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Comment by jefurii | Hacker News Reader

What I'm hearing from scientists is that we're already seeing unusual weather patterns that are due to global warming. For the past decade or so nearly every year has been warmer than the year before, and nearly every year is a record-breaking warm temperature. We're seeing more and more "exceptional" or 1000-year events happening every year. This is what you'd expect from global warming.

Global warming is a slow-moving problem, which humans are terrible at dealing with. It's unfolding over a time span that it hard for humans to perceive in their lifetimes unless they're personally keeping track, and large segments of our population have been trained to distrust scientific reporting.

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Per my comment above, we actually just experienced the largest 2-year drop in temp in the last 100 years. The danger with a hugely complex system like "global warming" (i.e. world climate) is that it can be attributed to be the cause of anything.

Here's what seems to be a chart of the last hundred and thirty-six years of global land-ocean temperature.

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

It seems some years are cooler than others, but the general trend is upwards.

I don't see where the last two years indicate much of a temperature drop. Do you have a source of information for your statement?

NASA GISS surface temp data [0]. Feb 2016 to Feb 2018. It's a noteworthy occurrence (and not something the news cycle would pick up) since the focus is always on warming. It certainly doesn't refute the short-term trends present.

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Cherry picking 2 data points is not the right way to interpret a trend. 2016 was a spike, but if you look at the trend over the past 20 years (in the data set you linked) it is clear temperature is trending upwards at an accelerating pace.

You're burying the lede here.

While 2017 was slightly cooler than the year preceding, it was the second hottest year since global temperature records began in 1880.

From the same page you linked. https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20180118/

We'll see how 2018 compares. Look at the chart and you can see that it's not a straight line, it has ups and downs. I see no reason at all to assume that it's trending downward for the next few decades to erase the increase seen over the last century.

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