http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/09/14/493925781/epic-climate-cartoon-goes-viral-but-it-has-one-key-problem?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160914
NPR points out some of the problems with the cartoon and the models thereto.
What gets me is that they're complaining about inaccuracy when Munroe built a notation about said inaccuracy into his graphic... look on the right side between 16000 bce and 15500 bce. He has a notation labled "limits of this data"
I'm still wondering where all those other temperatures happen to make the difference between "normal" and "ice age" only a couple of degrees. If Texas (~69F average) is covered in ice (32F maximum) but the average global temperature is only down 5F, then either somewhere had to get a lot hotter than normal or a lot of somewheres had to warm up a bit.
Texas was never covered in Ice. Per the graphic, New York and Boston was covered in ice. All that's required to get massive depths of ice is to have temperatures cold enough that not all of the ice deposited in the winter melts in the summer before it cools again. Same deal with "permafrost" up in Alaska. The winter freezes the dirt deeper than the summer thaws it, so you have a more or less permanently frozen layer of earth within a certain range. Change the average temperature even 1C warmer, and that layer may disappear, as the winter doesn't freeze as deep, and summer thaws deeper.
Even small amounts of change can affect massive areas, as a larger freezing 'ice accumulation area' can get large enough to PUSH glaciers down into zones where they couldn't form, but thaw the accumulated kilometers of ice relatively very slowly, so they reach even further south before they finally completely melt.
Does this involve algebra that runs out of Latin and Greek letters and has to start using Kanji, hieroglyphs and the blood of virgins?
Pretty much.
I thought XKCD was mocking the globular wormers. Is that not the case?
You're not helping your cause here... The rapidly melting glaciers up here indicates that something has changed. The data is that global warming is happening.
