Through August, 2015 is - BY FAR - the warmest year on record

[shira]

That's kind of sad. Feelings of inferiority can be dealt with, often without medication. Have you spoken to a mental health professional?

That "ego boost" I get is from the 99th percentile to the 99.1st percentile. So there are no "feelings of inferiority," and no need whatsoever for psychological counseling.

(Note: The above boost was computed on the clearly reasonable assumption that the moronic climate-change comments we see here from righties nevertheless represent the operation of the top 0.1% of right-wing minds. And since as everyone knows the actual share of 99th-percentile minds is divided 90% lefty to 10% righty [and because I'm already clearly operating at the 99th percentile], I'm able to completely leap-frog 100% of righties, for a net gain of one-tenth of a percentile point.)

 

[werepossum]

Re: The whole "you need to personal sacrifice" crowd. You could wipe an entire continent or two off the face of the earth and you wouldn't solve Climate Change. It's either a global effort, a revolution in energy production, or its nothing. You cannot fault someone for living like the rest of us when the sacrifice needed requires ALL humans to sacrifice.

Re: "Wamrest year", the pause is important. Whether it exists or not determines whether Climate Change is being accurately described by its proponents. The claim of warmest year is only held by one set of data, and is largely driven by the inclusion of record ocean temps, for which our historical record is even more sparse and unreliable.

My opposition is not in a vacuum. It's based on the theory that we don't know enough about our past to determine attribution for present warming. Proponents like to pretend they have those numbers dialed and they can tell what how warm it'll be.

I'm with Bastardi and others who believe the PDO and AMO cycles turning "positive" during the 80s-90s warm up is not a coincidence and that simple redistribution of heat already in the system is responsible for some of the changes measured. That without reliable ocean measurements spanning the past century we are unable to make a determination without first waiting and seeing.

If the pause does exist, it lines up nicely with the ocean cycles returning to a "negative" phase. For this ocean theory to be accurate, there must be another reduction of global temps on NCEP following this El Ninio. The pause must at least continue on Satellite. If either of those fail to happen then we know the alternative theory is bunk and CO2 has overridden the system as we knew it.

By 2018-2020 we should have enough data to determine what is accurate, and what is not.

Well said, and I agree completely. That said, I do see some common ground for Deniers (skeptics) and True Believers. Most people agree that historically high CO2 levels cause some adverse effects. Most people agree that fossil fuels are depleting rapidly and that they will continue to be important and valuable in future centuries, even if just as a source of quality plastics feedstock. Most people agree that the things we have to do to get fossil fuels today (fracking, deep sea drilling, drilling in reserves, mining) have bad side effects. Most people agree that internal combustion engines and generators exhaust things we'd rather not see increased in our environment. Therefore, increased adoption of cleaner, renewable/sustainable alternative energy sources and increased resources toward research on improved (read: more efficient OR more cheaply produced) insulation, energy efficiency, alternative energy production, etc. should be things on which everyone can agree. If the True Believers are wrong, we've still reduced CO2 and stretched our supply of fossil fuels. If the True Believers are right, then we've pushed certain doom back a bit, allowing more room for a miracle to happen. Either way, as long as we can limit ourselves to things which do not break our economy, we're better off. If we can figure out how to do these things in America (as opposed to importing cheaper goods from China or better goods from Germany), then we've made our children's world doubly better as their debt will be a bit less crushing. Win-win.

 

[werepossum]

That "ego boost" I get is from the 99th percentile to the 99.1st percentile. So there are no "feelings of inferiority," and no need whatsoever for psychological counseling.

(Note: The above boost was computed on the clearly reasonable assumption that the moronic climate-change comments we see here from righties nevertheless represent the operation of the top 0.1% of right-wing minds. And since as everyone knows the actual share of 99th-percentile minds is divided 90% lefty to 10% righty [and because I'm already clearly operating at the 99th percentile], I'm able to completely leap-frog 100% of righties, for a net gain of one-tenth of a percentile point.)

Yeah . . . for someone so taken by his own perspicacity you should probably learn that there is no 99.1st percentile; that is a contradiction in terminology. There is only a 99.1st permille.

See, those of us whose brains are so incredible that they must be measured in such fine gradations already know such things - along with the secret handshake.

 

[bshole]

I have to wonder if the record warmth has any relationship to the record crop yields we are having this year? Could the evidence be any more clear? Record warmth==record crop yields. You never hear these whack jobs utter a single peep about this unprecedented boon in crop production.... the single most important metric in measuring sustainability in the human population. THEY tell us the food supply will implode..... INSTEAD it explodes. Hey its science though, they must be right. We must learn to deny objective reality.

http://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2015/08_12_2015.asp

 

[werepossum]

I have to wonder if the record warmth has any relationship to the record crop yields we are having this year? Could the evidence be any more clear? Record warmth==record crop yields. You never hear these whack jobs utter a single peep about this unprecedented boon in crop production.... the single most important metric in measuring sustainability in the human population. THEY tell us the food supply will implode..... INSTEAD it explodes. Hey its science though, they must be right. We must learn to deny objective reality.

http://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2015/08_12_2015.asp

Makes sense. For crops not near their CO2 inhibition limit, more warmth combined with high CO2 and sufficient fertilizer is definitely a recipe for record production as long as their is sufficient rain. (Which in hotter weather may be higher than in cooler weather, given faster respiration and faster evaporation.)

 

[shira]

Yeah . . . for someone so taken by his own perspicacity you should probably learn that there is no 99.1st percentile; that is a contradiction in terminology. There is only a 99.1st permille.

See, those of us whose brains are so incredible that they must be measured in such fine gradations already know such things - along with the secret handshake.

Sadly, you're incorrect. The definition for "percentile" that you were taught, which allows for only integer values, isn't the only one in use. For example, when referencing the normal distribution, percentiles with much finer granularity are commonly used. See, for example, the section "The normal distribution and percentiles" in the Wikipedia article for "Percentile."

Percentiles represent the area under the normal curve, increasing from left to right. Each standard deviation represents a fixed percentile. Thus, rounding to two decimal places, −3 sigma is the 0.13th percentile, −2 sigma the 2.28th percentile, −1 sigma the 15.87th percentile, 0 the 50th percentile (both the mean and median of the distribution), +1 sigma the 84.13th percentile, +2 sigma the 97.72nd percentile, and +3 sigma the 99.87th percentile. This is known as the 68–95–99.7 rule or the three-sigma rule.[dubious – discuss] Note that in theory the 0th percentile falls at negative infinity and the 100th percentile at positive infinity, although in many practical applications, such as test results, natural lower and/or upper limits are enforced.

Notice in the paragraph above the usage of percentiles expressed to a precision of 0.01.

If your integer-only definition were the sole accepted one, it would be rather ironic, don't you think, that the ultra-high-IQ "The Prometheus Society" (threshold for entrance = +4 sigma) would be misusing the term on the home page of its website?

The Prometheus Society is a very exclusive high-IQ society.

Mensa, perhaps the most well-known high-IQ society worldwide, selects for the top 2% in general intelligence (approximately two standard deviations above the norm). One person in fifty would theoretically qualify for Mensa. The Prometheus Society, however, discriminates at the 99.997th percentile, which equates to "1 in 30,000" (four standard deviations above the norm).

But I'm glad I was able to clear that up for you.