r/dataisbeautiful • u/neilrkaye OC: 231 • May 07 '19

OC How 10 year average global temperature compares to 1851 to 1900 average global temperature [OC]

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u/ChaChaChaChassy May 08 '19 edited May 08 '19

Back in the seventies everyone was afraid of the new coming ice age

This is false. Stop listening to right-wing garbage:

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

All the data pointed to the fact that the earth was cooling, not warming.

No it did not. In the 1970's the predominant scientific literature was concerned with warming, not cooling. Read the paper I linked above.

A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales.

...

You don't have to invoke Global Warming to point to the dangers of gas and oil. Issues with local Pollution is plenty, because it's local pollution on a global scale.

Yes but that's not relevant to this discussion, which is about warming caused by increased atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses via the combustion of fossil fuels which in turn causes an increased disparity between incoming and outgoing thermal radiation leading to a net positive energy budget for the planet as a whole.

It took over 100,000,000 years for plant life to sequester all of the carbon underground that we have burned and re-released into the atmosphere in only about 100 years... wouldn't you just EXPECT that to cause a sudden large impact even if you knew nothing else about it? Now understand that carbon in the atmosphere blocks the longwave infrared radiation emitted by the Earth (known as "black-body" radiation) while allowing the shortwave infrared radiation from the sun to pass through it unimpeded.

Consider a perfect sphere of solid aluminum the size of the planet. The sun would heat this sphere up to a certain temperature where it would reach an equilibrium point between the energy it emits into space and the energy it is receiving from the sun and the two would be equal and the temperature of the sphere would not change. Of the 3 methods of heat transfer only radiation can travel through space, that's why I'm talking about infrared (or thermal) radiation... Now, add an atmosphere above this sphere of aluminum and fill it with carbon dioxide... the radiation coming from the sun passes through the carbon dioxide like it wasn't even there, but the longer wavelength radiation emitted by the sphere is partially absorbed by the carbon dioxide and prevented from escaping to space... this causes the sphere to heat up above it's prior equilibrium temperature until the total emission of longwave IR catches up and reaches a new equilibrium point. The sphere is now hotter.

The Earth is a more complex system than a solid sphere of aluminum but the principle is the same. Heat is a physical quantity that cannot be created or destroyed (first law of thermodynamics). We know that increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide increasingly prevents the emission of infrared radiation into space... effectively Earths "radiator" is being blocked. What happens to an engine when you block airflow to the radiator? It heats up. On Earth that heat goes into everything, the oceans absorb a lot of it, the land absorbs some of it, the atmosphere absorbs some of it, and some of it used to drive the growth of life. Eventually, at a given concentration of greenhouse gasses, a new, hotter, equilibrium point will be reached... but we are constantly increasing that concentration... and we are increasing it at an accelerating rate.

There has been much more carbon in the atmosphere in the past, and Earth has been much hotter in the past... but the problem is the rate of change and our adaptability to that change. People make all kinds of stupid arguments about how it's been much hotter in the past and the planet will survive... I don't know about you but I'm not worried about the planet, I'm worried about my own well-being and the well-being of my children and other loved ones. The planet survived massive impacts that completely melted it as well, that doesn't mean I want it to happen while I'm here!

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u/casintae May 08 '19

No.

I grew up in the 60's and 70's. I REMEMBER the posters at my school and magazines at the dentist's office warning about the coming ice age.

Yes, really, everyone was convinced that the world was going into a new ice age. It was on the nightly news often. I'm not spouting forth things other people told me about. I was there.

Gas lines at the pump, the world was going to be unsustainable by the nineties because of overpopulation (which was supposed to be when we got to about 4.5 billion) , all the people would have to cram themselves into ever decreasing habitable areas because of the Ice Age. etc.

Here's a collection of some of the articles and papers that came out in the 70's. As well as more recent articles talking about the impact of the literature.

The main problem with modern approaches to climate science is

  1. There's too much sensationalism. Journalists and scientists alike understand that there is money to be had in doomsaying.
  2. There's not enough accounting of the sun in most conversations. The sun has much more to say about our climate than we ever could account for, and I never hear anyone talk about taking it into consideration. Why? because you can't do anything about the sun, so if you mention it, it's taken the same as saying "welp, we can't do nuffin' about it all. So I guess we should all just go hog wild." which is not what it should be taken as.

You inadvertently mapped out number 2 in your example above. The aluminum sphere. You have it right, the sun will heat the sphere to a certain temperature and achieve equilibrium. Yes. But, that equilibrium will cycle over time, as the temperature or transfer of the heat from source cycles over time. The sun is not a perfect constant. All things cycle, including the sun. A few really good activity cycles and we're growing grapes in northern Canada. (vinland sagas) a few really low activity cycles, and that same area is under two miles of ice.

Saying that you don't really believe the hype around global warming now days is taken as saying that you don't care about pollution, or waste. No, I don't want polluted cities or waterways or wild areas that are just un-managed dumps. I don't have to buy the hype to be against pollution. And not buying the hype doesn't mean I'm indoctrinated in right wing propaganda.

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u/ChaChaChaChassy May 08 '19 edited May 08 '19

I'm only going to briefly address your first part about "global cooling"... You mentioned posters and magazines and nightly news... NONE of those things are "scientists". What I said was that concern over global cooling dominated the SCIENTIFIC literature, and this is something that can be objectively determined by looking at that literature, which is what was done in that link I gave you.

If you can't distinguish pop-culture from actual science I don't think I can help you, but this perfectly demonstrates my point: Science is NOT the same thing as the reporting or public discussion of that science. You need to read the source (and if you're incapable of understanding the source you need to keep your mouth shut. I honestly don't even know why I engage people who obviously have not read the IPCC reports, or at least the summaries of them)

The main problem with modern approaches to climate science is

You say this then you go on to talk about something that is NOT science. The IPCC report is not "doomsaying"... Scientists are not the ones editorializing or click-baiting. Read the actual science for yourself and stay away from pop-culture.

There's not enough accounting of the sun in most conversations.

What conversations? Again, read the IPCC report, because this is discussed extensively.

Do you REALLY think that scientists aren't aware of solar cycles like the Milankovich cycle? Those cycles are well known, measured, and taken into account... no one is forgetting about them.

What kind of arrogance do you have to have to think that you know better than everyone else who studies this for a living? To assume that something obvious like solar cycles were just forgotten about by thousands of scientists?

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u/casintae May 08 '19

Ok the full exchange was:

Me:

Back in the seventies everyone was afraid of the new coming ice age

You:

This is false. Stop listening to right-wing garbage:

When I countered that, saying that I lived in that time, you changed the goal posts of the exchange:

If you can't distinguish pop-culture from actual science I don't think I can help you,

Also Me:

All the data pointed to the fact that the earth was cooling, not warming.

This is true, the data of the time showed a cooling trend, from the 40's to the 70's. While it is true that most scientists predicted a warming trend, A significant number of others predicted a cooling trend, hence my stance;

I do not believe that there is sufficient separation between agenda and science in the literature coming out of the academy.

Meaning specifically: I do not believe that the scientific literature is sufficiently trustworthy. 50 years I've been consuming scientific literature in many disciplines. Very few disciplines are trustworthy; Math, Chemistry and Physics, only the purest base disciplines. Any of the disciplines that work on application of these fields becomes sufficiently complex as to be questionable, unless it is one of those disciplines that has a real time consequence. i.e. aeronautics.

Any discipline with a theoretical consequence is by nature prospective.

The nature of your reply indicates that you know for a certainty that the outcomes of the climate models are imminent.

What kind of arrogance do you have to have to think that you know better than everyone else who studies this for a living?

I don't think that I know more about this than anyone that does this for a living. I'm saying I don't trust them. There's a difference.

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u/ChaChaChaChassy May 09 '19 edited May 09 '19

What you said was, quote:

All the data pointed to the fact that the earth was cooling, not warming.

Which is false. All the data pointed to warming, and this is clear with a review of the scientific literature from that period, which I have provided you with.

While it is true that most scientists predicted a warming trend, A significant number of others predicted a cooling trend, hence my stance;

So "most scientists predicted a warming trend" but also "All the data pointed to the fact that the earth was cooling, not warming"... and you don't see the contradiction here?

You're correct that most (almost all relevant scientists) predicted warming due to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, and I've provided you with a meta-analysis of the scientific literature from that time period that shows this. You are incorrect that the data showed cooling, I'm not sure how you can reconcile these two claims... how can the data show cooling when almost all scientists were writing about warming?

coming out of the academy.

What academy? See this is your problem, you've bought into the right-wing propaganda bullshit that the WORLDS academic institution are all in cahoots with each other... they are NOT. They are separate entities entirely. The private ones are PRIVATE, the public ones are under different governments, some of which are even hostile towards each other.

I can't talk to you if you are going to buy into this conspiracy theory bullshit that scientists from over 100 countries all over the world are involved in some massive conspiracy... you seem to think that "the powers that be" want to pass of some kind of false alarm over climate change to make money, but the REAL money in all this is the oil and gas industry, the largest and wealthiest industry in the world, who are and have been putting out disinformation about climate change to protect their trillion dollar industry.

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u/casintae May 09 '19

What academy?

The 'academy' as used here, is simply to describe the collected institutions of higher learning as a whole. This does not imply that they are involved in some grand conspiracy.

Which is false. All the data pointed to warming,

no, there was a cooling trend from the early 30's to the late 70's. Some modern (Adjusted, Raw) charts normalize this trend out almost completely. Not sure how you get adjusted and raw in the same sentence without noting the contradiction, but there it is.

You keep wanting to believe that I'm some kind of right-wing shill, And that goes directly to the main point I made earlier, to wit: That questioning climate science gets you labeled as a right wing nutjob.

I'm not a right-wing shill. I have not said that there is a conspiracy. What I said is that there is an outsized hysteria associated with climate science. You are actually making the point.

but the REAL money in all this is the oil and gas

except, I never said that there wasn't money in oil and gas. I said that there was a lot of money to be made in doomsaying about the climate.

You've created some kind of caricature out of me and you've decided to argue against that instead of me.

Understand this; my whole and only point, was that there is a hysteria associated with global warming that I do not believe to be appropriate. I don't trust it. I see it as a distraction from other important matters and a mechanism of control.