another thing I don't understand
Jul. 15th, 2014 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacIt's a common factoid that the actual temperature rises of the earth have leveled off in the last couple of decades. Here's a climate scientist site discussing and explaining why that doesn't negate global warming. Here's a news report claiming that scientists are trying to hide the fact. Here's a skeptic who ain't buying the explanations.
Yet I am also reading regular reports that the earth's temperature is continuing to rise and set new records. A new one came in today. Here's the graph. Here's the news story.
So what's the story here? The natural variability in a general rise, as is the usual explanation, can't be the whole story, because according to these other stories the temperature is rising. Is it that one is measuring sea temperatures, the other atmospheric temperatures, or something else? Is the lack of temperature rise purely a statistical sleight of hand trick? (I've seen this argued, but not always.) Look at the random jumps in the last graph. See that particularly outstanding high around 1997? Notice that, until the latest data point, none of the successive ones is higher than that, even though the trend is still up? You could say the temperature hasn't gotten higher since 1997, though you'd be criminally misleading by saying so. Is that all it is, though?
Yet I am also reading regular reports that the earth's temperature is continuing to rise and set new records. A new one came in today. Here's the graph. Here's the news story.
So what's the story here? The natural variability in a general rise, as is the usual explanation, can't be the whole story, because according to these other stories the temperature is rising. Is it that one is measuring sea temperatures, the other atmospheric temperatures, or something else? Is the lack of temperature rise purely a statistical sleight of hand trick? (I've seen this argued, but not always.) Look at the random jumps in the last graph. See that particularly outstanding high around 1997? Notice that, until the latest data point, none of the successive ones is higher than that, even though the trend is still up? You could say the temperature hasn't gotten higher since 1997, though you'd be criminally misleading by saying so. Is that all it is, though?
