NASA's interactive climate time machine | Hacker News Reader

NASA's interactive climate time machine

climate.nasa.gov

63 pointscryptoz24 comments

So I initially wasn't too interested in the temperature changes. It seemed like fairly considerable changes but I didn't know what to reference each change from. Was it the delta YoY? Maybe I missed the info explaining that in the page.

When I looked at CO2 ppm I got really scared. Talk about hockey stick growth.

You can look at the heat map scale on the bottom right, just remember that it's a bit misleading because the heat map only covers the range when data was available (2002 through 2014 for CO2 concentration, but late 1800s to 2014 for surface temperature). Usually when we developers look at heat maps it ranges from an absolute zero (like number of clicks on a Web page) to a local maximum, but here "zero" is really a global average that is much higher than absolute zero temperature as defined in physics.

The reality that these graphics represent is absolutely dire, but the way they are presented here isn't exactly the most honest representation of the data. For example, if we had CO2 concentration data for the last two thousand years, this graph would be much more informative because we'd go from grey to yellow over the time period 1700-1900 and yellow to red in the last century, which is much more representative of the changes in human CO2 production.

It's interesting when you look at the temperature record that the data sources are NASA/GISS, but the record goes back way further than these organisations have existed. So we ask, where does the data come from?

The bulk of the earlier record is from standard weather stations enclosed in stevenson screens, which are dotted around the globe in cities and remote areas. The number of these has varied over the timeframe shown here, as some have been abandoned over the years, and the nations responsible for them have changed.

A first, obvious question one might ask is: Where can I get the raw data for all of these weather stations since the recordkeeping began? To which one might suspect there's probably a freely available corpus for all climate scientists to look at.

You'd think completely wrong though. There is no data. The data from these stations is aggregated in national weather organizations, who publish only an "average" temperature. Most of the raw data archive is lost. What data you can actually acquire (perhaps you can get more if you have 'credentials'), is rather limiting, and vague as to what it represents.

This is the main reason I look at climate science with a pinch of salt. All of the scaremongering depends on this so called temperature record dating back to 1880, but they're comparing apples and oranges. In any science experiment, you take the variable you wish to measure and attempt to keep everything else constant. In climate science, the means of measuring surface temperature is allowed to be variable - it's changed significantly since 1880. The recent record uses satellite imagery in addition to the surface measurements for example. Still, climate scientists are treating it as though the data they have is from a fixed number of weather stations in fixed locations, where any human activity around them can be considered to have no effect. This reality doesn't exist.

What is really behind this data of NASAs is "an adjusted view of surface temperature from 1880 to 2014", where the adjustments are made based on hundreds of theories and climate models proposed by many other climate scientists (albeit in peer reviewed works). I want to believe that the state of AGW is as dire as it is made out to be, but until I have the raw data at hands reach for any of these publications, and we can start comparing oranges to oranges, I remain sceptic.

I'm sceptical that you've ever actually tried to get any data. The first sentence of NASA's GISTEMP page tells you where they get there data, and a few more clicks will get you to daily logs for a decent chunks of it.

Sparkie also doesn't understand that raw data, especially over long timescales where collecting methods have changed, is messy stuff. It has to be cleaned up to be useful, and the people who are best qualified to do that are, gosh, climate scientists. Temperature dataset papers are routinely published and any odd assumptions challenged by other people knowledgeable in the field.

In short, demanding "raw data" is a shining example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

I disagree extensively - raw data should definitely be available, and there are a number of interesting things you can do with it without any special expertise. For one, evaluating whether those adjustments even affect any overall conclusions you are concerned about, like this:

http://forums.sandiegouniontribune.com/showpost.php?p=532360...

If there is incompetence at play here, it's in failing to get ahold of raw data.

Is their really that much ice on Greenland to make the ocean rise 16-23 feet?

"...If melted completely, the Greenland ice sheet contains enough water to raise sea level by 5-7 meters (16-23 feet)."

Greenland is smaller than Mexico

The ice sheet is 1-3km deep. That is almost unfathomable.

That's what covered Northern Europe until 12,000 years ago. Sea levels were much lower than today.

See Wikipedia:

"It is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet is almost 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) long in a north-south direction, and its greatest width is 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) at a latitude of 77°N, near its northern margin. The mean altitude of the ice is 2,135 metres (7,005 ft). The thickness is generally more than 2 km (1.2 mi) and over 3 km (1.9 mi) at its thickest point. It is not the only ice mass of Greenland – isolated glaciers and small ice caps cover between 76,000 and 100,000 square kilometres (29,000 and 39,000 sq mi) around the periphery. If the entire 2,850,000 cubic kilometres (684,000 cu mi) of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 m (24 ft)."

Thank you, they have a ice elevation map that was helpful.

I don't understand... we've been an industrialized world (and by all accounts, a far dirtier one) for over a hundred years now. Why do the big shifts seem to happen between 1980 and 2015

"We" haven't all been industrialized. Asia. Population growth. More cars, more everything.

... and keep in mind that we were 4.5B people in 1980 vs. 7.2B in 2015.

Also think about the growth in e.g. China (http://indepthfacts.com/gdp-per-capita-china.html).

I was hoping it went back further than the 1800s.

Indeed. It is dishonest to present this data without the known facts about huge changes in the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#Ov...

Great time machine from 1979: that says nothing and proves nothing. It is a real shame NASA is part of this UN (IPCC) joke.

Ice and ocean levels will rise and fall as they have done throughout the geological history of the planet (of billion years, not decades or centuries). Ocean levels have not had any significant change probably since the formation of the Mediterranean sea. As for glaciers, they are retreating since the end of the ice age. So, nothing new, they were already retreating.

I won't even mention carbon because any high school kid should be able to debunk this ridiculous hypothesis that has already been debunked countless times and is only used to sell cause sensationalist debates, sell useless papers, deviate research money, keep peer review journals alive and provide excuse for expensive meetings in exotic places.

For those who will reply to this I recommend first to spend a night in a desert with only a tank of CO2 to protect from the cold. If you do get back, I would love to talk.

》 For those who will reply to this I recommend first to spend a night in a desert with only a tank of CO2 to protect from the cold. If you do get back, I would love to talk.

You're trolling, right? I can't imagine what your understanding of the atmosphere is when you think a tank of compressed CO2 would provide any heating effect at night.

GP is likely trolling, but CO2 does work in the night the same as in the day. It keeps in infrared radiation emitted by the earth and things on the surface, like you. You won't have a temperature increase, but you'll have less cooling.

In that example, you'd need some structure to keep it in, since the parcel of air will eventually mix with its neighbors, and you can't breathe in the CO2. The structure itself would provide a greater greenhouse effect than the CO2 since it basically would be a greenhouse. But if you tested a windowed shelter filled with CO2 and one with normal air, Mythbusters-style, I suspect you'd find a measurable difference.

Since you mentioned the mythbusters, that episode is really wrong, though I really love it because it is the only one of its kind I know of that uses more than two gases. There is a real flaw there, which is the same in all those kind of experiments actually. And it is a real scientific flaw. If it were to be done properly, that would be interesting and I would bet it would reveal surprising results.

As you mentioned, a structure is required. The CO2 is useless. By the way, on a greenhouse, CO2 has no function regarding temperature.

The same way I cannot understand people that call themselves scientists of whatever been talking for the past years that CO2 can rise temperature, day or night!

The anecdote is to be illustrative and not really done literally, naturally, but if I have to explain that...

You've been hard at work for a while now commenting on climate-change-related articles, haven't you?

That would be something like giving someone a large bucket of ice to protect oneself from their house burning down around them. (obviously not a perfect analogy, but a tank of CO2? Seriously? SMH)

Let me know how well you do boiling water with a wool blanket...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10133400

Reply on news.ycombinator.com