July 20, 2012
Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
Three simple numbers from Bill McKibben that add up to a global catastrophe, via Rolling Stone:
If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven't convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.
Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the "largest temperature departure from average of any season on record." The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.
Not that our leaders seemed to notice.
More here.
Posted by Henry Molofsky at 08:21 AM | Permalink
Comments
"June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States...the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe."
What an absolutely horrible use of statistics.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 20, 2012 9:54:11 AM
The reciprocal of that number might be larger than the number of stars in the universe. The number itself is pretty small.
Posted by: rmm | Jul 20, 2012 12:44:01 PM
Okay, I was wondering how he arrived at that probability figure, and it truly is at an almost creationist-level of statistical disingenuousness/stupidity.
Here's how I reproduce it: say the probability that the temperature in a month will be above the average is 0.5, then take the 327th power (0.5^327 = 3.7 × 10-99).
The 0.5 is meh, so let's consider the procedure of raising to the 327th power. Basically he's assuming that the probability of June being hotter given May being hotter (or June 2012 being hotter given June 2011 being hotter) is the same as the unconditioned probability. A moment of reflection shows that this hypothesis doesn't distinguish meaningfully between CO2 induced climate change and *anything* else anyone has suggested, be it solar radiation or cloud cover or what have you. Hell, it doesn't allow for the climate to have any memory. Couldn't he at least do a random walk instead of making the temperature for each month a separate die-throw? [I hope I'm not seen as doing climate science denial here, since that's very far from being my intention. But crap math is crap math.]
Posted by: prasad | Jul 20, 2012 2:02:03 PM
It is getting hotter---
Deal with it, or not!
Posted by: Dave Ranningdd | Jul 20, 2012 11:17:06 PM
Startling article! It is shocking that oil companies and governments are colluding to use climate change as a source of new profit (drilling in the arctic now that the ice cap is melting). Our governments are lame on this issue as they inevitably follow short-term ideas about the economy (decided by corporations) over and above the long-term well-being of its citizens and ecosystems. It is important to remember that climate change in not just a human issue; we are witnessing (causing) the largest extinction episode in 46 million years. The earth belongs not only to every one of us and our children but to our trillions of non-human co-inhabitants and their offspring as well. It is time to rally around the notion that the earth (its future, its resources, its well-being) belongs to neither our governments nor our oil companies. It is time for an informed global society to take back the planet. It’s not for sale.
Posted by: Christopher Holvenstot | Jul 21, 2012 8:12:57 AM
I'm beginning to get the feeling that U.S. democracy is irretrievably broken in very important ways. Issues such as climate change and economics (and, as the last couple of days have shown, sane gun control) are very complex -- so complex that they cannot be understood without a good deal of research and thought. There are of course people capable of doing this research and thought, and they are producing. But democracy is based on what the majority of voters vote for, and the majority of American voters (itself a small percentage of the population) is clearly not able or willing to absorb the results of this research and thought and act sensibly on it. Thus, the electorate can be pretty easily manipulated to put politicians in power who simply will not do what it takes to solve our problems; instead, they do what the wealthy Masters of the Universe, their masters, instruct them to do. The impending victory of Mr. Romney, and a Republican majority in Congress, will bear this out, I think.
I don't see any way to counteract this process. We, and the planet, are probably doomed.
Posted by: JonJ | Jul 21, 2012 11:04:45 AM
I keep waiting for the groundswell of environmentally conscious people who refuse to live carbon positive lives. Mostly, instead, they are showing me photos of their latest eco-tourist trip to this or that tourist-endangered far away place.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 21, 2012 5:25:14 PM
Cynicism begets more of itself. It's very important to take action, even if all you are saving is an idea of how a human being should live.
On the Island of Thera -- the Southernmost in the Cycladic arc -- approximately 3500 years ago, the greatest volcanic eruption of ancient times occurred. It was far, far bigger than any the Mediterranean has since seen, and the only eruption in that region to compare with it was that of the same volcano, about 50,000 years earlier. It will erupt again, of course -- may that occur inside history, and not beyond its outer edge. But the remains of the island's city, Akrotiri, tell the story of what the natives were doing up to the time of the explosion. They were evacuating the island, a systematic program of evacuation that had gone on for perhaps 10 years prior. They knew what would happen, they intended to flee and survive. So they were a mobilized population, yet, in one room of a three-storey palace, a painter was repairing a plaster wall and touching up a fresco when the final signal to head down to the boats and leave home for the very last time was heard. The painter dropped what he was doing. His colors, his brushes, his bucket of plaster were found on the floor in front of the wall, as he had left them, when excavations revealed this world, starting about 50 years ago.
Everybody who bothers to get out of bed in the morning knows how that painter felt, and why he did what he did -- they just may not like to think of themselves in that role. Our world will end, and we do not know when, although we do know we hasten that end. Can we make a difference? It's not a question to stop asking.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jul 21, 2012 9:18:48 PM
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