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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

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Extremely rapidly, and it is wholly unprecedented in the geological record[0]. At this point, expressing curiosity about this rather than putting forth the trivial effort to find the amply available high-quality evidence is difficult to read as anything other than bad faith.

[0]https://phys.org/news/2021-11-global-temperatures-years-toda...

Your first two "questions" have been answered, IIRC. A bit of duckduckgoing will e.g. lead you to https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3071/the-r.... Same for solar cycles.

The data is not perfect, but unfortunately, there's no escape from the conclusion: we have to act, and we've already missed targets.

Look at that chart, we changed the way we measure temperature in the 1960's with the introduction of digital thermometers. Prior to that we utilized mercury or worse alcohol. The chart itself raises the question(s) I just highlighted. Further, prior to WWII there was not "global monitoring" of temperature; let's highlight this comment:

> Remarkably, despite the differences in methodologies used by these independent researchers, their global temperature estimates are all in close agreement

Let's assume that's true (which I would argue is not true), even "similar" results will have a 2-5% fluctuation -- which is the entire range of the increase in temperatures. If something reads 98.2 one year and the prior reading is 97.3 we have a 0.9 increase in temperature, but in reality it could be the margin of error based on cloud cover or a change in instrumentation. We simply don't know. The article you linked admits as such:

> Each organization uses different techniques to make its estimates and adjusts its input data sets to compensate for changes in observing conditions, using data processing methods described in peer-reviewed literature.

> If something reads 98.2 one year and the prior reading is 97.3 we have a 0.9 increase in temperature, but in reality it could be the margin of error based on cloud cover or a change in instrumentation.

That would be true if we had only two measurements. But it can't explain the trend over the last 40 years (neither can the introduction of digital thermometers in the 60s).

There are a multitude of things simultaneously that need to be considered:

1. The sun naturally has cycles where it increases and decreases in temp

2. The measurement devices we use have changed over time

3. The location of our measurements have changed over time

4. We only have 120-160 datapoints total for yearly averages.. with the above issues associated.

Because of those points it’s hard to make any absolute claims, besides the argument since 1960s the trend is slightly upwards in terms of temperatures , maybe.

Have you looked out of the window recently? Noticed anything odd?

> What if our interments for measuring temperature were improving over the last century?

Thermometers have been around pretty much unchanged for a long time. We don't need particularly high precision measurement for an overall trend on the measurement scale of tenths of degrees Celsius.

> What if the locations of the measurements changed slightly?

Then we'd expect momentary level and trend shifts whenever the location changes.

> And finally, what if we’re exiting an ice age (we are still technically in one)?

We are, but much much faster than would occur without human activity.

> And finally, what if we’re exiting an ice age (we are still technically in one)?

Yes we are living in an ice age, which began 3 million years ago. We are currently in a warm interglacial that started 11,000 years ago.

Yes, the rate of change is way too fast, comparable to a meteorite or volcano eruption, except there aren't

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