[rogersmith]

"The global surface temperatures across land and ocean in February were 1.35C warmer than the average temperature for the month, from the baseline period of 1951-1980."

Earth having been around for millions of years, how statistically significant is a 29 years period in the grand scheme of things?

[dalke]

Odd phrase, "in the grand scheme of things".

How statistically significant are each of us "in the grand scheme of things"? Not very. There will be no Hollywood biopic about my life, nor likely yours.

If you believe in an eternal afterlife of joy in a heavenly garden, then even a billion years of life on a single planet is statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of things. (Or, like Secretary of the Interior Watt; if you believe the Rapture will come in our lifetime, then why have an environmental management policy at all?)

If we are but a colony of some Galactic Confederacy, then again we are insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

If the Sun should go nova tomorrow, and destroy all life on Earth, is that really statistically significant in the grand scheme of things? No.

Yet despite all of that, I still think I'm significant enough that others - who are all just about as insignificant as I am - should still care about not littering, about keeping poisons out of my water, about keeping disease causing bacteria out of my food, about keeping CFCs from the ozone layer, and keeping the Earth's climate stable and in the current climate regime.

But of course, how statistically significant is one more piece of trash in the grand scheme of things? Not very. So why not throw that trash out the window?

In other words, I reject your qualifier "grand scheme of things" as meaningless, at least not without further clarification of which grand scheme you mean. Policy decisions must have a more concrete goal, with a more meaningful time span than the heat death of the Universe.

[DropbearRob]

For me the biggest question is why is that period of time considered the "baseline". The climate is a dynamic system in constant change. There has never been a static period of climate. It is forever in flux. Climate Change is the normal state of climate. The REAL question is, how much of the observed rate of change is attributable to human factors, and what is the most effective way to combat the emergence of a potentially hazardous climate scenario.

I am personally in the camp of plant more trees. It is a fact that sunlight falling onto a plant causes the energy to be converted into cellular metabolism and sequestering CO2. A desert however will absorb and then re-radiate a lot of that heat. We need to stop deforestation and take advantage of the higher c02 levels to grow more plants. Hell lets start some geo-engineering projects which will be useful for when we need to terraform other planets.

[phaemon]

> For me the biggest question is why is that period of time considered the "baseline".

For convenience. It allows you to compare the last two 30 year periods: 1951-1980 vs 1981-2010

[ekianjo]

> We need to stop deforestation

That may be one way to address it, but there's a lot to be done to have any effect there. Most of the places where massive deforestation is happening is where the most corrupt officials are.

[DropbearRob]

I agree 100% that there is a lot more to be done than simply reducing deforestation, however it is a simple action to be taken. The growth of just trees/plants is only one method of sequestration, all the insect and animal growth are also CO2 and energy sinks.

There are many things that we can do to attempt to tackle the issue of a developing hostile climate. however trading carbon credits is not one. We need simple engineering solutions, but biological CO2 sequestration is quite efficient. especially algaes, plankton, grasses, insects, etc.

[phaemon]

30 years (not 29) is long enough to even out the short term cycles that will affect our temperature measurements (most notably, the ENSO cycle).

The age of the Earth isn't relevant at all. Imagine tossing a coin to see if it's a fair coin. How many times do you have to toss it to be fairly confident it's fair?

Now, how old is the coin?

[vacri]

> Earth having been around for millions of years, how statistically significant is a 29 years period in the grand scheme of things?

I'm almost left speechless by the scale of this goalpost-moving. The earth will continue to exist and won't notice any climate change. It's mostly a ball of iron and rock. We, on the other hand, have a population that is heavily reliant on the climate not changing too much, and in so many different ways.

Keep in mind that the climate doesn't just 'get warmer'. It also has more extreme weather events - like a pot simmering on a stove, add a bit more heat and it gets a bit more violent.

[megalodon]

Well put. Some seem to think that the earth belongs to us and not the other way around.

[adaml_623]

You have a expected lifetime of ~70-80 years and I assume you've already been around for 18. Go and stand in a Sauna for a few hours and tell me how statistically significant that few hours is to you.

[rogersmith]

So I go to the sauna for a few hours right? Reach abnormal temperature for a statistically insignificant period of time wrt to my expected lifetime, then a few minutes later after I left the sauna my temperature is back within average expectations.

What was your point again?

To clarify: my point is, even only taking into account only the period during which it has been inhabited by mankind, Earth has probably reached hotter and colder averages than what we've experienced over the past half century. Mankind did fine.

[adaml_623]

"So I go to the sauna for a few hours right? Reach abnormal temperature for a statistically insignificant period of time wrt to my expected lifetime, then a few minutes later after I left the sauna my temperature is back within average expectations. What was your point again?"

My point was that you're dead.

In a Sauna for a few hours. You will die. Statistics and average lifetime are not relevant.

[fsloth]

Just to be clear, a few hours of sauna does not kill you. It's not a pressure cooker.

[adaml_623]

Well I wasn't totally sure so I googled quite a bit and what with websites recommending 20 minutes, articles about deaths, discussions about achieving 45 minutes in a sauna, I would say that a few hours in a Sauna would kill you unless the temperature was very low by Sauna standards. I was originally going to suggest that the OP stand in an oven but thought that too crude.

Realistically I accept that this debate is not 'winnable' in any traditional sense. Even if the governments crack down on CO2, and the temperature drops back to non increasing fluctuations there will be no acceptance from some people who will always insist that it is/was a conspiracy the same as the moon landings and the UN. I suppose the only way that one side could convince the other is if the CO2 keeps increasing and the weather doesn't end up killing us all. Sorry for the digression.

[fsloth]

A sauna can be used as a steam boiler, then being plausibly lethal:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Sauna_Championships#20...

I usually spend like an hour at 75 degrees celsius with some moisture. Which is totally non-lethal.

[azernik]

http://espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=5198604

Note the times - on the order of minutes.

You don't need a pressure cooker to kill a person from heat. The 70°C of a traditional sauna will do just fine.

[noselasd]

"Mankind did fine". It survived, sure (not every species did though). There's quite a lot findings attributing the vanishing of various populations to climate change.

People are concerned about negative effects, not just surviving.

[mirimir]

It's been a few hundred thousand years, I believe.

[mkesper]

The real data goes farther back: First link in article is http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.t... going back until 1880 but as averages are compared here you don't need the whole context to compare against.

[sd8f9iu]

And using reconstructions, the data appears to go back even further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Com...

[anon1385]

Those 29 years are just a baseline that's used by convention. You can pick whatever period you want to use as a baseline and it doesn't change the result (i.e. the absolute magnitude of the anomalies will change but not the relative change which is what we are interested in).