It's so weird that records began in such a hot year, I wonder if they were even hotter before that? I guess that's pretty dumb, there's no way we could ever know. How hot was it in 1880 anyway?

[–] sinkingship@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Hey, I'm not sure if you're trolling or not, but try to help in case you really seek answers to your questions:

1880 was much cooler than today, globally about 1°C cooler. You'll find plenty of graphs showing the history of global temperatures online and animated videos on YouTube.

There have been times, where Earth has been hotter than today. We know quite a lot about Earth's history, it's astonishing. However, the big problem we are facing today isn't the temperature itself, but the speed of the change happening. When climate changes naturally it takes thousands of years. This allows for many plants and animals to adapt and migrate, not all though. Some are always left behind in this circle of life.

Today's temperature change appears to be faster than anything we see in history, posing the worry that a lot of life forms will not be able to adapt in time. If I recall correctly, today's atmosphere is changing about 200 times faster than it did during the most severe mass extinctions in history we know about and animals go extinct about 1000 times faster than they should in a world without humans.

In today's articles you often see "since 1880". There is older temperature data, both from thermometers as also from other more abstract sources, as for example air bubbles trapped in ice cores give an atmosphere reading of a time long ago etc. However, older measurements are highly localized and don't cover enough places of earth to get a reliable reading of global average temperatures.

It is also possible, that we will see this "measuring starting point" 1880 go back to earlier decades in future, as there are still tons of records that aren't evaluated yet. One example would be the detailed sailing ship logs of previous centuries that cover wide areas of Earth.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That was awesome! I learned a lot although I'll admit I didn't understand everything. A bit scary though; I wish they would make it this clear when they talk about it instead of just assuming everyone knows what they're talking about

[–] sinkingship@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you! If you have specific questions, feel free to ask them. If I can't answer, maybe somebody else can. I read a lot about these things, but I am no scientist or expert.

If you want to take an advise: try to ask differently. Maybe it takes more than a single sentence, maybe admit like "I don't understand XY, can someone explain..." or something alike.

Your initial post and the second showed that you don't know but at the same time sounded like you were having doubt in science or didn't take it seriously. As there are plenty of people who doubt science but at the same time are not open to discussion, you might get down votes instead of answers.