It has to the "best" if it's the "only"

xkcd relies heavily on one particular study of temps (Marcott et al, 2013).

Marcott was the first attempt to reconstruct the temps of the last 11000 years. I think it's still the only one. Science depends on replication of findings, and one single study is not science yet. It's scientific, but it is not "the science".

The study has been criticized. There are plenty of climate scientists who believe the earth has been warmer than it is today. Particularly during the Late Glacial Interstitial, in which Europe and N. America unquestionably saw a period of a lot of warming. That period is not noticed on the xkcd graph, presumably because smoothing? Whatevs, it's one single study and so it gets a big "mmmmmmaybe".

That period is indeed noticed on the xkcd chart. There's a noticeable hump. At 13000BC warming accelerates noticeably, then levels and falls back a bit by 10500BC, whereupon it resumes warming.

Relevant events on the graph:
- Glacial dams burst in Washington State
- Ice sheets withdraw from Chicago
- Floods of meltwater in the Atlantic cool Northern Hemisphere (Younger Dryas, as mentioned in the wiki page you provided)




ETA: Apologies; missed mention of Late Glacial Interstadial c.14,670 to c.12,890 in the wiki page. There is no hump there. I find it difficult to parse whathe wiki is trying to say about it, though - it says it is "the first pronounced warming since the end of the LGM", but the "LGM" ends at 13000BC. The previous uptick in temperature in xkcd before 13000 is a bit before 15000.

Interstadial, interstitial, these are hard words :)

I found an alternate to Marcott, a suggested timeline based on a number of different sources, so Marcott is no longer the only one. Some of this is based largely off an older study so take it with the appropriate grains.

https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/cl...t-18000-years/

The point is, all these proxies are not great measurements and so we are left with huge uncertainty. The uncertainty/error bars are left off the cartoon version... and also, left off every media report about this, ever.

Didn't mean to highlight your typo; that bolding was from the cut&paste.

Both of these studies can be nit-picked ad infinitum but they agree that there have been humongous changes on earth with a temperature swing of less than 15, maybe 20 degrees.

There's a cartoon out on the internet somewhere. Something along the line of:

"Gosh what if global warming has nothing to do with mankind? Then we'd be cleaning up all this pollution and saving energy for nothing."

The internet is a very busy place...

Where have all the old farts gone...

Re:
 

Thanks for the report! Clicking on that button is safe, right?

8.8 million lightning strikes...

Organic food business...

I call complete and utter bullshit on that chart.

Porn is not even mentioned.

Pfft.

Well, that took a month.

ScienceAlert: "Something Weird Happened to Men 7,000 Years Ago, And We Finally Know Why"

Wall of nerd shit! Break it down:

Only sons of Anthony are allowed in clan A
Only sons of Barry are allowed in clan B
Women can go between clans (because they are whores property not warriors)
Clan A wipes out entire clan B
Now there is genetic diversity of women but not of men

It happens at the development of agriculture, because that is the point where clans/tribes stabilize and become much larger, and longer-lived.

Behaviors that we evolved to deal with the world of 20,000 B.C. were still applied to this new world of 6,000 B.C... and broke it.

Now in our 2,000 A.D. world, these behaviors are still inside us.

Built very deeply into every single one of us is a sexist tribalism that causes us to go to war with the "other" -- literally, anyone not of our own family -- and to fight until the other side is entirely wiped out.

Well! Good luck to us all.

It does explain our assholey nature. One of my podcasts just covered a Roman town sack, men killed and women / children into bondage. That's kind of how we build great culture. When our own military goes off the rails it would seem to be genetics over-whelming system discipline, one more reason to oppose the use of mercenaries.

So just to be clear, it's NOT that women were all fucking the 17 hot dudes at the top with the most expensive set of arrowheads, while all the ugly cavemen were lucky to get a single pity-lay. It was, as usual, because the men were being aggressive dicks and slaughtering each other en masse.

We need to elect more women. If you look at our national spending habits we easily defend aggression over compassion. A largely male Congress has convinced itself that cuts to compassion make us stronger. We are unbalanced.

It surely worked then like it does today, and female sexual selection is an important part of the hierarchical nature of humankind, one of the major things that invokes the warring nature of man. (Invokes, not causes. It's built-in.)

(i.e., you don't make us go to war - but we would only do it because of you. We don't defend territory, like dogs; we defend family and tribe, like apes. Plus I saw Omar looking at your ass so I hit him with a big rock. Don't you like that?)

But historically, aren't cultures with less female sexual selection (i.e. women as property, etc.) *more* likely to engage in tribalistic warring behavior? When one woman becomes a dude's property, that doesn't make him go, "cool, cool, this is enough." Now he just wants a second woman for his property, too. And suddenly we're back at harems for the rich and powerful, and the dudes with no women are blaming the women again.

Here's what I've noticed about many socially-awkward, historically-un-sexually-selected men: they're actually quite picky, and reject a huge number of average-and-below-average biologically female humans who would be interested in dating them, but they only want the hot ones (who they bitterly accuse of being shallow for only wanting the hot guys.) I know a number of heterosexual women who have never been asked out by anyone, ever, which under the Female Sexual Selection theory ought to be impossible.

Full disclosure: this subject hits my Asshole Button because for whatever reason, I have always seemed to attract exactly the kind of guy who gets enraged when I am politely uninterested. My theory is that it's because I'm just enough of a butterface to make them confident: smart/funny/waistline/blah-blah-blah, but they see the glasses and non-chin and say, "Ah ha, I am the only man who sees her true inner value, and she will surely be grateful for it." I have always been hit on more often than my objectively way-hotter friends, and when *they* turn them down, the guys say, "ah, well, she was out of my league," but when I turn them down, it's stalker-time. No man in the history of the world has ever thought I was out of his league, and I couldn't even begin to count the number of times I've been accused of unfairly hoarding my vaginal resources.

That's what wesee today, because we get to compare cultures against each other; the "rules" in people's heads are all defined differently now that we've laid down frameworks for the development of behavior. Frameworks handed down for Centuries, that start in infancy.

But in 6,000 B.C. we didn't have any of that... it's pre-culture. No books, no schools, no way to communicate across tribes, no way to socialize people and explain how to behave productively and fairly. All we had was a dumb beast who had achieved some level of consciousness.

But even though there was no communication, the behavior was the same across continents. That's what's so wild about it.

It's a small rejection for you, but the most immense rejection POSSIBLE for them. Humanity is telling them they are so unworthy that humanity doesn't want their genes in the pool.

No wonder they are angry. To replicate our DNA is the very deepest drive we know. It's built in to not just humans, but every single evolved species on earth. Every living organism has had to work out a strategy for how to deal with this.

Previously, humanity's answer was to fight to the death. That's still the answer for a lot of species. Fighting, even if both die.

http://cellar.org/2017/interlocked-bucks.jpg

Part of the pain you get to experience (lucky you) is this violent avenue being taken away from males via socialization. No wonder it is so insane and awkward.

For those following along at home, the May 2018 numbers are in; and the anomaly was +0.18, down 0.03 from April. That makes May 2018 the 10th hottest of the last 40 Mays.

Each month's anomaly change doesn't tell us much of anything about warming -- like being told one day's Dow Jones closing number and change amount doesn't tell us how our long-term investments are doing. It's just a single point of perspective.

Who's driving how far.

A woman needs a husband because she needs a chauffeur.

Shrinking households...

In our modern day, nobody knows why Gloria and Meathead didn't move out to a studio apartment in Brooklyn.

Gloria was smokin' back in the day...

I wonder what the percentage breakdown is between divorced singles (30+) and young unmarried singles who can afford/are allowed to live on their own, both of which have increased since the 60s.

Also, how many of the 6 and 7+ households were just parents and kids, vs. extended family and/or boarders? Inquiring minds want to know.

Disasters...

Go Texas--lit up in all six categories!

KY - Tropical cyclones

That makes my eyebrows go up.

Hurricanes, the rest of the world calls them cyclones.

Yeeeah.:right:

Although we don't get a lot of them here in KY, I know what they are.

A hurricane, cyclone, and typhoon are all the same thing except for where they make landfall. Pacific Northwest and Atlantic are hurricanes, Eastern Pacific is a cyclone, and Southeast Pacific and Australia are typhoons. But it isn't a regional language thing; the NOAA officially classifies storms in these three terms, while the equivalent folks in other countries call them something different. It makes no sense.

In KY, we call it wind.

Whoopee, were all gonna die...

The pdf has correlations of seatbelt usage and alcohol.

When a passenger car and an LTV hit head-on, an occupant was between 3.1 to 4.1 times more frequently to be killed in a passenger car than in an LTV.

When a passenger car front hit the side of an LTV, an occupant was between 1.3 to 1.7 times more frequently to be killed in an LTV than in a passenger car.

However, when an LTV front hit the side of a passenger car, an occupant was between 13.3 to 22.7 times more frequently to be killed in a passenger car than in an LTV.

Never heard of an LTV.

That's an NHTSA term, LTV (SUV, pickup truck, or van).

So is the LTV the problem or is the passenger car the problem?

Depends on which one you're driving/riding in, if you're in a passenger car there's a bigger chance you'll be dead and have no problems.

Only 12 fatalities in a year in DC? Wow.


I guess it makes sense; no highways and few straightaways so speeds are lower, so accidents are less likely to be fatal. Plus lower population overall, except for Vermont and Wyoming.

Texas (or at least Austin) has been doing this thing for a few years now where they keep a running total on the big Amber Alert signs when there's no Amber Alert going on. "1,257 people have died on Texas roads this year," and then the next day it will be 1,264...

And 3 more dead in CA because the driver was texting.:mad:

What do they call those ICC bumpers that (are supposed to) keep cars from going that far under the rear of the trailer?

Anti something bars?

Anyway, that one didn't work.

Women in Congress...

Whoopee we're all gonna die...

KY is 45th. Out of 50.

Well, that's just great.

I like that one.

It felt familiar. It may have been posted before.

But, since Sexo hasn't brought it up, maybe not.:D

Some states are flat and some are really flat.
Driving across Kansas I thought maybe the Flat Earth Society was right.
But Kansas is only number 7, even got beat by Delaware.

W00t!!! Go PA!

When did Alaska and Hawaii get thrown out of the Union? When did DC become a state?

Obvious is that only the Contiguous United States are relevant in this topographic comparison and the column heading over their names plainly says "State or District."

Didja see the tree?

… and all those dogs?

Median income...

It's likely you'll find this interesting. Maybe.

http://cellar.org/2017/Likelihood-and-words.png

RIP - Indubitably