There has been no
warming trend so far in the 21st century, based on EVERY temperature
measurement methodology in use.
There were only
two periods of global warming during the 20th century, from about 1910 to 1940,
and from 1976 to 1998.
No one knows what
caused the warming.
No one blames the
1910 to 1940 warming on manmade CO2.
Based on weather
satellite data from 1979 to 1998, most of the warming was actually local
warming in the northern part of the Northern Hemisphere, mainly during winter
nights.
There has not been
the widespread year-after-year global warming that was claimed to be the
mandatory result of emitting more and more manmade carbon dioxide (CO2).
The claim that
climate computer games can predict Earth's average temperature many decades
into the future is a hoax.
The claim that a
crisis of some sort is coming, and can ONLY be prevented by following the
commands of the person or people making that claim, is a centuries-old strategy
to gain power over gullible people, originally used by religious leaders.
Definitions:
Al
Gore: Science illiterate who makes wild and crazy climate
predictions that are always wrong. Leftists consider him to be their
"Climate Pope".
IPCC:
UN group of leftist climate modelers on government payrolls, and non-scientist
activists, who regularly present non-scientific climate opinions and beliefs
with high confidence … as Mother Nature ignores their predictions. Leftists
consider the IPCC Summary Report to be their "Climate Bible".
Climate
Computer Models: Climate astrology. Four decades of
inaccurate predictions that have grossly overestimated actual global warming.
Average
Temperature of Earth: A statistic that is an ever-changing
rough estimate with no importance to humans because 99.999% of historical data
are unknown, and no one can define "normal". Local temperatures,
however, are important to humans.
Global
Warming: Harmless natural climate trend that
alternates with global cooling between Earth's ice ages. Both trends are
believed to typically last for hundreds of years, based on climate proxy
studies.
CO2:
Harmless airborne plant fertilizer demonized by leftists,
whose concentration in the air has increased hundreds of years AFTER natural
forces caused ocean warming, per climate proxy studies. There is also no
correlation of CO2 levels and average temperature in real-time measurements
since the 1800s, so there is no scientific proof that CO2 causes global
warming.
"Environmentalists":
Leftists who used to care about real, visible pollution, which was justified,
but then changed to promoting imaginary environmental boogeymen to scare
people, get attention, and get government grants. The field attracts people who used to call themselves
Marxists because every environmental "crisis" seems to require the
same "solution": A bigger more powerful central government.
Climate
Cult: A subset of "environmentalists" who only care
about global warming, but after 12 to 18 years of no warming trend they have
cleverly changed their boogeyman's name from "global warming" to
"climate change". Since everything that has ever happened on Earth
for the past 4.5 billion years has been accompanied by climate change, this
cult will blame every extreme local weather event on "climate
change", even unusually cold weather! Their "Climate Pope" is Al
Gore, and their "Climate Bible" is the IPCC Summary Report.
Environmental
Boogeyman: Any environmental issue, real or
imaginary, claimed to be a "crisis" which will end life on Earth as
we know it … unless everyone follows "environmentalist" orders
without question. When a boogeyman stops scaring people, it is replaced by a
new boogeyman, and the old boogeyman silently "disappears". Nothing
bad actually happens -- the primary goal is just to scare people.
“Future
generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early twenty-first
century’s developed world went into a hysterical panic over a globally averaged
temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross
exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into
implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the
industrial age.” Richard S. Lindzen, PhD
MIT Professor of Atmospheric Sciences,
member of the National Academy of Sciences, and former lead author, UN
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Note to Democrats, Marxists and other Big Government
lovers:
Do
yourself a favor and stop reading this blog now. My summary of climate facts
and your leftist climate beliefs will clash. You treat Al Gore as your climate
"Pope", for example, and I know he is a scientific illiterate, who
took two elementary science courses in college and couldn't manage to get an A
or B in either of them. You treat the IPCC Summary Report as your climate
"Bible" -- I know it is a non-scientific summary of leftist opinions,
at variance with the back-up documents, and supported by computer game climate
simulations that have no predictive ability.
I
consider your beloved climate modelers to be computer gamers on the public dole
undermining real climate science. And
if any leftist got this far, stop demonizing the airborne plant food called CO2
while acting like political zealots -- taking billions of dollars of government
grants, refusing to debate your scary predictions, and making idiotic
statements such as "the science is settled". Science is never
settled. Start demonizing REAL pollution of the land, water and air -- in
China, for one good example -- and then you will be real environmentalists
addressing real pollution.
This blog is my summary
of scientific data, and logical data-based conclusions, from 17 years of
reading climate articles and papers written by scientists.
I do not collect climate
data or do any original climate research. I would not write about global
warming if there was not so much lying and propaganda about the subject.
I do not have any climate
'beliefs', nor do I claim to be able to predict the future climate
-- no one can predict the future, although some people pretend they can, and
isn't it strange how often they see a coming environmental catastrophe unless
everyone does as they say without question?
Who are you going to
believe, me, or this New York Times headline: "America in Longest Warm
Spell Since 1776"? I seek knowledge and reach
conclusions supported by the most accurate data available -- my conclusions
will change if new data demand a change, in contrast to leftist beliefs that
never change, are never debated, and are the only 'news fit to print' according
to the left-wing biased New York Times.
That "Longest Warm Spell"
headline, by the way, was from the March 27, 1933 New York Times. It was so hot
in the 1930s that every year in recent decades leftist climate
"scientists" have quietly revised average temperature of Earth data
from the 1930s to make the decade cooler and cooler -- there's no need to let
unpleasant raw data interfere with their precious global warming beliefs.
There has never been a
correlation of CO2 levels in the air and the average temperature of Earth.
That means there is no
scientific proof CO2 increasing above current levels will cause any
warming.
The ramp-up of manmade CO2 in the air
after 1940 was accompanied by global COOLING trends most of the time (1940
through 1976, and 1998 through 2014), based on the most accurate temperature
measurements available at the time.
That's not proof more CO2 in the air
causes global cooling.
The years 1976 to 1998
are the only period in 4.5 billion years of Earth's history when the trend of
manmade CO2 and average temperature both went up at the same time.
That's not proof more CO2 in the air
causes global warming.
It's not logical to
believe for 4.5 billion years natural factors were responsible for climate
change, but since 1940 natural factors are ONLY responsible for cooling trends,
while warming is ONLY caused by manmade CO2 ... yet that is what the pesky
"environmentalists" are claiming, and hoping gullible people believe
them.
The 'coming climate catastrophe' is a
figment of overactive "environmentalist" imaginations -- global
warming is their imaginary boogeyman, used as a political tool to get three
things they do not deserve: Attention, money, and political power through the
EPA and other government agencies.
"Environmentalists"
are science deniers -- they prefer scary computer game climate astrology to
boring real climate data.
Note:
New data may cause changes to my climate conclusions because my conclusions are
always supported by data -- they are not personal beliefs that never change.
Conclusions without supporting data
would be just be personal opinions. Predictions of the future climate are
ALWAYS personal opinions, not science, because scientists can't predict the
future climate of Earth -- they barely understand the past climate.
Personal opinions on the
climate published by the UN are deliberately made to resemble real science by
the use of mathematics and complex writing.
I won't waste your time, and mine,
predicting the future climate or debating someone else's prediction.
Climate predictions made with computer
models over the past 40 years have been horribly inaccurate, so current
predictions do not deserve any attention.
Assuming cycles in climate history
repeat, there will be ice ages separated by repeated mild warming/cooling
cycles lasting hundreds of years.
We are most likely in a
mild warming trend now, starting in roughly 1850, which was definitely not
started by CO2.
It has also been warming since the last
ice age peaked 18,000 years ago, also not started by CO2.
Hmmm … it seems that global warming can
have natural causes!
It's also been cooling
since the Greenhouse Ages when there was no ice on either pole and all the land
was tropical and sub-tropical, from pole to pole.
In fact, Earth's climate has been
changing for the entire 4.5 billion years that our planet has existed -- our
planet is not in thermodynamic equilibrium.
If you don't believe
Earth's climate is always changing, you might as well stop reading now -- your
climate beliefs are more important to you than learning the most basic climate
fact.
My thoughts on leftist motives for their climate scaremongering
are personal opinions based on common sense, and my direct observations of
leftists in the 1960s and early 1970s, when I was one.
Leftists will not reveal their motives
directly, other than saying they want to save the Earth.
They have been saying that about every
environmental boogeyman since the 1960s.
Earth, however, doesn't need saving, so
that's a meaningless claim.
A one to two degree F.
(+/- one degree F.) change of Earth's average temperature, measured very
roughly over the past 134 years, is not scary.
However it has been used
as an 'opening act' for scary computer game predictions of the future climate
… made without ever explaining how anyone could predict local temperatures 100
years in the future to compile a global average … when no has ever proven to be
capable of accurately predicting local temperatures 10 days in the future … but
then leftists always want a boogeyman to scare people into giving their
government leaders more power over the private sector, so they treat climate
predictions as if they are 100% accurate, and character attack everyone who
questions their ability to make 100% accurate predictions.
The goal of the leftists
is to generate a world-wide panic over the future climate, starting with
climate change propaganda spouted by leftist teachers in elementary schools.
The goal of climate propaganda is to
cause people to demand, or at least accept, the recommendations of
environmental extremists who want to turn back the industrial age, and
apparently want everyone to get around with horses again (I assume gondolas
would replace cars and trucks in cities flooded by global warming when the
water was too deep for horses).
Not that there's anything wrong with
horses and gondolas, if you are not in a rush.
Today's "environmentalists"
are the modern-day equivalent of 1800s con men stock promoters standing by
holes in the ground and telling anyone who will listen there's gold down there!
Climate should be a happy
subject because Earth's climate has improved in the past 134 years -- about one
or two degrees F. warmer -- with no correlation of CO2 levels and the average
temperature of Earth, so there is no reason to fear more CO2 in the air.
In fact, there are thousands of studies
proving green plants love more CO2 in the air, as every greenhouse owner who
uses a CO2 enrichment system already knows.
Scientific evidence and
greenhouse experience proves there are real benefits from more CO2 in the air
for green plant growth, while there's never been any bad news from more CO2 in
the air -- scary global warming predictions, based on false greenhouse theories,
are not proof of anything.
Especially when future warming from
higher CO2 levels is predicted to be much more than the warming since 1880 (of
course there is no proof any of that warming had been caused by CO2) … even
though the beloved greenhouse theory says each +100 ppmv increase of CO2
in the air causes less warming than the prior +100 ppmv increase of CO2 -- so
not only is the greenhouse theory unproven, but its also ignored by the very
people who created it, simply because they want to make scarier global warming
predictions of the future climate!
Earth's climate was healthy in 2014,
except for pollution in Asia, and a lot of cold weather records set in the
world …
including my in-garage water meter freezing and cracking in February 2014, for
the first time in 27 years, for which I was charged $300, plus the cost of
renting a huge propane heater for five hours to thaw my pipes, during a very
cold winter that set new snowfall records for the Detroit metropolitan area
where I live (I've lived in Bingham Farms, Michigan since 1987).
"Environmentalists" can, and
do, get lots of money from governments by predicting a coming climate
catastrophe, and claiming it can ONLY be stopped if governments are given a lot
more power to control the private sector.
There's a lot of money to
be made from climate catastrophe predictions, and no grants for saying the
climate is normal … so some "scientists" with bills to pay are
willing to take the money, play computer games, and make scary climate
predictions every year.
Computer game simulations are not real
data, however, and working without real data is not real science.
"Environmentalists"
specialize in trying to scare people to get attention, funding, and new
government regulations to roll back the industrial age.
The Marxists among them, and there are
plenty of them (the "greens" are the new "reds") also want
"climate reparations" transferring wealth from rich nations to poor
nations.
"Environmentalists"
used to be concerned about dirty US air, water and soil in the 1970s, which was
a good cause, but they have changed.
They no longer care about
the environment.
If they did, they would
be cheering for more CO2 in the air to accelerate green plant growth and reduce
green plant water requirements, with little or no effect on the average
temperature.
"Environmentalists" also
don't seem to care about polluted Chinese air, water and soil, at least not for
the next few decades.
So what do
"environmentalists" really care about?
They care about getting attention,
money and political power, and some also want taxpayer-funded subsidies for
their alternative energy businesses, investments and product purchases.
"Environmentalists"
were incredibly wrong with their 1960s attack on DDT that ended up killing
millions of people from malaria, yet they never apologized for their false
demonization of DDT.
"Environmentalists" have
become more desperate than ever for attention and political power, especially
after a large number of cold weather records set in the past two years,
including a huge increase of Northern Hemisphere sea ice back to normal levels,
and record levels of Southern Hemisphere sea ice.
Just seven years ago, in
2007, "Climate Pope" Al Gore wrote that Arctic sea ice could be
entirely melted by 2007 -- I won't hold my breath waiting for his apology for
unnecessarily scaring people.
I got interested in the climate only
because of the blatant lying and obvious scaremongering I discovered in the
late 1990s.
I've also lived long
enough to know predictions of the future are usually wrong, and predictions of
a coming catastrophe, unless people do what the predictor says without
question, are an ancient strategy used by devious men to gain power.
"Environmentalists" have
warned of a coming climate catastrophe every year for the past 45 years.
I wonder how many years of false
warnings are required before people stop listening to their bogus predictions?
Nothing harmful has happened to our climate so far, and there is no indication anything harmful will happen … other than the 1850 Modern Warming eventually ending, and a cooling trend starting -- in fact cooling trend may have already started a dozen years ago!
The only thing to fear,
if you want to worry about something, is the next ice age … especially if you
can't ice skate -- Michigan was under one or two miles
of ice 18,000 years ago when manmade CO2 ended the ice age and started a
warming trend still in progress … wait a minute, maybe manmade CO2 from coal
power plants and SUVs did NOT end the last ice age -- maybe the warming since
then had natural causes … until after 1940, when according to
"environmentalists" (and I'm not making this up), global warming no
longer had 100% natural causes, and suddenly global warming was 100% caused by
manmade CO2 !
The global warming crisis
warnings have obviously been wrong for 45 years so far, just as wrong as over
one dozen prior "environmentalist" warnings about DDT, acid rain, a
hole in the ozone layer, etc.
"Environmentalist's'" primary
strategy since the 1970s has been demonizing a harmless airborne fertilizer,
CO2, which is a tiny 400 parts per million by volume of our atmosphere …
specifically demonizing manmade CO2, assumed to be just 3% to 5% of all
atmospheric CO2.
I have been reading climate articles
since 1997 -- The first thing I learned was climate is ALWAYS changing on
Earth.
Few "global warmists" seem to
know that in 2015.
A slight warming of
Earth's average temperature in the past 134 years has been treated as really
bad news, when in reality it was good news because it followed many centuries
of cool weather, per climate proxy studies.
If the average temperature of Earth had
not changed over the past 134 years, that would have been unusual.
We've been having fewer
severe storms on Earth, not more as the global warmists have falsely predicted
for decades:
(1) 2014 was near a 30-year low in
worldwide hurricane energy (measured
by “accumulated cyclone energy,” or ACE index).
(2) Landfalling hurricanes in the US
have been in a downward trend since 1945.
(3) It has been over 3,000 days since
the last Category 3 or stronger hurricane hit the US mainland (2005) -- this is
the longest stretch (by more than 1,000 days) without a strong hurricane since
records began in 1900.
(4) This year's Atlantic hurricane
season was the least active in 30 years.
Scary (false) predictions
are a political boogeyman invented by leftist extremists to indirectly attack
the economic growth and population growth they hate.
Leftists would rather die than go
through life without an alleged "crisis" they claim can ONLY be
solved by everyone doing exactly as they say, without question ... so they say
people must vote only for Democrats, because they (falsely) claim Republicans
"don't care" about the Earth.
Leftist
"environmentalists" have been insulting our intelligence since the
1960s, by inventing one false environmental "crisis" after another.
All the alleged
environmental crises are said to cause the same problem: Life on Earth 'will
end as we know it'.
Do you remember the acid
rain crisis, the hole in the ozone layer crisis, etc.?
A coming environmental
'crisis' lasts until the public loses interest, and then another scary bogeyman
is invented … and of course every new boogeyman "requires" the same
old solution: More government regulations, more government taxes, and
micromanaging people's lives.
The latest leftist bogeyman is
"global warming" ("global
cooling" for a while in the mid-1970s).
The average temperature
of Earth is not a direct measurement of anything -- it is an ever-changing
complex statistic that may be interesting to know, but serves no useful
scientific purpose.
Average temperature is used mainly for
political purposes, through wild guess extrapolations of recent data going 100
years into the future, leading to bogus claims 'life on Earth will end as we
know it' unless we elect Democrats.
The average temperature
statistic is used as a political tool because there are no good alternative
statistics available (no statistics show global warming has harmed humans,
animals, or plants -- in fact, humans are healthier, humans live much longer,
and plants are growing faster, than 134 years ago).
In the absence of any actual (not
merely predicted) harm from global warming, "environmentalists" need
some real data to scare people -- predictions of a future climate catastrophe
are too abstract, and too hard to believe, if presented without any real data.
Average temperature statistics were
first compiled in the mid-1800s with very few thermometers, far from global
coverage, and most of the surviving thermometers from that era read low
compared with modern accurate thermometers -- so the temperatures read from
them in the 1800s were probably too cool and had an accuracy of +/- 1 degree
F., at best.
All real time average
temperature statistics calculated in the past 134 years were derived from local
temperature data collected during a warming trend that started in the mid-1800s
-- a trend most likely still in progress, so record high years are not ‘news’
that deserve front page headlines -- record highs should be expected repeatedly
until that 1850 Modern Warming ends, and a cooling trend begins … and no one
knows when that will happen.
The average temperature
of Earth does not matter in the absence of visible negative effects of climate
change on humans, animals and plants.
My advice, based on studying the
climate since 1997:
(1) Celebrate more CO2 in the air --
CO2 greens the Earth.
(2) Celebrate slight warming.
(3) Hope the 1850 Modern Warming
continues, because warming is better than the ONLY other alternatives (mild
cooling, or another ice age).
(4) Stop listening to smarmy leftists
trying to gain political power by claiming a climate disaster is coming, unless
everyone does as they say without question.
(5) Note that environmentalists
clearly exhibit cult-like behavior:
- They ridicule and character attack
skeptics.
- They refuse to debate.
- They refuse to admit they could be
wrong.
- They have a "Pope" (Al
Gore) and a "Bible" (UN's IPCC Summary Report).
- They reject science and real data in
favor of climate astrology (computer game simulations of the climate 100 years
into the future that have been grossly overestimating actual warming for three
decades so far).
In spite of the fact that
source data are collected by US government agencies, headed by people appointed
by President Obama, a stunning amount of publicly available climate information
is ignored or barely mentioned by most media sources … who seem to think it is
NOT important for you to know because it conflicts with scary global warming
stories that many people love to read, probably for the same reason people like
scary zombie movies and TV shows:
(1) 2014 had the greatest snow cover in
the Northern Hemisphere since data collection began in 1968 (Rutgers University Global Snow Lab).
(2) 2014 had the greatest Southern
Hemisphere sea ice extent (area) on record.
(3) 2014 had Northern Hemisphere sea
ice extent (area) rebound back to a normal level.
(4) About 75% of the 48 contiguous US
states had their hottest years on record BEFORE 1955 -- only one US state had
its hottest year on record AFTER the year 2000.
(5) Over 50% of the 48 contiguous US
states had their COLDEST year on record AFTER 1940.
(6) US / Canada Great Lakes ice in 2014
set three cold weather records (the second greatest ice extent (area) on record in
early 2014, the longest ice duration on record in early 2014, and the earliest
ice formation on record in late 2014).
(7) 2014 had the fewest number on
record of US land-based temperature stations that reached 90 degrees F. or
warmer at any time during the year.
(8) 2014 average annual US temperature
for the 48 contiguous states, according to NOAA, was only the 33rd warmest year
since 1895 -- 2.7 degrees F. below the record high.
(9) 2014 average annual US temperature
for the 48 contiguous states, according to Berkeley Earth, was only the 38th
warmest year since 1850.
(10) 2014 average annual US temperature
was the 4th coldest year in the past 17 years, according to NOAA.
(11) ALL
measurement methodologies used in the world have reflected a flat average
temperature trend for at least the past 12 years. There are no exceptions.
Americans lived through an unusually
cold year in 2014, yet few had skepticism when told in early 2015 that the year
2014 was the hottest year for Earth on record … claimed to be a mere two
hundredths of a degree C. warmer than 2010 … using measurements said to have a
+/- one tenth of a degree C. margin of error … so NASAs claim to know the
average temperature of Earth in hundredths of a degree, and their claim 2014 is
a new warm year record, are both malarkey based on their own very optimistic
margin or error claims.
And most Canadians exhibit no
skepticism either:
(12) 2014 was the coldest
Canadian year since 1996, according to Environment Canada.
The huge number of important climate
facts never mentioned in mainstream press articles on the climate are stunning
-- I always wonder if Baghdad Bob, Saddam Hussein's old propaganda minister, is
the real author of most of the climate articles in the mainstream press !
The claim that computer
games can predict the future climate, and "they" see a coming climate
catastrophe, is the biggest hoax in human history.
It is a hoax used to gain attention, political power, and tens of billions of dollars of government grants for leftist "scientists" to study the alleged problem and predict a catastrophe every year … that will never happen.
An amazing quantity of
climate data are ignored by anti-science climate change cult members simply
because the data contradict their global warming beliefs:
(1) They ignore climate history, including
hundreds of mild cooling/warming cycles over the past one million years, as
determined by many climate proxy studies.
(2) They ignore the fact that glaciers have
been melting and raising the sea level for over 15,000 years (after the last
Ice Age ended) and will continue to melt and raise the sea level until another
Ice Age begins.
(3) They ignore the fact that no one
started averaging local temperature measurements until the late 1880s after a
global warming period began, and then leftists act “shocked” whenever a new
record high temperature year is reached, as if that should be surprising during
a warming trend.
(4) They ignore the fact that 1800s
thermometers had far from global coverage, and tend to read low when checked
against accurate modern thermometers.
(5) They ignore an early 1900s change in sea
temperature measurement methodology, from wood buckets to canvas buckets, that
happens to coincide with a lot of pre-1940 “global warming”.
The sea temperature measurement
methodology was later changed again.
(6) They ignore the abandonment of most
USSR weather stations in the late 1980s when the USSR collapsed -- eliminating
a lot of measurements from a huge nation, and creating an opportunity to
"cook the books" by "infilling" data for most of the huge
USSR nation with wild guesses.
(7) They ignore 150 years of CO2 data
(90,000 measurements from 1812 until 1961 by the Pettenkofer method) showing
CO2 peaks in 1825, 1857 and 1942 -- demonstrating that for much of the 19th
century, and from 1935 to 1950, atmospheric CO2 was higher than today, and varied
considerably.
(8) They ignore most (over 80%) of raw CO2
infrared data from Mauna Loa (since 1959), using “editing” to leave fewer than
20% of the raw data measurements (I assume the data used are carefully selected
to create a smooth "curve" on a chart that just happens to support
pre-existing beliefs).
(9) They ignore the fact that a majority of
land weather stations in the US, claimed to be the best weather station network
in the world, are improperly sited by US standards: Too close to buildings,
roads, runways and parking lots that all absorb heat during the day, and create
“global warming” at night when the bricks, concrete and asphalt release heat,
completely unlike what is measured at properly sited weather stations
surrounded by grass and trees.
(10) They (including NASA!) ignore all NASA
weather satellite global temperature measurements since 1979, even though they
are the only global temperature measurements in history, and the most accurate
temperature measurements available, simply because their data show no warming
since 1998, and little wild guess "infilling" is needed for
unmeasured areas, meaning there is little opportunity to "cook the
books" with creative infilling.
(11) They ignore a strong correlation
between solar energy variations and the average temperatures of Earth based on
sunspot counts for 400 years (sunspots are a proxy for solar energy).
(12) They ignore the fact that the
temperature “signature” of the greenhouse gas warming theory -- increasing
temperature when moving up from Earth’s surface, reaching a temperature peak
roughly six miles up in the troposphere -- does not exist.
Weather balloons and weather satellites
consistently measure no temperature increase correlating with altitude above
Earth’s surface, which is strong evidence greenhouse gases are NOT the primary
cause of a minor increase of the average temperature since the late-1800’s.
(13) They ignore the fact that “average
temperature” is not a real measurement of something that exists.
Average temperature is a complex
statistical average of ever-changing local temperatures.
The Earth is not in thermodynamic
equilibrium, so the temperature is constantly changing everywhere over time.
There is no single global temperature.
Statistical averages are not real
measurements.
There is no proof that
any average of local temperatures, measured with weather stations whose count,
locations and instruments have changed radically over time, is a meaningful and
useful statistic.
Whether one “measures”
warming or cooling at surface weather stations over time, depends mainly on:
- The years one starts and ends the
measurements,
- The accuracy of the measurements,- The time of day measurements are made,
- The total number of weather stations in the average,
- The spacing of weather stations from each other,
- The changing environment around weather stations, and
- The statistics chosen to combine the data into one number
The total number of surface
measurements included in the average temperature has changed a lot over time,
peaking in the 1960s. A majority of the 1960s temperature stations are no longer in use.
After the USSR collapsed in the late
1980s, the number of weather stations fell by about half in just four years.
Oceans are 70% of the Earth’s surface,
yet ocean temperatures were measured haphazardly by sailors on merchant ships
throwing buckets over the side, and sticking thermometers in those buckets.
First wood buckets were used, then
canvas buckets, and later the temperature of incoming engine cooling water was
measured – three different measurement methodologies were used in one century!
Almost all the world’s oceans are
unmeasured, especially in the Southern Hemisphere where 80% of the surface area
is ocean, but there is far less shipping than in the Northern Hemisphere.
Ocean temperature measurement locations
are at random, but only in established shipping lanes, and mainly in the
Northern Hemisphere.
1800s thermometers were +/- 1 degree
F., at best.
The distribution of surface
thermometers over land and ocean is uneven and there are large areas of the
Earth with few or no measurements, whose temperature data are
"infilled" (wild guessed), which is a great opportunity for "cooking the books"..
Land-based weather stations have
changes in equipment over time, and may have been moved to different locations
multiple times too.
The environment around a weather
station often changes over time – more cement and more asphalt in the vicinity
of a weather station is the typical result of economic growth.
(14) They ignore the fact that no human can predict the future, whether the future climate, or future anything else.