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Comment by RagnarD | Hacker News Reader

Given the age of the earth - 4.543 billion years - the roughly 200 years of human recordkeeping, even assuming a true statement, makes that 4.4e-6 percent of the age of the earth. Or put another way, the record doesn't account for the other 99.99956% of earth's history. Just a reminder.

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"Earth used to be a molten rock so what's 5 degrees more, nothing to see here"

That's how this argument sounds

It's obviously not quite such a nonsense statement, 99.999% of human history is in that range, too.

> not quite such a nonsense statement

In itself yes, maybe, but what's the point of it in the context of climate change or in the context of this discussion ?

When the water reaches 100c does the frog care it was 20c when it started ? It even used to be ice cubes before we turned up the heat, what is there to fear ?

For a long stretch of time, carnivorous dinosaurs roamed the Earth. For a long time, it was molten rock.

Would you like dinosaurs or molten rock in your apartment? I wouldn't.

Also a reminder that human record keeping is not the only way we can know what range past temperatures were.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-of-natu...

This is not a random sampling issue. There is a pattern over years, that any engineer can recognize.

The record accounts for more history than you are giving it credit for [0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record

I like how you pretend not to know about the existence of ice core samples or geology. Honest people make their best arguments first, shills their worst.

I’m always surprised why people make this argument.

Is this argument “it’s normal and not man made?”

Is the argument just normal grammar Nazis stuff, intentionally latching on to the ability to redirect context?

Is the argument that earth will be fine, implicitly dismissing we should care about our species sustainability?

Why oh why I wonder.

“Just a reminder, “Just asking a question” and “I find this interesting”… are basically smokebombs people throw into a conversation- but why?

“Just asking a question” here…

The argument is it is easy to manipulate statistics for both fun(power/control) and or profit!

Back in my day science wasn't so defensive. They would simply explain how they can use this tiny amount of data to draw the conclusions they are presenting.

I see you are choosing to avoid the question. I rest my case.

https://climate.copernicus.eu/july-2023-sees-multiple-global...

explains it well enough. The data available by Copernicus is exhaustive and high quality.

> Global daily surface air temperature (°C) from 1 January 1940 to 31 July 2023

I didn't find the part where they explained how they know that's sufficient data to draw all the conclusions that are being made about climate.

> I rest my case.

Alright then. I'm unconvinced.

ERA5 records go back to 1940. But it could have been supplemented with other records…and it appears that 1936 was hotter than 2023. So NPR could have at least mentioned that.

* July 2023 set a record for the highest monthly sea surface temperature anomaly (+1.78°F or +0.99°C) of any month in NOAA’s 174-year record.

1850 - 2023

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-gla...

1936 was below the long term average, 1937 was above ... but still much cooler than 2023.

There's literally hundreds of pages detailing the methodology,data and conclusions in IPCC reports that have been published for decades now.

It's not science's job to do your homework.

> There's literally hundreds of pages

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

> It's not science's job to do your homework.

It isn't my homework. I'm not the one demanding that I be given the levers of power.

you realize that calling the IPCC report a gish gallop doesn't really help your case, right?

I assure you I am correct. The paragraph that proves it is somewhere in a tale of two cities.

You said you wanted explanation, then deride the available explanations as a Gish gallop - incorrectly, because they are used to support hypotheses rather than thrown into a debate to bog down an opponent.

You can claim to want an explanation while refusing to read it, but don't expect anyone else to take you seriously.

I thought we were not supposed to do our own research and trust The Science.

What do you mean?

He's trolling, poorly.

Maybe its not an argument at all and someone is just pointing out statistical facts? Any inference from that statistic is entirely in your own brain, with your own thoughts, interpretations, biases, etc.

I program computer chips and have a high school level of earth science under my belt so I have a hard time understanding how we extrapolate out things like 1 degree increase in temp means we're cooking the planet and there's no turning back. What I would like someone to explain is how our 200-300 years of measuring things can be extrapolated out to have any certainty around future or past events.

I (and I assume others) aren't asking to "smokebomb a conversation". I genuinely see headlines and understand we haven't been taking measurements for very long in comparison to Earth being here, and actually wonder these things. I would love to read thru something that presents it all in layman's terms (with references) that can describe how we arrive at any conclusions. I'm not denying that the temperature is increasing or that humans have a detrimental effect on the atmosphere. When I read mainstream media "reporting" on things I am knowledgeable about they get lots of details wrong and often come to wrong conclusions. Knowing that, I'm more like a 5 year old that keeps asking "how do you know that? / why?" Thanks for reading thru my brain dump.

> I have a hard time understanding how we extrapolate out things like 1 degree increase in temp means we're cooking the planet and there's no turning back.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_points_in_the_climat...

Although I don’t believe you’ve never heard of runaway. It’s not as if this is some niche argument; it’s a well-understood mechanic that underpins most arguments about climate change. If this is new to you, I daresay you’ve been wearing some extremely heavy duty blinkers.

The last ice age had average global temperatures that were about 6-8 degrees (centigrade) lower (if I remember correctly) than global temperatures in the 19th century. Large parts of Europe, Asia and North America were under a permanent ice shield during that time, flora and fauna looked dramatically different.

Currently, global temperatures are 1-1.5 degrees higher than in the 19th century. This is already a massive shift that comes with severe consequences. Temperatures will rise further even under best case scenarios and if we do not curtail CO2 emissions radically, we will see temperatures rise to +2 degrees and more.

Not sure about you but I’d rather not find out what”a third of an ice age but hot “ looks like.

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