It feels to me that every year breaking weather records is becoming, or has already become, the new normal. I can imagine people thinking "weather has always done that, big deal."
But the coldest year we'll experience for the rest of our lives. Even if we get emissions down to zero tomorrow we are facing additional degrees of warming.
Instead of focusing on emission reductions we need to be talking about the best way to capture and confidently sequester CO2 on the tens of gigaton scale. In terms of size -- the carbon atoms in a decades worth of anthropogenic CO2 equivalents could build a diamond mount everest. A few hundered ppm change doesnt sound like much until you remember you need to integrate across the volume of the atmosphere.
As the study of the ice cores and the data gleaned from that ongoing study which contains many millennia of scientific data before our known intelligent human occupation some are not surprised. Many more however are going to learn from the result once again of failing to study history and apply what was learned from that education. Most are only concerned with their immediate vicinity that impacts them directly because until change is forced it is human nature to maintain a pattern. We only get 'pissed' when we are not the ones deciding to change our own pattern. This is the recognition of the pattern and the cycle of everything everywhere known and unknown. Change is the only thing guaranteed in life and your life too will conclude at some point as just yesterday I attended a close family members funeral reinforcing that conclusion. As we age we are confronted with a reality of progress, both in our personal lives as well as our global world. Younger generations choose not to accept that reality just as all the old grey hairs here likely did when younger too.
A major news site today released a story that relates to several recent HN past link shares and discussions including some of my own. As the ice melts on the caps so to does the pressure become less on those subterranean lands as the water is distributed in liquid form into oceans, where are the rising sea deniers as they certainly exist too. Our now spheroid will rebound in time and we have only understood tectonic plates for how long?
It is going to warm up in more ways than one if we do not first manage to directly eliminate ourselves versus the secondary affects which we can now directly measure and feel that are setting in from our human 'progress'.
I wonder, if some countries are secretly conducting geoengineering - would it be detectable? would there be any hint different from "anomalous heating" we observe now?
Basically every country has been conducting a massive geoengineering project in the open for the past decades by releasing billions of tonnes of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses) into the atmosphere. We've been able to detect that, yes.
It really depends on what you mean by geoengineering. Dumping things into the atmosphere has been easy to detect for a while now, but with NASA spinning down their space assets focused on climate data [1] there’s definitely dimensional data that’s being lost. However, there’s still plenty of data being supplied via the EU Copernicus team [2] to track a lot of those things that hopefully will be able to fill some of the gaps.
All of this to say, with enough stable overhead assets then most things can be detected that would cause possible impacts in climate.
Of course warming is accelerating. Emissions are accelerating and the second and third order effects of ice cap loss, thawing permafrost etc are setting in on top.
We have known about this for a century at this point and it's still being presented like a surprise. It's not a surprise. It's exactly what anyone who's paid attention has been expecting for decades.
Over a decade ago I decided not to have kids because I don't think they will have a world worth inheriting. I've mostly stopped following these kinds of news because it's depressing but it's not at all surprising.
They've been telling us this would happen for my entire life, and everyone has been sticking their heads in the sand thinking it'll be fine for the next few hundred years and looking at me like I'm a lunatic when I tell them it's happening during our lifetimes.
Don't worry sfn42 because those with their heads in the sand with be forced to face reality as that sand fills with water thus forcing them out for air.
Most of the top environmental organizations agree that we should not build nuclear plants. Many also oppose solar and wind. It’s important to remember this so that we don’t react in a knee-jerk fashion and try to build so-called “green energy”.
We can't only be concerned about the environment. We've got to maintain a healthy economy too. Building out expensive coal and natural gas just because some environmentalists demand it is an inefficient use of funds and a drain on taxpayers and electricity bill payers. Solar and wind might not make you feel good, but the economy doesn't run on feelings.
> Building out expensive coal and natural gas just because some environmentalists demand it is an inefficient use of funds and a drain on taxpayers and electricity bill payers
Environmentalists overwhelmingly are against building out coal power plants.
So, a clueless Luddite like me went and pulled the temperature reading database since 1903 and did the following:
- search for all United States
- excluded all 14,200 US stations installed since 1973
- average/median them the rest
Trend? Largely flat.
Did I jump the gun?
Were excluded stations like number 80238 (Arcadia, FL) being installed near heat-producing objects (air conditioning condenser unit, nuclear cooling towers, new parking lots) the cause? A valid cause?
- Did that number decline over time (as you excluded replacement stations)?
- What was your scale?
- Are you willing to share your results?
- How is this still the top comment after 30 minutes?
But your comment touches on a common misconception, which is that heat islands must be excluded to accurately measure the overall temperature. You refer to the idea as "heat-producing objects", but I would argue that a parking lot is more of a heat reflecting object. More to the point, even heat islands must be considered as part of the worldwide climate, simply because they are part of this wide world. Their heat does not simply disappear (I hope you agree that would violate physics).
Imagine we want to measure the average temperature inside a single 30-foot by 10-foot room during winter. We have two probes: one near a burning fireplace on one end of the room, and one near a window on the other. If we excluded data from one probe or the other, do you believe we would get an accurate average reading?
Of course, when scientists are calculating a global temperature, they have to handle special cases in the data (like heat islands). This has been known for some time, and you can read more about it here: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/no-ma...
I fear that I've spent too much time responding to this, but I wanted to take it on in earnest.
Basically, it's something that's taken into account. The two main ways are calibrating urban stations relative to nearby rural stations, and by looking at the variation between windy and calm days, since the effects are larger on calm days (so if things are corrected well, there shouldn't be a difference)
It's not something that climatologists and meteorologists are unaware of. Even for longer-running weather stations you can get a heat island effect if they're in a city and it's built up over time. So while I can't say exactly why you got the result you did with this specific query and dataset it is something that is taken into account when analyzing this kind of data.
Wait so, in response to an article about the current year being hot, you excluded the past 50 years and made a conclusion that things are flat. Am I missing something from your post?
Not excluding the 50 years. Excluding stations installed then. Older stations still report. You have to tune the number right. If you choose 40 years it doesn’t work. So something must have happened in 1973.
The other thing is that people use the classic chart trick of not starting the Y axis from zero Kelvin (the only scientific scale). If you do that you see that even including all these stations the trend is imperceptible.
On that scale, the difference between normal human body temperature and dangerous hyperthermia is just about imperceptible too. Even the difference between summer and winter is pretty small. Dunno why we bother with heating and air conditioning and having two sets of clothing.
It feels to me that every year breaking weather records is becoming, or has already become, the new normal. I can imagine people thinking "weather has always done that, big deal."
But the coldest year we'll experience for the rest of our lives. Even if we get emissions down to zero tomorrow we are facing additional degrees of warming.
Instead of focusing on emission reductions we need to be talking about the best way to capture and confidently sequester CO2 on the tens of gigaton scale. In terms of size -- the carbon atoms in a decades worth of anthropogenic CO2 equivalents could build a diamond mount everest. A few hundered ppm change doesnt sound like much until you remember you need to integrate across the volume of the atmosphere.
As the study of the ice cores and the data gleaned from that ongoing study which contains many millennia of scientific data before our known intelligent human occupation some are not surprised. Many more however are going to learn from the result once again of failing to study history and apply what was learned from that education. Most are only concerned with their immediate vicinity that impacts them directly because until change is forced it is human nature to maintain a pattern. We only get 'pissed' when we are not the ones deciding to change our own pattern. This is the recognition of the pattern and the cycle of everything everywhere known and unknown. Change is the only thing guaranteed in life and your life too will conclude at some point as just yesterday I attended a close family members funeral reinforcing that conclusion. As we age we are confronted with a reality of progress, both in our personal lives as well as our global world. Younger generations choose not to accept that reality just as all the old grey hairs here likely did when younger too.
A major news site today released a story that relates to several recent HN past link shares and discussions including some of my own. As the ice melts on the caps so to does the pressure become less on those subterranean lands as the water is distributed in liquid form into oceans, where are the rising sea deniers as they certainly exist too. Our now spheroid will rebound in time and we have only understood tectonic plates for how long?
It is going to warm up in more ways than one if we do not first manage to directly eliminate ourselves versus the secondary affects which we can now directly measure and feel that are setting in from our human 'progress'.
I wonder, if some countries are secretly conducting geoengineering - would it be detectable? would there be any hint different from "anomalous heating" we observe now?
Basically every country has been conducting a massive geoengineering project in the open for the past decades by releasing billions of tonnes of CO2 (and other greenhouse gasses) into the atmosphere. We've been able to detect that, yes.
It really depends on what you mean by geoengineering. Dumping things into the atmosphere has been easy to detect for a while now, but with NASA spinning down their space assets focused on climate data [1] there’s definitely dimensional data that’s being lost. However, there’s still plenty of data being supplied via the EU Copernicus team [2] to track a lot of those things that hopefully will be able to fill some of the gaps.
All of this to say, with enough stable overhead assets then most things can be detected that would cause possible impacts in climate.
1. https://www.npr.org/2025/08/04/nx-s1-5453731/nasa-carbon-dio...
2. https://dataspace.copernicus.eu/explore-data
The conversation under this post is an excellent example of why humanity is going to be faced with dramatic and catastrophic changes in 2030.
We are failing an open book test.
Of course warming is accelerating. Emissions are accelerating and the second and third order effects of ice cap loss, thawing permafrost etc are setting in on top.
We have known about this for a century at this point and it's still being presented like a surprise. It's not a surprise. It's exactly what anyone who's paid attention has been expecting for decades.
Over a decade ago I decided not to have kids because I don't think they will have a world worth inheriting. I've mostly stopped following these kinds of news because it's depressing but it's not at all surprising.
They've been telling us this would happen for my entire life, and everyone has been sticking their heads in the sand thinking it'll be fine for the next few hundred years and looking at me like I'm a lunatic when I tell them it's happening during our lifetimes.
Don't worry sfn42 because those with their heads in the sand with be forced to face reality as that sand fills with water thus forcing them out for air.
[dead]
All while it's currently the coldest winter of the last 15 years. Fascinating
These facts aren’t mutually exclusive.
Most of the top environmental organizations agree that we should not build nuclear plants. Many also oppose solar and wind. It’s important to remember this so that we don’t react in a knee-jerk fashion and try to build so-called “green energy”.
We can't only be concerned about the environment. We've got to maintain a healthy economy too. Building out expensive coal and natural gas just because some environmentalists demand it is an inefficient use of funds and a drain on taxpayers and electricity bill payers. Solar and wind might not make you feel good, but the economy doesn't run on feelings.
> Building out expensive coal and natural gas just because some environmentalists demand it is an inefficient use of funds and a drain on taxpayers and electricity bill payers
Environmentalists overwhelmingly are against building out coal power plants.
So, a clueless Luddite like me went and pulled the temperature reading database since 1903 and did the following:
- search for all United States - excluded all 14,200 US stations installed since 1973 - average/median them the rest
Trend? Largely flat.
Did I jump the gun?
Were excluded stations like number 80238 (Arcadia, FL) being installed near heat-producing objects (air conditioning condenser unit, nuclear cooling towers, new parking lots) the cause? A valid cause?
I have many questions about your methodology:
- How many stations were you left with?
- Did that number decline over time (as you excluded replacement stations)?
- What was your scale?
- Are you willing to share your results?
- How is this still the top comment after 30 minutes?
But your comment touches on a common misconception, which is that heat islands must be excluded to accurately measure the overall temperature. You refer to the idea as "heat-producing objects", but I would argue that a parking lot is more of a heat reflecting object. More to the point, even heat islands must be considered as part of the worldwide climate, simply because they are part of this wide world. Their heat does not simply disappear (I hope you agree that would violate physics).
Imagine we want to measure the average temperature inside a single 30-foot by 10-foot room during winter. We have two probes: one near a burning fireplace on one end of the room, and one near a window on the other. If we excluded data from one probe or the other, do you believe we would get an accurate average reading?
Of course, when scientists are calculating a global temperature, they have to handle special cases in the data (like heat islands). This has been known for some time, and you can read more about it here: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/no-ma...
I fear that I've spent too much time responding to this, but I wanted to take it on in earnest.
May i suggest you consult the website realclimate.org? this and many other classic denialist tropes are well addressed there. Thank You!
Care to paraphrase the relevant explanation?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/no-ma...
Basically, it's something that's taken into account. The two main ways are calibrating urban stations relative to nearby rural stations, and by looking at the variation between windy and calm days, since the effects are larger on calm days (so if things are corrected well, there shouldn't be a difference)
Please no, because this would be feeding the sea lions.
It's not something that climatologists and meteorologists are unaware of. Even for longer-running weather stations you can get a heat island effect if they're in a city and it's built up over time. So while I can't say exactly why you got the result you did with this specific query and dataset it is something that is taken into account when analyzing this kind of data.
Wait so, in response to an article about the current year being hot, you excluded the past 50 years and made a conclusion that things are flat. Am I missing something from your post?
Not excluding the 50 years. Excluding stations installed then. Older stations still report. You have to tune the number right. If you choose 40 years it doesn’t work. So something must have happened in 1973.
Show me the source, Luke!
The other thing is that people use the classic chart trick of not starting the Y axis from zero Kelvin (the only scientific scale). If you do that you see that even including all these stations the trend is imperceptible.
On that scale, the difference between normal human body temperature and dangerous hyperthermia is just about imperceptible too. Even the difference between summer and winter is pretty small. Dunno why we bother with heating and air conditioning and having two sets of clothing.