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Comment by StreamBright | Hacker News Reader

In the last 100 years. Missing from the title.

"The highest temperature ever recorded at Anchorage’s official station was 85 degrees"

Yes so in the last ~100 years it was the highest. How about 1000 years or 100000? Why is only the last 100 years relevant in the context of climate?

It's never changed this suddenly and dramatically before: https://xkcd.com/1732/

Again arbitrary cutoff at 20000BC.

Lets pick the peak of last ice age and be amazed because since then we are only getting warmer.

Lets also add some exponent predictions in the end, because it worked out so well for Lisa Simpson teeth.

I like xkcd, but this is not their best work.

Sure, whatever. Honestly, I'm tired of arguing with denialists. Really, I do hope that it turns out you're correct and know better than almost every climate scientist on earth.

At this point irrational hope is about the only hope left, so sure. Let's say you're right. Everything is fine. Natural cycles. Whatever.

>I'm tired of arguing with denialists

I don't think that guy is denying anything. He's merely stating that the earth has gone through drastic changes _many_ times in the past.

What makes this change the final one before earth is incapable of sustaining life?

Nobody sensible says Earth will be incapable of sustaining life. Jellyfish, for example, are predicted to flourish in a warming ocean depleted of fish stocks.

I think it still it's an open question whether modern human civilization will survive these changes. Today, people are already dying of heat and rioting for lack of water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_heat_wave_in_India_and_Pa...

If society does collapse from drought, famine, resource wars, etc., then will we be able to rebuild it without all the free energy from fossil fuels, or was that a one-time cheat code? Maybe we're looking at the Great Filter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

Right now society is monolithic. As individuals we are part of a highly coupled system and we would die without it. What we need are small communities that are independently self sustaining. That will be much more robust and eco friendly I believe

And would literally put us back to the stone age. Even the neolithic had trade networks.

Don't think you understood my meaning. Trade community and tech are all good things and can coexist with self sustaining communities

Please break down what you mean by self-sustaining for me then - tech is super specialized, requiring special resources to construct. There is very little of modern standards that you can self sustain - really, food is about it, and for everything else you need trade, and can't self sustain.

>I don't think that guy is denying anything. He's merely stating that the earth has gone through drastic changes _many_ times in the past.

Bringing with them tons of changes to the climate, the kind which would kill billions from famines, floods, tornadoes, heat, lack of potable water, etc, in our hugely populated modern world.

>What makes this change the final one before earth is incapable of sustaining life?

We don't merely want an Earth "capable of sustaining life". We want an Earth capable of sustaining us, the whole 8 billions, and not a hellhole of environmental disaster, famine, decertification, and so on.

I could not give less fucks if cockroaches and wolves, e.g. survive, but billions of people are wiped out...

Some people will survive, and hopefully they figure out what it is that this civilization did wrong and do a better job. This isnt the first time a human civilization has wiped itself out due to spiritual negligence, that is the myth of Atlantis.

We use 100 years as a benchmark for weather events like floods. As to why I guess it’s a good benchmark for living memory.

So I guess there is no scientific reason, just living memory. For me such articles just lack the scientific merit and the only purpose is trying to cause mass hysteria. Earlier it was about how we all going the freeze to death, nowadays it is how we are all going to die because of global warming. In fact Earth went through several warm and cool periods, even if you look back just few hundred years. I am all for reducing CO2 and I am pretty successfully reduced unnecessary CO2 production in my work by using more efficient solutions and not wasting energy because this is what is under my control to help mother Earth. Writing click baity articles without context and scientific merit is not going to help anybody.

Or maybe it’s only you who considers it clickbait and everybody else immediately understood the article was about recorded history of temperatures, because, you know, it’s kinda common sense?

I do not debate whenever it was the record in the last 100 years, I just try to understand what is the scientific implication.

If you look at the bigger picture it means nothing:

Last 65M years:

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/65_Myr_Climate_C...

Lat 10K years:

https://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/gisp-last-10000...

Now please explain to me that how looking at only the last 100 years is relevant or it prooves anything.

To cause "hysteria" in the way you're implying the general public would have to read the headline any other way than it is meant in the first place. But joe shmoe wasn't ever going to consider that 1000 years ago earth may have been in a different place climate wise so they're going to read the headline exactly the same whether it has the qualifier "in recorded history" or not.

I was looking at this yesterday and learned the following. A 100 year flood is a flood that has a 1% chance of happening in a given year. A 500 year flood has a 0.2% chance of happening in a given year. I’m not sure if temperature has the same model as rainfall. Anchorage was settled in 1914 according to Wikipedia, so I’m assuming that there are no temperature records beyond that and that 100 years in this case refers to it only having been settled for about 100 years.

If it bleeds it leads.

Don't worry about climate change, we're all going to have bled to death first.

Maybe because our whole way of life and industrial food production is adapted to the current conditions?

Because the context is the effects humans are having on climate, which were minimal 1000 years ago and nearly nonexistent 100000 years ago.

And one day it will record lowest record.

Yeah, and in between it might cause the premature agonizing death of hundreds of millions of people in the next 30-60 years. Who cares, right?

I remember when I was like you.

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