Thank you!
Sea level rise, among other things, has been exceeding projections. Right next door to me, relatively speaking, a small island off the coast of PEI is under threat from sea level rise and is losing about a metre of coastline per year.
Cite?
Right, well the above-mentioned cruise ship, the Crystal Serenity, completed its navigation of the Northwest Passage just over a week ago. Mind you, it’s only 820 ft long, has only 13 decks, and a tonnage of only 68,870 gross tons and accommodates only 1,070 passengers and 655 crew, so basically a kayak.
Global warming denial is a rough business these days.
There are a number of possible mechanisms that could cause an acceleration above the straight-line extrapolation, even with levels of human activity unchanged. For instance, if enough ice melts in Greenland, it might produce enough of a lubricating effect to allow the remainder to just slide off the island. And shrinking of polar caps means less sunlight reflected off of the white ice, and more absorbed by the dark land and sea underneath. And more heat means more water evaporated, which means more water vapor in the atmosphere, which is itself a contributor to the greenhouse effect.
It’s considered unlikely but it would be a much worse outcome than any of our models account for.
The comic is a bit selective and misleading in that it only goes back to the last global minimum, which (like all statistical biasing) makes the current rise look anomalous and awfuler.
If you look at alonger term temperature chart, it shows spikes into +4C and more about every 100,000 years. The last time was… about 100,000 years ago.
I’m absolutely no denier (and I have a close relative who is a significant figure in climate change science)… but subtly manipulative presentations like this make my hackles rise no matter where or to what end they’re used. You can make a graph show almost anything by choosing its ranges carefully.
This is not much better than any Facebook meme designed to provoke ignorant outrage. I think this selective approach damages the arguments for climate change and all the disastrous issues we’re facing.
Actually, it’s your comment that is a bit selective and misleading.
What you’re describing there are the well known glaciation cycles. One significant difference from the present situation is that those cycles are thought to be primarily due to orbital fluctuations called Milankovitch cycles, which also directly influence the carbon cycle and specifically carbon exchange with the oceans, and it takes thousands of years to create the kind of temperature increase that we’ve seen in just the last 50.
The other problem with your argument is that CO2 has been stable for the past ten thousand years, and it has never exceeded present levels within the 800,000 years of ice core records and very likely not within at least the past 15 million years. And now it has suddenly soared wildly above those historically stable levels. Since we’re injecting this CO2 into the atmosphere from geologically ancient fossil fuels, this should not be surprising.
The comic isn’t about CO2 levels. It makes two vague mentions of CO2. It goes out of its way to show a relatively short-term temperature spike while omitting even the most recent of such regular spikes. Starting from the recent minimum is deceptive, like economic charts that pick some minimum or maximum within Obama’s term while conveniently dropping much worse peaks from Bush’s era.
And of course there are mountains of other data, so go ahead and wave your hands and roll your eyes. I still maintain the comic is needlessly deceptive. If it was about all these things that (roll, roll, wave, wave) “everybody knows,” then it wasn’t needed in the first place, right?
I thought it was funny he had projection lines, since he also has this comic on extrapolating: xkcd: Extrapolating. “By late next month, you’ll have over four dozen husbands.”
I know it’s adored in this crowd, but I recognized XKCD as “memes for the cognoscenti” quite a quite back. If it’s a comic, fine - but you don’t cite Snoopy in climate change discussions. If it’s an infographic service, fine - but it shouldn’t be allowed to get away with sloppy, biased presentation. To allow it to do both, like a pen and ink Jon Stewart (actually, he’s rarely sloppy) makes it one with “Don’t Be Mean to Kittens” memepix.
So you’re mad that he didn’t include something like, “The last time the planet was this warm was over 100,000 years ago, before humans had written language, cities, agriculture, and possibly even oral language”? Because that wouldn’t exactly change his point, that climate change on this level is unknown within any history of our civilization.
You are actually falling for the selective talking points of deniers still.
You are really pointing at global “wobbling” as a Republican goes about here:
[QUOTE=A denier Republican congress critter] “When you have a model and you say we'll leave out the most important impact of that model out of our theory and not talk about global wobbling, how can you make projections?” [/QUOTE][QUOTE=Jon Stewart]
(laughter) >> Jon Stewart: what’s up, scientists?
global wobbling, bitches!
(laughter) he sees your so-called global warming and raises you a global wobbling.
explain that dr. white house.
[/QUOTE]
The presidential science advisor pointed out that:
[QUOTE=Jon]
(whispering) I didn’t know we would be talking to an actual scientist…
All right, Holdren, you aced the wobble warming.
[/QUOTE]
It is an effect that takes place very slowly during tenths of thousands of years. The “manipulation” you mention is really ignoring that it is not pointed at in an attempt to deceive, but just for the pedantic reason that the effect happens so slow that it is not used in modeling and graphics to describe the issue in more immediate and relevant terms.
The basic point was made many times elsewhere and in the chart from XKCD. Besides being a useful time line for the humans of today and the ones being born just recently; the effects that are important to humans and are looked at have to deal with how human civilization was developed in regards to climate and human civilization developed in a very stable environment. An environment where now we are the biggest factor of that change now. If the Milankovitch cycle was the driver now we should actually be cooling, it is clear that you were shown charts that omit that we are actually on the “going down” temperatures part of that cycle.
Okay.
So deniers/conservatives/Republicans/Trumpskis can be selective in how they present information, and it’s a crime against humanity, but when it’s done on our side, it’s just making sure everybody understands. Got it.
I’ll just leave off with what I said already: this kind of selectivity is fuel to deniers no matter how many believers it makes nod and laugh knowingly. But fuck it, ya know. It’s just the web.
Sounds a lot like creationists that tell us that if biologists do not mention evolution in their papers, that therefore most Biologists do not think that evolution is happening.
The bottom of the graph relies on what scientists are telling us is happening and it is more likely to happen as a result of man made emissions.
It does include the most recent such spike, the one we’re currently going through. In fact, it includes every such spike in the entire history of the planet. There is no other time since the planet formed when the temperature has increased so much over such a short term.
We established that it is not sloppy. And this is Cafe society, so one does really wonder why you are complaining about this cartoon when it was posted as an admirable piece or art… with an important message. In reality, as a piece of art it is exactly what Hegel would say is a very, very proper reason for art to exist.
It was not, you are still getting it wrong.
Again, what really did take place is that denier propaganda is the one that pulled your leg. Demand better from your sources.
Oh, and this isn’t the first time Munroe has addressed global warming, either:
4.5 degrees
Cold
Maybe this is a stupid question, but if there was such a spike of 50-100 years duration, 50,000 - 400,000 years ago – would it show up for sure in some geological record, or would it be too short to be detected?
You got, pardon me, nuthin.
“Crime against humanity”? Quite the opposite: there’s no way NOT to be selective with information. Literally. Any time you communicate, you’re selecting which information is relevant to include.
“Crime against humanity”? Stupid hyperbole. What deniers often do is select information dishonestly, deliberately eliding information that most people would consider relevant to the point. This isn’t a crime against humanity, it’s just dishonest argument.
You’re equivocating here, suggesting that because dishonest elision of information is poor form, any elision of any information is poor form. What you’ve not done is show why this history of earth’s climate during the rise and development of human civilization needs to include information about earth’s climate eons before human civilization developed.
Do you want to show why that’s relevant information? Or would you rather keep humblebragging about how you’re too smart to fall for infographics that pseudointellectuals like me fall for?
I knew it was all bullshit when he said the Pokemon were extinct. Those little bastards are everywhere.