Global temperature for 2013 ranked as 2nd warmest since 1891,

[Art_from_Ark]

and the 13 years of 2001-2013 are all among the 15 warmest years since 1891, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Link to English pdf article:

http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/news/press_20140203.pdf

[Demeter]

1. Pardon my scoffing

Exactly what kind of verifiable, trustworthy, scientific data could possibly have been collected in 1891?

The Victorian scientists were unreliable at best, and certainly couldn't cover the globe or even a small fraction of it. Given the massive prejudices, faulty techniques, and erroneous background information they held so tightly, I would be amazed if they had anything at all to contribute of any value to any topic. The recent reports in many a field are full of studies debunking long-cherished Victorian "scientific conclusions".

This is the biggest flaw in the climate change discussion: you can't make long-term predictions on short-term information, and you can't make any predictions without good data for a long period of time, which is simply not available. A long period is very long, climatologically; in excess of a millenium or 10.

All you can do is guess.

And if your guesses are designed to terrorize people, and move policy in ways that overturn governments and hurt people, then you are not a scientist, but an agitator.

You want to take down the 1%, that's fine. that's evolutionary and ethically just and proper. Just don't further distort science while doing it. Don't rush to judgment.

[Art_from_Ark]

2. My source is the Meteorological Agency of Japan

which is the Japanese equivalent of the US National Weather Service. Why would they want to terrorize people?

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. International meteorological cooperation started in the mid 19th century

Although there had been significant developments in meteorology in the 18th century, Matthew Fontaine Maury, of the US Navy, instigated the convening of the first true International Meteorological conference from late August through early September 1853.[1] The Conference opened its proceedings at Brussels, Belgium on the 23d August 1853, in the residence of M. Piercot, the Minister of the Interior. The Governments represented at the first International Conference, and the names of the officers who attended were :
...
Maury's initiative was followed by an International Meteorological Congress in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, in September 1873 which agreed to prepare for an International Meteorological Organization (IMO). The members of that Organization would be the directors of national meteorological services. A Permanent Meteorological Committee was established with Buys Ballot, director of the Dutch meteorological service as president.[2]

A second congress in Rome 1879 decided on the IMO establishment and elected an International Meteorological Committee to prepare for the next Conference of Directors. There was however no separate funding. Also the directors agreed on a collaborative research effort with the International Polar Year 1882-1883. The first International Meteorological Tables were published in 1889.

The 1891 Conference of Directors of Meteorological Services convened in Munich. The organization was further refined by electing an Executive Bureau and deciding upon the first permanent topic Commission, the Commission for Terrestrial Magnetism.

The 1896 Conference of Directors in Paris established more Commissions: The Commission for radiation and insolation, and the Commission for Aeronautics. The same year IMO published the first International Cloud Atlas.

In 1905 the Conference of Directors convened in Innsbruck. Léon Teisserenc de Bort proposed a telegraph-based worldwide weather station network, the Réseau Mondial. Simplifying Teisserenc de Bort’s vision, the IMO decided that the network should collect, calculate, and distribute monthly and annual averages for pressure, temperature, and precipitation from a well-distributed sample of land based meteorological stations, in effect a global climatological database. The distribution standard was two stations within each ten-degree latitude/longitude quadrangle. Ultimately, the network comprised about 500 land stations between 80°N and 61°S. The first annual data set, for 1911, appeared in 1917.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Meteorological_Organization

Yes, they could cover a significant part of the globe. There was national pride at stake, for one thing; showing you could do science as well, or better than, your rivals. The effort that went into the first International Polar Year was considerable - 12 Arctic and 3 Antarctic expeditions. And outside the polar regions, look at the countries involved - the British Empire, France and its colonies, the United States, Russia, and other colonial powers. They covered a large part of the globe. The Stevenson screen was designed in 1864 (by Robert Lousi Stevenson's father - I never knew that till now), so they had clear ideas of how to provide standardised temperature measurements.

This is not "terrorizing people"; that is an absurd thing to write.

[Demeter]

4. the comparison between a few gross data points of 1891

and the statistical analysis and modelling and whole-planet satellite scanning....

Well, there simply is no comparison.

It's like the difference between Newtonian physics and quantum, and quantum is now evolving in theory.

And terrorizing people is exactly what is going on now. Leaping to conclusions with insufficient data, predicting the end of humanity....if that isn't terrorism, what is?

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. You claim the data is insufficient; back that up, please

Tell us the amount of data, and what, and why, you deem it insufficient. Contrast that with the scientific organisations of all major countries in the world who agree that global temperatures have demonstrably increased since the late 19th century. Hell, even most anthropogenic climate change deniers accept that; they just think it's part of natural cycles.

No, it's not 'terrorism', and that is frankly a dumb accusation and use of language. The Japan Meteorological Agency is not "predicting the end of humanity".

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Observations of temperature at given locations on given dates.

Last edited Sat Feb 8, 2014, 05:23 PM - Edit history (1)

They had thermometers in 1891, shockingly. (And a long time before that; temperature records for central England go back over 300 years, with monthly observations since 1659 and daily observations since 1772.) Instrumental observation is objective. By taking a series of instrumental observations over a long period of time it's possible to establish the normal range of variation in seasonal temperature at a given location.

I'm sorry, but we have substantial evidence of human-caused climate change. We have long-term instrumental observations of average temperatures for much of the world; we have evidence from ice cores that shows atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over much longer periods than we have instrumental data for, we have substantial evidence that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased substantially over the period when humans have been using fossil fuels...like this:



There is nothing of a "rush to judgement" in this data, it's verified by pretty much every single serious study. It's as close to a settled fact as we have.

[NickB79]

7. Exactly. Temperature records are largely moot at this point

We've progressed to the point where we can glean so much data from archaeological and paleontological evidence that even if we just invented thermometers yesterday, we could still conclude with strong scientific confidence that we are warming the planet at a rate and intensity not seen in millions of years.

[stuntcat]

8. ty

k&r