By Lyn Ford (Brisbane, Australia)
on January 31st, 2012

Been reading a few books in the last few years, which incorporate millions of years of global change - but not only weather.  While there is no doubt that it’s happened before, although often due to catastrophic extinction type events, this is certainly very quick by previous standards. Possibly the best thing in humankind favour is that we are very adaptable, and also have the ability to adapt, to a certain extent, the natural events which have happened like this. Having said that, certainly looks like we, as homo sapiens, need to get our fingers out.

By dan in illinois
on February 3rd, 2012

Okay, here’s a question.  If the warmest years on record were in the 1930s, which I’ve seen widely reported, then why does this map show that period as relatively cool?  Here’s another question: Was the data that was used to create these temperature maps adjusted to account for the considerable rise in temperatures that has occurred at the temperature recording sites due to the pavement and other urban structures at those sites?

By Jamie Grover (Santa Cruz)
on February 3rd, 2012

Wow, it would seem there are some real fools out there trying to put there own spin on this. What would it take guys? Do you need to accompany the scientists when they retrieve the dusty records from the archives?

I expect they are the same people who can’t accept reality in any any number respects.

Gore certainly had it right when he called this truth inconvenient.

By Tricia Schwartz (Andover, MA 01810)
on February 7th, 2012

I think that he was being facetious.

By Chip Atkison (Denver, Co 80236)
on February 11th, 2012

Brian from VA.  had it right, as in Republican / Tea Party / Right wing fascism / Neo Nazis / God will save us all, views that are constantly jammed down the Fixed News and “Conservative” party “news” outlets that feed the fear that Boener, Limbaugh, Kantor, Beck, Gingrich, Santorum, Romney, Paul spoon feed their dominions.

Nice farcical view Brian

By Little Loowey
on February 15th, 2012

Why is there no sound?!

By Dave (NY)
on February 28th, 2012

I can prove this thing is wrong. Look up various large volcanic eruptions and correlate them to the years in the video. You’ll find no difference in the heat or lack of heat graphics. For example, the Iceland eruptions in 2010 and 2011. The timeline shows a continued heating despite the fact that millions of tons of particles floated over to Europe for months. If pollution particle reduction can cause the 70’s to look cooler, then volcanic clouds laden with all sorts of ash should produce a very similar effect. There should be a clearly defined path from Iceland to europe in 2010 and 2011 with the entire globe looking less heated.

Here’s a few other large eruptions and dates.

May 8, 1902, Mount Pelée, on the island of Martinique
1902 Santa Maria Guatemala
1903 Changbaishan China/N korea
June 6th, 1912 Novarupta Alaska
1925-1928 - Greece
June 1991 Mount Pinatubo Philippines

By Robert L. King (Saint Petersburg, Florida)
on March 14th, 2012

A friend and myself were having a cold drink of tea the other day at the flea market catching the side show entertainment.  I asked the vendor, “fill it up low on the ice”.  My friend didn’t care, so here we be, sitting there drinking our teas, my friend with his ice packed 16oz, me with my low iced 16oz.  Meanwhile I happened to be beating the drum for the typical sea level rise mentality croud down his throat, me not being the scientific kind of guy I always wanted to be, just didn’t have the education, but I had a boat load of inconvenient truth to peddle.  After about an hour, i had finished my tea and he hadn’t taken a sip.  I told him, “hey you better drink your tea before the ice melts”... his reply “are you afraid the glass will over-flow”?  I shut up after that. But then how would I know, I’m no expert at least I was willing to admit I could be wrong he might be right.  Does anybody really know. Can mankind really overcome the laws of nature by his actions? Ask yourself how do you destroy WATER, ICE, CLOUDS, how do you create more WATER, ICE, CLOUDS?

By Russ Gaulin (Winchendon/MA/01475)
on March 15th, 2012

Nathan in Leipzig,

another good question.. determining how much warming is due to human burning of fossil carbon, v. other causes, is referred to as “attribution” studies, and there have been many.  In fact, in the case of greenhouse gases, the physics were discovered first, which led to the prediction that CO2 (and other trace gases) would actually cause the average temperature of the atmosphere to increase.  This is one of the most studied phenomena of modern science.  The best indication that the additional carbon in the air (as measured continually, Google “Keeling Curve” at Mauna Loa, HI) comes from human fuel burning is the ratio of plant-favored carbon to carbon that comes from geologic weathering.  The oil and coal is from plants, and it is the plant-based portion of CO2 that is rapidly increasing. 

Also, the computer models (often ridiculed by people who don’t understand them) have been reliably showing that past temperature changes can’t be explained without adding in the carbon from fossil fuels, but if forcing from that source are included, we get a very good match with what has actually occurred.  Sun studies show very small changes that can’t account for the global temperature changes, and the fact that the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) is cooling while the lower atmosphere (troposphere)  is warming is strong evidence that the sun is not the cause.

Dave in NY,

large volcanic eruptions do cause cooling either regionally or globally, for a short time, and the effect is visible on more detailed line graphs of the temperature record.  Those may not be noticeable on the animation because there is averaging over both time and space in the process that made the video.  Remember, you can’t get all the detail of over a hundred years in 26 seconds! Mt. Pinatubo eruption caused a very distinct blip world-wide, for example.  The “aerosols” produced apparently had the same effect as our industrialization in the mid-20th century, reflecting some incoming sunlight and helping to temporarily counteract the warming by CO2.  This is all becoming increasingly clear as time goes on and science has examined pretty much every angle and idea that have come up to explain our climate to ourselves.  There is still some “uncertainty” about future timelines for warming, and various other aspects, but it too is getting smaller as we methodically answer these questions with research.

I heartily recommend that you read “The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism” from the Skeptical Science web site.  It is basic, but there are lots of more detailed science citations in there if you are interested in learning more.  There is no excuse for not knowing about any subject in the age of Google for those who are interested, but you need the ability to distinguish a good source from a dubious one.

By Walt (Berlin, Wisconsin 54923)
on March 15th, 2012

The number of spins that people can put on this is always amusing, particularly those of the Type II error variety - where people fail to understand the false nature of the false null hypothesis. It is sometimes called the problem of over-skepticism (the null hypothesis is that humans are not causing the warming) and is nowadays largely supported by heavily vested financial interests (which of course would never lie to us - and “obviously” never have). With humans largely driving the warming (and this has been obvious for a while) it’s possible to record changing concentrations of gases, and individually test their transmission/reflection of heat to make predictions about how much effect there is, which is what climate modelers do. Problem with that is that things haven’t been warming as fast as they should be. A few years ago a group studying the effect of particulate pollutants found that their effect was about 10X the amount that modelers had expected. That effect, called global dimming when people began to understand it, canceled out half of the warming. So we are not seeing as much as we should be seeing, and this has fooled people for a while. It isn’t now, but even climate scientists don’t want to talk about it very much because of the ramifications, even though various linear thinkers (engineers) have proposed spraying chemicals in the stratosphere to reduce the warming effect (geo-engineering) which is a terrible idea, for many reasons.

I get a kick out of people who make note of the obvious fact that melting the Arctic Ice will not cause sea-levels to rise, because of course it won’t. Notice how “hot” the far north is. The fact that the meters-thick, multi-year ice may be gone, leaving thin annual ice forming every year to melt again in summer will not have not have an effect on sea-levels but no climate scientist ever said it did. There is a video on youtube called “A Climate Minute” which shows the annual melting and freezing photographed by a military satellite that senses ice thickness. The really thick ice is nearly gone and it doesn’t do anything to sea-levels.

However, one of the vids that pops up on the right when viewing “A Climate Minute” shows a Greenpeace representative talking with a media-hack about the melting Arctic Ice warning. The Arctic Ice is the ice that floats on the sea and it’s almost gone, just like climate scientists have warned. However the idea of sea-levels rising is related to ice that is on land melting and that ice is in Greenland and Antarctica, and both of these will take a very long time because there is so much of it even if things get really hot. So while discussing the warning about Arctic ice melting, the media hack switches definitions of Arctic Ice and includes Greenland Ice to point out how the “Arctic Ice” (by new definition used only by him) cannot melt in a few years. Mr Greenpeace doesn’t notice the bait-and-switch on geography and just claims that “NASA says” it’s going to be gone. Then you see hundreds of comments from nattering nitwits blowing wind about how climate scientists are constantly lying to everyone. No, the problem was that the media hack (mediot) and Greenpeace do-gooder were geographically challenged, and the n.n. crowd have a problem with gullibility. This is also why climate scientists do not pay attention to the n.n. crowd.

Apparently this video must be lying to us because it didn’t show cooling of the North Atlantic with the eruption of the Iceland volcano. If you are sensing water surface temperatures per year you might not see as much on cooling on water as on land because water takes a lot longer to yield its heat. There is a slightly cool trail on land over southern Europe when compared to northern Europe which was quite a lot warmer. However, somebody would have to get out actual temperature records to challenge the map so it’s much more convenient to just assume it’s a lie because “they” lie to us all the time. We really don’t want to come to terms with reality. Then we would incur responsibilities.

Of course we can assume that people want to control us by the use of the colors. On these maps 0 degrees is the mean for the area being colored for the last 131 years. Thus the map starts out mostly blue because it WILL be less than the mean. Of course we could lighten the colors so we won’t have to worry, so much. And oh yes, there is the problem of the data and non-uniformity of collection which climate scientists have been dealing with, which is the typical last stand of a losing argument. Yes, those sea temperatures come from the British Naval vessels which had a wooden bucket that sat out on the deck for 20 minutes (or was it 30?) before having a thermometer stuck in it. People have re-created all those methods to find out how they relate to modern satellite sensing. Even the study funded by the Koch brothers done at the University of California by skeptics (the Berkeley Study) came to the conclusion that what we are being told by the climate researchers is true - a true shock to the system to those who have bought into the type II error. The most interesting part of their result, which got almost no media attention, was that they showed an even greater change since 1800 than most of the climate scientists use. Oops! What a waste of potentially good lobbying or public relations money that was.

And when you see the long term North American weather maps for this year and see that cold spot over the Pacific and in the Pacific northwest of the USA and Canada, just remember those pollution plumes that stretch from China all the way across the Pacific to North America. I guess that all those trade treaties that job-jacked the working class did have a good effect - they helped keep the Pacific cool which will mean that the “world” temperature won’t rise so much this year - so we’re safe. But the blue colors on this video mean that the sea temperatures are below the average for the last 131 years and if China ever cleans up their pollution act, we could have some real fun but it won’t involve skiing.

By Tom Shearin (Lexington KY 40502)
on March 15th, 2012

To Nathan and Andrew:

The question of the sun’s influence is an important one, and it has been studied.

The sun’s energy output reaching the upper atmosphere, as measured by satellites since 1979, shows an 11 year cycle, but no net increase, i.e., no trend that would explain the observed changes in surface temperature.  See the graphic on page 20 and accompanying references in the report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States” from the U.S. Global Change Research program. (This report has a nice, quick summary of the evidence and can be downloaded from “http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts/”.)

By Michael T in NC
on March 16th, 2012

After reading some of these comments, it seems that some people don’t realize that this map is showing a 5-year rolling average of the temperature data. This is why it begins with 1884 instead of 1880. Here is a link to the NASA website where these animations can be found including explanation of these maps:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/animations/

From there it states:

“The NASA/GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio has in recent years created animations based on the GISTEMP dataset following the end of the calendar year. The most recent animation available was released in January 2012 and shows the five-year mean anomaly of surface temperature for 1880 through 2011. The means are five-year rolling averages, such that the animation begins with the 1880-1884 global surface temperature anomaly, advances in one year increments, and ends with the 2006-2010 anomaly.”

So when 2011 data is inlcuded, as the above video shows, the animation ends with the 5-year average 2007-2011. By using a 5-year rolling average, instead of annual averages, this can help to minimize the year to year temperature variability (noise) associated with ENSO (El Nino/La Nina) and large volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo in 1991.

By keith (thompson mb)
on March 20th, 2012

Radiation increase in ozone to surface due to nuclear reactors distributing into atmosphere along with industrial expansions and stack’s emission’s to stratosphere as well as all vehicle emission’s as well as expansion in dwelling’s that emit heat also in contribution of a warming affect on the globe the extraction of oil which helps to cool earth and refining of crude to be consumed in engine’s which also create heat this will only get worse unless we go green and reverse this aggression toward’s fuel oil consumption we must create more oxygen as we are losing plant life and forest which help cool the earth with there shade and emission of oxygen as well as loss of carbon dioxide consumption through loss of natural plant’s.

By Tom Kunek
on March 28th, 2012

This video is a scam. Can’t believe people believe it to be true. I can understand how such a video could be produced from the time NASA had satellite records from 1979 but before that there was only land based records and half of the records were in the USA. How the hell did they produce temperatures over 100 years ago to anywhere near the accuracy depicted. Such global temperature records simply do not exist to produce a video as shown. Probably produced via some unvalidated algorithm.