We have a cherry blossom tree. It bloomed a week earlier than last year. We’re not in Kyoto but I did notice and it’s a bit strange. I also noticed some other blossoming trees that typically bloom for about a week, went green after 3 days.
lysace•1h ago
Anecdotes like that with a 1 year horizon.. that's what we call weather.
A 1200 year time series.. that's definitely in the climate area.
BobbyJo•57m ago
Weather can be due to climate, and time series are composed of anecdotes.
lysace•53m ago
Key words: can be
Longer time series are indeed composed of many samples/anecdotes.
I'd trust such data a lot more, from any other source.
t0bia_s•24m ago
It's about trust anyway.
altcognito•25m ago
Longer periods can be called paleoclimate. As you may have noticed, most types of humans did not exist in previous climates, and we are unfamiliar with the conditions of those time periods, much less if we were to bring them upon ourselves in a period of time that isn't even capable of being shown on the chart you've chosen to use.
billfor•6m ago
I'm just clarifying parent comment that "1200 years of data is climate" by saying that longer periods also are climate data. I could have posted a graph of the holocene as well (I don't know that it would materially change my point).
I made two points. The other was that we are in an ice age.
shiandow•8m ago
Okay? Let's keep it that way then I suppose.
sandworm101•39m ago
Climate is also dimensional. Kyoto is a point. A point over time is a line, a line through a 3d set of data. That a single point is seeing an effect is interesting but not as significant as widespread changes. Only when multiple measurements create a 2d map of realtime data, which becomes a 3d bulk over time, should we draw conclusions. Sadly, that is also happening. But the later should be the topic of conversation, not a single very visible data point.
jfengel•6m ago
The single visible data point is interesting, as an illustration.
It doesn't prove climate change one way or the other, but that is a discussion that ceased to be meaningful decades ago. Climate change is real, it is significant, and it is caused by humans. Further arguments about that are a (deliberate) waste of time.
Having accepted that, and dismissed the time-wasters from the conversation, we can look around for things that we notice. One of them is the way it affects the times that trees bloom, giving us an opportunity to discuss the way that affects other aspects of the ecosystem.
That, in turn, helps inform conversation about just how important the consequences are. Unlike the fact of climate change, it's not obvious how much the consequences matter to us, and what should change to avoid them. That is a conversation worth having, but it has been impossible while we're still listening to people reciting decades-old falsehoods.
Trees often bloom based on the surrounding climate and conidtions. Warmer bursts in early spring lead to early blossoms.
carabiner•1h ago
Many factors in this. Heat islands from urbanization in Kyoto, different species bred for earlier blooming, etc.
nharada•1h ago
Is the "etc" here "because of human greenhouse emissions, the earth is rapidly warming"?
henry2023•37m ago
If these events where random noise then they would distribute in both sides of the climate models; We don’t observe that. Events only seem to match or be worse than expectations.
Psillisp•33m ago
lo heat, why doth thou radiate? from your islands; blooming species differently...
otherme123•24m ago
If only we had a plausible hypothesis that covered not only early blossoms in Kyoto, but hundreds of other observations in climate all in the direction of a rise in global temperature, be it in urbanized areas or in remote regions like Antarctica or glaciars... Damn scientist, they might be sleeping or something.
mitthrowaway2•6m ago
> The signal is local to one species
LightBug1•49m ago
Really disappointing first parse of the comments.
My average comment quality is pretty terrible, but these are on par.
yeah879846•43m ago
Now this is climate science I can get behind.
childofhedgehog•35m ago
I had visited to see the cherry blossoms in 2017 and felt that we were going too early but actually made it for the peak. It’s scary how quickly the dates are shifting.
I wonder what impact the earlier blooms have on the trees over the coming years, as this does not seem to be natural.
morkalork•27m ago
A dataset curated by humans, spanning over a thousand years, is awe inspiring on its own. The first person to record their observation must have had no idea what they started. Are there others like this?
binarymax•1h ago
lysace•1h ago
A 1200 year time series.. that's definitely in the climate area.
BobbyJo•57m ago
lysace•53m ago
Longer time series are indeed composed of many samples/anecdotes.
billfor•41m ago
b112•27m ago
t0bia_s•24m ago
altcognito•25m ago
billfor•6m ago
shiandow•8m ago
sandworm101•39m ago
jfengel•6m ago
It doesn't prove climate change one way or the other, but that is a discussion that ceased to be meaningful decades ago. Climate change is real, it is significant, and it is caused by humans. Further arguments about that are a (deliberate) waste of time.
Having accepted that, and dismissed the time-wasters from the conversation, we can look around for things that we notice. One of them is the way it affects the times that trees bloom, giving us an opportunity to discuss the way that affects other aspects of the ecosystem.
That, in turn, helps inform conversation about just how important the consequences are. Unlike the fact of climate change, it's not obvious how much the consequences matter to us, and what should change to avoid them. That is a conversation worth having, but it has been impossible while we're still listening to people reciting decades-old falsehoods.