the sun, so we must control how much insulating gas we put in
the atmosphere.

2\. Even it China cuts is emissions, with the USA outputting more than 4 times
per person, would that be enough? How exactly is it that China spends more on
reducing emissions while USA spends zero? This is a collective action problem
(much like CFC's were in the 1980s, or not peeing in the lake you depend on
for drinking water), it requires grown-up behavior from all nations now so as
to no despoil the inheritance we might leave to our children.

~~~
patrickg_zill
1\. Very few talk about how the sun changes its levels of radiance and how
this affects climate on Earth. The sun is not a "constant".

2\. Maybe I phrased that part of my statement rather lumpily. I meant, if USA
spends to reduce emissions and China and India do not spend.

~~~
SamPhillips
1\. They don't talk about it because it is not the primary cause of the
warming we see. [0] 2\. China and India have agreed to reduce emissions, as
part of the Paris agreement. 45% of all solar installed worldwide in 2016 was
installed in China. Every country needs to do its part. [1]

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-
wo...](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country)

------
kisstheblade
Where I live (Finland) it has been a shockingly cold summer. All the
denialists of course scream about "no global warming, don't tax me bro!".
Weird that the denialism-engine works all the way here (from the US). Of
course we have our fair share of different co2 taxes etc so when people don't
like them of course it's somehow easier to deny global warming (a logic I
don't quite understand... I myself are against any co2 taxes etc but still
"believe" in AGW).

------
MadSax
How to virtually guarantee funding: Create a research project that attempts to
better understand a cause or a potential effect of some aspect of Climate
Change.

How to be ostracized from the University zeitgeist and receive little/no
funding: Create a research project that attempts to disprove any major
assumptions or pillars of modern Climate Change science.

Welcome to politics.

~~~
scarmig
I guess the new line is that we can't trust the scientists, because they're
all corrupt.

Which I guess is pretty similar to the old line. But at least back then the
know-nothingism had the pretense of caring about the science with screams of
"1998!" and "sunspots!"

------
calafrax
"Last year’s record heat resulted from the combined influence of long-term
global warming and a strong El Niño early in the year."

"One of the strongest El Niño events since at least 1950"

~~~
pmarreck
can you provide a link instead of hearsay, please

~~~
calafrax
those are quotes from the article and the paper it references

------
dzaragozar
Next year: "International report confirms 2017 was fourth consecutive year of
record global warmth"

Not exactly shocking news :)

~~~
melling
It might not be because El Niño years are a little warmer. So, if the next
couple of years aren’t warmer, we don’t have a hiatus.

------
mentat
Title doesn't match article and is clearly hyperbolic.

~~~
sctb
We've updated the title from “2016 confirmed as planet's hottest year”.
Submitters, the guidelines ask us not to editorialize titles like this.

------
CaptainXMoonman
Regardless of CO2, does anyone have a sense of how much heat we are putting
into the earth system by burning non-renewables?

~~~
philipkglass
Fossil combustion is directly heating the Earth by ~16 terawatts. Radiative
forcing from human emitted CO2 (primarily fossil combustion) is ~1 watt/m^2:

[https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-
indica...](https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-
climate-forcing)

Multiplied by the surface area of the planet, 510,000,000 km^2, that's 510
terawatts heating from CO2 in the atmosphere. As time goes by the relative
importance of radiative forcing continues to increase, because fuel produces
heat for just a short time as it burns but the combustion emissions amplify
the effects of sunlight for years to come.

------
11235813213455
It's exasperating, people around me over-consume, drive too much, own pets
(which are completely useless, cost energy too (healthcare, food, ..), cats
damage seriously the ecosystem when they are outside, ..), we are talking of
something close to a billion of pets, 20% of people still smoke cigarettes as
a bonus

It's not just those simple acts, but when you consume 1L of gas with your car,
you have to consider the amount of energy to extract it, transport it, stock
it...

It can't go well with those attitudes, where residential pollution is about
40%-45% of overall pollution. This alone can be divided by 10, when I see my
environmental fingerprint, with my bike and laptop

~~~
triangleman
That is actually part of the plan. Everyone believes in a manufactured
environmental doomsday scenario, and can blame it on nameless "others" who
"pollute" the Earth with their trace gases. Soon there will be a carbon
indulgence available for everyone to pay in order to secure your salvation.
Then you can continue your patterns of _actual_ pollution with a clear
consience: littering, not picking up after your dog, not conserving resources,
starting flamewars online, using too much water, ignoring the real environment
around you.

------
oh_sigh
Regardless of CO2, does anyone have a sense of how much heat we are putting
into the earth system by burning non-renewables?

edit: I did the math, and it seems our total yearly oil production in 2016, if
used to directly boil the oceans, would raise the temperature of them by .0001
degrees.

It's really incredible the multiplier effect CO2 can have.

