It's in the 40s today in Shenandoah County and is supposed to hit 60 degrees tomorrow. That must be a warning to us and proof of global warming. The planet is heating up and we all better build our arks in the back yard so we can hop in and slam the doors when the polar ice caps melt and the coastlands disappear under rising ocean water. Be sure to stock plenty of seasickness pills.On the other hand, we just had one of the coldest Novembers on record with many cities in the southeast experiencing record lows. Augusta, Georgia recorded the sixth coldest November since 1900 and Asheville the chilliest in ten years. Perth, Australia had the coldest November of the past 37 years. So this must be a warning that we are entering a new ice age. Better stock up on thermal underwear and prepare ourselves for more of what the northeast is suffering: ice storms, frigid temperatures, and power outages.
Meanwhile, the glaciers in Norway and Alsaska are growing despite the fact that they were shrinking in the 80s. If shrinking glaciers point to global warming what do expanding glaciers point to?
The founder of the weather channel, John Coleman, has called global warming a "total myth" and a "scam." Coleman and 30,000 other scientists (including 9,000 PhDs) may sue Al Gore and others selling carbon credits for fraud. Coleman says the manipulated hysteria over global warming has become an "environmentalist religion."
Ho-hum who cares, you say? Well, how about the impact biofuels are having on the third world where the cost of grain has skyrocketed because it is now being grown for cleaner-burning fuel, thus creating food shortages. Al Gore's environmentalist hoax takes bread out of the mouths of babes literally. I doubt he loses any sleep at night. After all, Gore is a long-time anti-natalist who with President Clinton aggressively promoted population control in the third world. What's a few million starved poor folk in Africa who don't look like the Gores anyway? - Fewer carbon footprints messing up the planet.
Elitists consider the teeming masses in the third world a threat and the Clinton-Gore Cairo Conference of 1994 made it absolutely clear that population control, particularly in the third world, was at the top of their priority list. Could it be that global warming is just one more way to promote de-population? Already, voices clamor for carbon taxes on newborns who will clutter up the planet for eighty years or more interfering with the lifestyles of the the rich and famous whose favorite tourist attractions are overrun with the hoi-polloi these days.
As for global warming, I'm not worried about it. Even the global warming scare-mongers are changing their tune, singing a new song about "climate change." It's hard to sell global warming in the middle of some of the coldest weather on record. Meanwhile I'm rooting for Coleman's lawsuit against Al Gore and I plan to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather tomorrow. It's a nice break from all the unseasonably cold weather we've had lately.
"Augusta, Georgia recorded the sixth coldest November since 1900"
ReplyDeleteAmazing how many people have difficulty understanding the distinction between 'local' and 'global'.
File Under: Why can't we have a better science cirriculum?
I think that you have a closed mind on the subject and while you spend all your words in denial of the science, perhaps you should spend your time studying the science.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous claims there is some science to global warming -- perhaps he'd be kind enough to elucidate.
ReplyDeleteSo far all the science I've seen is 1) people pontificating and 2) just so stories based on anecdotal evidence.
The total data set in direct measurements of temperature goes back only to 1850 and is rather spotty. Satellite data has been much more recent and much of it doesn't suggest the gloom and doom scenarios tossed off to motivate all kinds of draconian programs.
So exactly what science?
I've been collecting data and if you have some I'd be delighted to hear about it.
On your model how do you explain the Medieval Warming Period? What about the ice ages? What percentage of the CO2 in the atmosphere is generated by human intervention? How do you know CO2 is an influential green house gas? Does 300-400 parts per million sound like a high leverage figure?
Just wondering!
So claiming that Augusta, Georgia's weather in November has little to say about the world's climate is 'denying science'?
ReplyDeleteFile under 'looney tunes'
So far all the science I've seen is 1) people pontificating and 2) just so stories based on anecdotal evidence.
ReplyDeleteApparently ignorance of climate science is supposed to be an indication that it doesn't exist.
Did you mention any? science I mean -- sorry I must have missed it. I am a Physicist and a friend of mine who did his doctorate in climatology doesn't think there is anything to global warming -- what makes you think there is? Please mention at least some data.
ReplyDeleteI must have missed the Georgia weather reference -- is it cold in Georgia in November? I live in Virginia which is probably colder than Georgia but I gather the folks down South got some snow recently. It's that weather thing you know -- earth goes around the sun, tilted on its axis, causes all sort of weather. Don't fall off!
Cheers, Ray
I must have missed the Georgia weather reference
ReplyDeleteComplaining about my post without having read the origninal blog? Par for the course for a denialist.
Please mention at least some data.
Sure. According to HADCRUT data, 8 of the last 10 warmest years of the last 150, occurred in the last decade and that is about to become 9 out of 10 when 2008 is added
http://tinyurl.com/5hjv2l
I am a Physicist and a friend of mine...
Not a very resourceful one apparently....
dear ray: Are you a scientist? I am not, just an interested amateur. I have read several books that indicate different interpretations of the data than the ones you give. I don't think that your classification of my comments as pontificating is accurate. I also don't really give credibility to anecdotal evidence. You ask what science? There is scads of it I am sure you know,
ReplyDeleteWho has a closed mind? At the International Conference on Climate Change last March, leading scientists from around the world gathered in New York to explore data results that dispute global warming. Al Gore was invited and offered his usual $200,000 honorarium. Other scientists from the global warming school of hysteria were invited to participate as well. They all declined. Closed minds?
ReplyDeleteMany scientists disagree as John Coleman points out, but the global warming school dismisses them. We all know how accurate computer models are at predicting weather ten days from now, but the global warming "experts" claim they can give us predictions 100 years in the future. Give me a break.
The prophets of doom remind me of Thomas Malthus and his predictions (early 1800s) that population increases would soon outstrip food production and lead to worldwide starvation. Wrong. Then there was Paul Ehrlich, the bug scientist, who predicted the same thing in the 60s with his book The Population Bomb. Wrong again. Starvation is almost always the result of government mismanagement, corruption, and now the biofuels idiocy.
Hysteria makes a lot of money for snake oil salesmen and generates support for more government control, more taxation, etc.
Skepticism, far from showing a closed mind, indicates the ability to think critically rather than just line up for the Kool-Ade.
I suppose the first thing to mention is that I was reacting to Anonymous and not to you Q -- I should mention that curriculum is not spelled 'cirriculum' -- What do they them in those schools? as my C.S. Lewis friends like to always say.
ReplyDeleteSo I gather you point is that because it has been warm lately it must be our fault? That really doesn't follow after all. You probably should get out of the habit of calling names, it is really counterproductive.
I looked around at the various data sets and I suppose if you have to waste your time doing something that's innocent enough. Tell me how the data sets are normed so that they can be said to be globally representative?
I think that all the global warming concern is quite clear evidence that people have too much time on their hands. Then they get to worrying, floride, alar, mercury, lead, CO2, heavy metals, nitrates, aspertine, aspirin, genetically modified plants, earth crossing asteroids, comet tails, methane, ethanol, non-organic food, transfats, ... I'm sure I've missed some.
Good luck ... It'll be all right.
Hi Anonymous -- there is a lot of science and a lot of noise as well. Most the real scientists that I know are a lot less certain that global warming is something to worry about than the general run of the mass hysteria.
ReplyDeleteThe sense I have of it is that a lot of this is driven by climate models which are big computer codes that try to model the climate (we can't even make a long range forecast that is accurate) -- there are something like 20 models and three or four times as many wrangling scientists who have an interest in the models. The are all arguing about one or two degrees per century one way or the other. They can't all be wrong but only because they have the likely range totally covered so someone will be right, likely by accident.
If I had a say in the matter I'd take global warming before global cooling. There is no sign of catastrophic climate change except in fantasy land.
I think we're likely to be talking about the weather for a long long time. It will likely shift between global warming and global cooling based on whatever happened lately. That's all.
The bottom line is that we know too little to make all these dire predictions stick. Good thing!
At the International Conference on Climate Change last March....
ReplyDeleteThis conference was was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a 'free market' think tank that refuses to reveal its funding sources.
According to the Washington Post it was "a sort of global warming doppelganger conference, where everything was reversed". The New York Times reports that when an organizer asked scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 showed up.
As far as I can determine not ONE mainstream professional society of scientists endorsed meeting.
Meanwhile according to the American Meteorological Society, the mainstream professional organization of meteorologists of all stripes, forecasters and researchers....
There is now clear evidence that the mean annual temperature at the Earth's surface, averaged over the entire globe, has been increasing in the past 200 years.
dear mary ann: If Q is right about the "politics" of the conference that you mention, it doesn't seem very credible, does it? I mean, I should probably dismiss it as a reason to agree with you, correct?
ReplyDelete- I should mention that curriculum is not spelled 'cirriculum'
ReplyDeleteWhen in doubt go after the typos.
So I gather you point is that because it has been warm lately it must be our fault?
I can't think of anything in my posts that would suggest such a conclusion. Evidently you are one of those jump to conclusions 'physicists'
Tell me how the data sets are normed so that they can be said to be globally representative?
Being a 'physicist' perhaps you should first try to figure that out by yourself. It will be a good learning experience.
Conference Co-sponsors for the
ReplyDelete2008 International Conference on Climate Change
Americans for Tax Reform
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise..
Congress of Racial Inequality....
The complete list of sponsors which contains not a single scientific organization can be found here
http://tinyurl.com/57zha6
"The prophets of doom remind me of Thomas Malthus..."
ReplyDelete"Paul Ehrlich, the bug scientist, who predicted the same..."
Gee. Two people whose predictions turned out to be wrong.
I guess that is supposed to settle the climate debate.
On your model how do you explain the Medieval Warming Period?
ReplyDeleteNatural variability perhaps. The RATE OF CHANGE of temperature is much larger today however suggesting the causes are probably very different.
http://tinyurl.com/6y3b37
dear mary ann: I am not one to line up for anyones Kool-aid (a rather disturbing dismissal of other opinions).Although you write with wit, you are a politician disguised as a scientist. My conclusion is that you have no credibility on this subject
ReplyDeleteQ said, "This conference was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a 'free market' think tank that refuses to reveal its funding sources."
ReplyDeleteSo? Greenpeace has an agenda and regularly sponsors global warming hype. I doubt you object to that.
Q said, "There is now clear evidence that the mean annual temperature at the Earth's surface, averaged over the entire globe, has been increasing in the past 200 years."
And your point is? Temperature fluctuations exist. I don't dispute that. What I do dispute is the scare-mongering which was my point about Malthus. I don't think we should be making policy based on worst case scenarios using questionable computer models.
Anonymous said, "If Q is right about the "politics" of the conference that you mention, it doesn't seem very credible, does it?" It is just as credible as the other side. Do a google on the politics of global warming and you get groups from both sides. I found this interview interesting. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_492572.html
I don't think there is a big dispute about the planet warming slightly, but the causes are definitely in dispute and the dire predictions, many scientists believe, are unwarranted.
I'm not posting any more on this. The only warming I'm focusing on now is hearth, home, Christmas caroling at the nursing home, writing Christmas cards, wrapping presents, and decorating the tree. I think that will keep me busy until Christmas eve for sure.
Anonymous, I sent my previous message before yours posted.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a scientist and never claimed to be. But I've read both sides and I know for sure that Al Gore is a politiician with no credibility at all. The fact that he wants to control population makes his agenda with global warming alarming to me. This is likely to be used to suppress development in the third world and it will have a huge economic impact on the developed world as well.
And that really is my last comment. Merry Christmas
Q said, "There is now clear evidence that the mean annual temperature at the Earth's surface, averaged over the entire globe, has been increasing in the past 200 years.
ReplyDeleteWrong. As I clearly indicated the American Meteorological Society said it. Why is you denialists can't read a simple paragraph and get it right?
And that really is my last comment. Merry Christmas
ReplyDeleteI don't blame you. You are waaaay over your head.
Merry Christmas.
So? Greenpeace has an agenda and regularly sponsors global warming hype. I doubt you object to that.
ReplyDeleteMary Ann is apparently unable to distinguish between private, nonscientific institutions with an agenda, like the Heartland Institute, Greenpeace etc. and national scientific organizations like the American Meteorological Society, the National Academy of Sciences, The American Statistical Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Federation of American Scientists, American Geophysical Union, NASA, etc.
From what I can see all the name calling is coming from Q who claims to have some credentials or other.
ReplyDeleteScientists are not in agreement on global warming. There are tens of thousands of scientists who have signed a statement that this is alarmist stuff. Those who support it are not offering solid science they are making groundless accusations (questioning funding sources ??? funding for what ???) Do you imagine that because research is funded by the government for example it is more credible? Talk about agenda driven.
Calling those who disagree with you "deniers" is not a scientific posture. Whether or not there has been a global warming trend has to be determined from the quality and integrity of the data set. But even if you can firmly establish that you can't establish that it is caused by human activity.
Just repeating your mantra doesn't prove anything. Science is about the quality of the data not the credentials of the scientists unlike consensus driven disciplines like history.
Below is a link to a list of scientists who disagree. Over 31,000 bonefide scientists have signed a petition as disagreeing -- do they count or only the ones that agree with you Q?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
There is no evidence that global warming is 1) all that alarming, and 2) caused by human beings in the first place. All the claims are model-driven. Since I write computer models all the time I know that you get out what you design in. I might add that few of the global climate models agree very closely. Kick back and find something else to worry about.
http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Review_Article.html
ReplyDeleteYou might want to look at the data in the petition project just in case you think that global warming is manmade and a slam dunk.
Global warming is certainly happening just as global cooling happens, but there is plenty of evidence that human activity has nothing to do with it.
Look at the data! Then you can find some other disaster to worry about.
Q you said:Mary Ann is apparently unable to distinguish between private, nonscientific institutions with an agenda, like the Heartland Institute, Greenpeace etc. and national scientific organizations like the American Meteorological Society, the National Academy of Sciences, The American Statistical Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Federation of American Scientists, American Geophysical Union, NASA, etc.
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could explain that remark to me. Do you think that the people in these organization are of different types, different degrees of veracity, different levels of expertise, different levels of cupidity -- just what is it that you are saying? I've been and am a member of lots of organizations, technical and otherwise. Being a member doesn't mean much more that you can get reduced rates a their sponsored meetings and you get a copy of the journal(s) -- do you think it makes you smarter or something? In that case I'm a member of the ACM, the IEEE, a past member of the American Physical Society, a current member of the ASQ, the ADPA, etc. do I get a point for each? What organizations do you belong do? Did they vet you in some way? or do you just pay dues? NASA and most government agencies have just a big agendas and Greenpeace or any other organization -- so suck it up. That's not an argument. It is an attempt to cow people with pseudo authority. The only authority that counts in science is data. Frankly the data doesn't support manmade causes of global warming except if they are explicity generated by model driven assumptions. Check out the Club of Rome's models -- you're dead according to them.
Cheers, Ray
From what I can see all the name calling is coming from Q who claims to have some credentials or other.
ReplyDeleteI made no such claim. Once again you denialists seem to have difficulty reading entire paragraphs.
You might want to look at the data in the petition project just in case you think that global warming is manmade and a slam dunk.
The petition project? Their criterion to be considered a 'scientist' was laughable - an undergrad degree in science. Even then then they were only signing a petition to reject Kyoto.
By the way you'll never be taken seriously until you learn to distinguish between global warming, human-caused global warming, and Kyoto. You seem to think they are all the same thing. Very sloppy for a 'physicist'.
Sloppy -- I have not heard you say anything that is definitive about anything. You just are a troll as far as I can see Q.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all if you think there is something to distinguish you might actually mention what it is.
Data doesn't come with motivations built in. All data requires some sort of interpretation. The point is that a very large number of scientists (BTW since when is an undergraduate degree something to snear at? As a BS in Physics I collected hundreds of hours of earth magnetic field data from aircraft. My data wasn't better or worse because I didn't have my MS yet or later didn't have my Ph.D. yet. Get real.
The petition site has some very interesting data sets on it which show data sequences before the industrial revolution through the build up in human use of CO2 producing technologies without any change whatsoever in the slope.
That's a very negative result if you want to believe in man made global warming. I might add that it only takes one negative data set to invalidate the hypothesis and there are lots of negative data sets. That's the point.
---
There are no experimental data to support the hypothesis that in -
creases in hu man hydrocarbon use or in at mospheric carbon di oxide
and other green house gases are causing or can be expected to cause
unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape.
There is no reason to limit hu man pro duction of CO2, CH4, and other
minor green house gases as has been pro posed (82,83,97,123).
We also need not worry about environmental calamities even if
the current nat ural warming trend con tinues. The Earth has been
much warmer dur ing the past 3,000 years without catastrophic ef -
fects. Warmer weather ex tends growing sea sons and generally improves the habitability of colder regions.
---
That is an excerpt from the peer reviewed paper which includes data sets that show that no slope change in temperature occurred over the industrial revolution build up in the use of coal, oil and gas.
The paper and the data sets can be seen at http://www.petitionproject.org/gwdatabase/GWPP/Review_Article.html
If you don't have data you need to at least deal with the data that exists. The ice core data for example shows CO2 increasing after the temperature increases -- that is not the right causality relationship. Sorry -- the warming is natural and not even out of historical norms.
Cheers, Ray
Email I just got from a friend:
ReplyDeleteThe temperature at Denver International Airport dropped to 18 below zero on Sunday, breaking the previous record of 14 below set in 1901. White Sulphur Springs, Mont., reported 29 below to the National Weather Service, breaking the record of 17 below set in 1922. Meanwhile, ice storms ravage the Northeast and the upper Midwest.
This is not a local phenomenon. Hong Kong had the second-longest cold spell since 1885. Cold in northern Vietnam destroyed 40% of the rice crop and killed 33,000 head of livestock. The British Parliament debated climate change as London experienced the first October snow since 1934.
Presumably this has all been reported by the Associated Press. But according to a weekend AP report, this is all an illusion and "2008 is on a pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line." Rather than being "evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming." Oh.
The report, which includes no comments from any skeptic, says global warming "is a ticking time-bomb that President-elect Obama can't avoid." It warns "warming is accelerating. Time is running out, and Obama knows it." Especially if he relies on AP wire reports.
Problem is, nature didn't get the memo. Geophysicist David Deming found that for the first time since the 18th century, in the days before SUVs, Alaskan glaciers grew this year instead of retreating. Fairbanks had its fourth coldest October in 104 years of records.
U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia reported: "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July." It was the worst summer he'd seen in two decades.
As the Anchorage Daily News reports, "Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Ice Field witnessed the kind if snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too."
The consequence of melting glaciers and sea ice is supposed to be rising sea levels. The poster children for this phenomenon are low-lying coral islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu. Again, the facts are ignored in the quest for headlines.
The satellite record shows the sea level has actually fallen four inches around Tuvalu since 1993, when the $100 million international TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite project record began.
As in other places around the world, sea-level changes have many natural explanations, including geologic changes in the land.
The atolls of Tuvalu rest on sinking volcanic rock on top of which new coral grows to replace the coral die-off that occurs as the volcanic rock sinks deeper into the ocean where coral does not survive. Sand is excavated for building material on Tuvalu. Excavation for building material has eroded the beach, thus giving to the casual, or biased, observer the impression of rising sea levels.
The strong El Nino of 1997-98 caused the sea level surrounding Tuvalu to drop just over one foot.
Patrick Michaels, a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and visiting scientist with the Marshall Institute in Washington, D.C., notes that Tuvalu is near the epicenter of a region where the sea level has been declining for nearly 50 years. He has written that the decline has been so steep that, even accepting the U.N.'s median estimates of global warming over the next hundred years, Tuvalu would not return to its 1950 sea level until 2050, much less disappear under the sea.
None of this, of course, matters to the warming zealots and some major media outlets. If it's too dry or too wet, too hot or too cold, everything is caused by global warming. We believe, as do many reputable scientists, that the warming and cooling of the earth is a natural phenomenon dictated by forces beyond our control, from ocean currents to solar activity. We needn't worry about one day mooring our boats to the Washington Monument.
--- I guess everyone doesn't agree with Q.
"That is an excerpt from the peer reviewed paper which includes data sets that show..."
ReplyDeleteA review of global warming in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons? What better place? By the way the following book reviews can be found in the same issue.
The Trouble With Medical Journals
(Richard Smith)
Reviewed by Joel M. Kauffman Ph.D.
Minutemen – The Battle To Secure America’s
Border (Jim Gilchrist, Jerome Corsi)
Reviewed by Elizabeth Kamenar, M.D.
Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation
Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation(Richard A.
Epstein)
Reviewed by Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D.
Also by doing a bit of research you will find that the Journal is not included in the major scientific data bases used by most University libraries. It is however referred to by Quackwatch and Nationmaster as as untrustorthy. The World Health organization refers to it as 'troublesome'
You wingnuts just get funnier and funnier.
Selective dismissal -- sort of the inverse of cherry picking your data right ... Do you do anything but character assassination Q?
ReplyDeleteApparently the first gate with you is an ideological one. This guarantees that they you get the result you want since you wear blinders to anything else. You have not presented any data whatsoever.
I think the troll designation is accurate. You apply only ideological tests and have presented exactly no data whatsoever. This is typical of the global warming alarmists.
You don't like my data -- where is yours? Oh I forgot, you don't need data because you think right, isn't that it?
So far you've done almost all the namecalling. I never mentioned Kyota because I never mentioned it, but you seem to think it's important. It's a treaty not a science element ... if you want to reduce carbon signatures why not go where they are, like China and talk with them.
You also introduced the term "wingnut" which so far as I can tell describes you to a T since you have not made any attempt to present actual data. I pointed out: 1) There are many many bonefide scientists who don't think global warming is human induced or even significantly contributed to by human activity, your response 2/3rds of them only have BSs-- gee what percentage of working scientists do you think get PhDs -- almost a third had PhDs -- I might add that the ratio of PhDs to working scientists is probably closer to 5%
But I suppose you can dismiss the over 9,000 PhDs that don't agree with the alarmist position.
Do you have any credentials or just that degree in trolldom you're exercising?
Cheers, Ray
"The temperature at Denver International Airport dropped to 18 below zero on Sunday, breaking the previous record of 14 below set in 1901"
ReplyDeleteNot surprisingly we see that denialists are unable to distinguish between the globe and Denver.
This is not a local phenomenon.
Yes it is. Both in time and space. With the data in so far, it is pretty clear that 2008 will rank among the top 10 hottest years of the last 150.
Hot off the press...
ScienceDaily:
Second Warmest October For Global Temperatures, NOAA Says
ScienceDaily (Nov. 24, 2008) — The combined global land and ocean surface average temperature for October 2008 was the second warmest since records began in 1880, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
Selective dismissal -- sort of the inverse of cherry picking your data right
ReplyDeleteNot exactly. Cherry picking involves choosing data that supports your hypothesis and rejecting the rest for no good reason. I'm merely relying on the standard scientific database used by Harvard, MIT, etc. Do you think they are part of a conspiracy?
Google Scholar is a search engine used for scholarly articles. The number of hits for the Journal of American Physicians and Scholars is 322 while The New England Journal of Medicine gets 700,000 and The Lancet gets 1,400,000.
That's as good a definition of 'obscure' as one can expect to find.
You also introduced the term "wingnut" which so far as I can tell describes you to a T since you have not made any attempt to present actual data.
ReplyDeleteWrong again. Like many wingnuts you seem to be impervious to new information. Let me try again.
From an earlier post:
According to HADCRUT data, 8 of the last 10 warmest years of the last 150, occurred in the last decade and that is about to become 9 out of 10 when 2008 is added,
http://tinyurl.com/5hjv2l
The data backing up the statement can be found using the link. Get it?
While there is a difference between local results and global ones -- all measurements except remote sensing measurements from satellite are inherently local. So the claim that they are global can only be made through some method of combination of measurements. So I doubt the 1880 date since the likelihood of enough local measurements to combine into a global measurement in 1880 is pretty low.
ReplyDeleteThe December 11th report shows:
December 11, 2008
The November 2008 temperature for the contiguous United States was warmer than the long-term average, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The January-November 2008 temperature was near average.
---
Cherry picking November when the average for the year is near average (which BTW means the 50% point if the data are normally distributed) -- so by selecting the November data you intentionally highlight an outlier for the year.
Gee how scientific of you.
BTW the article which was claiming anomalously cold weather in widely separated points was from Investor's Business Daily which is where by friend gets a lot of his stuff.
The first question I'd have is why should one believe any specific "average" which is produced by glomming together a loose grid of temperature observations?
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/images/11statewidetrank.png
is the high res US map. Tell me it makes sense to average that -- why?
Note the deep lows in the Southeast and substantial highs in the Northwest. What explains the gradient? I looked for the standard deviation in these data and didn't see them. In the absence of the standard deviation the significance of statements about being above the average is hard to judge. Also it would be interesting to know how the average temperature was computer -- is it just the mid point between the high and low or is it a time average.
The point I'm trying to make is that the observation can be correct and essentially meaningless. Any particular measure will always be above or below the mean and it doesn't mean very much unless the observation is far from the mean as measured by the standard deviation.
The NOAA report reads a bit like the daily reports on the stock market -- it goes up, it goes down.
In any case I'm not arguing with the data, only the notion that we have anything to do with it. Temperatures on average are either going up or going down on any epoch. We have some way to go to get to the levels of the Medieval Optimum if we even get there.
Cheers, Ray
Obscure is not the same as wrong. Mendel's famous genetic paper was published in an obscure journal too. In any case the data is what I was referring to. You seem to focus on the political perspective and science is not about either consensus or about politics -- it is about data. So unless you trying to say that they simply faked the data I think you have to deal with it.
ReplyDeleteSo what if n of the last m years -- I'm not denying that there is a warming trend. I'm denying that it matters. If it wasn't a warming trend it would be a cooling trend. If there is a warming trend then of course the last n years would be on average warmer than the previous n years -- that's the definition of warming.
ReplyDeleteSome of the significant questions are: 1) does it matter? and 2) Why? and 3) What evidence is there that we have anything to do with it?
My set of proposed answers are: 1) no it doesn't matter it is within historical norms and there is no particular reason that anything terribly out of the ordinary is going on, 2) the hypotheses that CO2 is causeing warming has substantial facts against it. It is more likely that warming is driving CO2 increases. 3) There is no evidence we could do anything about it anyway.
So find something else to worry about.
But I suppose you can dismiss the over 9,000 PhDs that don't agree with the alarmist position.
ReplyDeleteApparently Ray, the 'physicist', thinks that having a PhD in Medicine, Economics, Political Science etc. means you are qualified to speak on global warming.
Naw..lets stick to those who have published in the scholarly journals (meaning that those who work at Exxon, Shell etc. are in the minority)
Obscure is not the same as wrong. Mendel's famous genetic paper was published in an obscure journal too
ReplyDeleteAnd most important papers are not so let me compromise and agree there is a TINY TINY possibility you are right.
-- I'm not denying that there is a warming trend.
ReplyDeleteRAY BELIEVES IN GLOBAL WARMING!
That's progress I guess.
Cherry picking November when the average for the year is near average (which BTW means the 50% point if the data are normally distributed) -- so by selecting the November data you intentionally highlight an outlier for the year.
ReplyDeleteNovember? If you are referring to the Science Daily article, it was October. Anyway I was merely noting that the December cold in Denver and other places in North America that you were hyping could easily be offset by the warm GLOBAL October in the calculation of the annual global average.
"no it doesn't matter it is within historical norms"
ReplyDeleteWrong. While the AMOUNT of warming so far is not too far above historical norms, the RATE OF WARMING is unprecedented. This is obvious from the DATA which you continually ignore. Check out the last part of this graph...
http://tinyurl.com/6y3b37
Wickepedia and the global warming art project are reputable sources? And exactly how can scientists determine with any kind of accuracy what the temperatures were 12,000 years ago except through modeling?
ReplyDeleteI'm a little sick of the name-calling about denialists and wingnuts and the insulting sarcasm. (Thanks, Q.) So I've changed the settings to only allow registered bloggers to post. If you wish to continue to use an open ID.
On second thought I'm just closing this thread.
ReplyDelete