I’ve been reading about global warming since discovering the www.sepp.org website in 1997.
http://sepp.org/the-week-that-was.cfm
I’m not convinced the average temperature of our planet is an important measurement of Earth's climate.
Important measurements would be of problems caused by climate change, such as damage to humans, animals and/or plants -- evidence of negative results of climate change.
There are no negative results so far.
The reason is that the climate today is better than it has been in at least 500 years.
There is claimed to have been a small +1 degree C. (+/- 1 degree C.) change of the average temperature in the 135 years since 1880.
Those 135 years have been the most prosperous and healthy 135 years, for humans, animals and plants, so far in Earth's 4.5 billion year history !
The only climate "bad news" in the past 135 years ? Ridiculous predictions of doom, wrong for 40 years so far, published by mentally unstable leftists who want public attention and government grants for further study.
I’ve never found any compelling evidence to prove the average temperature from 1880 to 2016 has a margin of error less than +/- one degree C. .
And remember that a mere +1 degree C. is the entire global warming claimed from 1880 to 2016 ... and the starting point was measured with thermometers from the 1800s tended to read low ... exaggerating the warming since then.
Most of Earth's surface was not measured in 1880, and is still not measured in 2016.
Climate "science" is the only field where you can measure less than 5% of the planet, and then claim near-perfect (+/- 0.1 degrees C.) knowledge of 100% of the planet.
Other sources of error:
- Huge changes in the total number of measurement instruments,
- Changes in temperature station equipment and locations,
- Failure to send people out in the field to verify temperature station accuracy at least once a year.
During most of the 20th century, land surface air temperatures were measured using a liquid-in-glass (LIG) thermometer located in a box-like louvered shield called a Stevenson Screen, or Cotton Regional Shelter (CRS)
After about 1985, thermistors or platinum resistance thermometers (PRT) housed in an unaspirated cylindrical plastic shield replaced the LIG/CRS sensors in Europe, the Anglo-Pacific countries, and the US.
Beginning in 2000, the US Climate Research Network deployed sensors consisting of a trio of PRTs in an aspirated shield.
An aspirated shield uses a small fan to ventilate the interior of the shield with outside air.
Unaspirated sensors rely only on wind for ventilation -- measurement error will occur when outside air is stagnant.
--- Solar radiance can heat the shield, warming the interior air around the sensor.
--- In the winter, solar radiance reflected up from a snow-covered surface can also produce a warming bias.
Sailors with buckets and hand held thermometers to measure 70% of the planet = comedy, not science!
Then ship engine cooling-water intake thermometers, provided most early and mid-20th century sea surface temperature measurements.
Sensors mounted on drifting and moored buoys have been increasingly used since about 1980, and now dominate sea surface temperature measurements.
Perhaps the most important source of errors is politics:
- The people who make the climate computer model predictions of doom … are the same people who compile average temperature actuals … which they repeatedly "adjust" … to show more warming than the raw data ... and better match their doomsday predictions.
Roughly half the "global warming" since 1880 was caused by "adjustments" to the raw temperature data.
If I have not already created much doubt about data quality, NASA reports the average temperature of our planet in hundredths of a degree C. (only a fool would believe that accuracy is possible)!
At the same time, believe it or not, NASA claims their margin of error is +/- 0.1 degrees C. (there is no way modern instruments could have a margin of error less than +/- 0.5 degrees C.)
It is anti-science for NASA to report the average temperature in hundredths of a degree C. -- that is meaningless propaganda to make the public think the measurements are extremely precise.
NASA must pull their margin of error numbers out of a hat … just like the IPCC does for their equally meaningless "95% confidence" claim !
You don’t have to be a scientist to know the temperature and CO2 data are far from accurate.
CO2 real time measurements since 1958 are probably accurate — but before that, the CO2 levels are rough estimates based on air bubbles in Antarctica ice cores -- proxy measurements -- not real time measurements.
The change in global air temperature since 1880 cannot be known within ±1 C. before 1980, and or within ±0.5 C. after 1990, at a 95% confidence interval.
There are no accurate data to support the claim of “unprecedented” surface temperature warming since 1880 ... and no real-time measurements at all for the prior 4.5 billion years.
No one has any idea what a "normal" average temperature is for our planet.
Since our planet is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, the average temperature is always changing, so the concept of a "normal" temperature makes no sense.
All of the debates about future air temperatures are speculations
about the unknowable
based on wild guess
computer games.
There is no evidence in the historical temperature data record for declaring a climate emergency.
In fact, the climate today is the best it has been for humans and plants in at least 500 years.
More CO2 in the air is great news for green plant growth rates, and the animals and people who eat those plants.
The slight warming of nighttime lows is good news for human comfort.
Compiling the average temperature is likely to have been a waste of the taxpayer's money.
The political influence is so strong that I predict if Earth's surface starts cooling in the future, the "books will be cooked” to show warming is still in progress.
I'm not convinced leftist bureaucrats will EVER allow global cooling to be reflected in “their” average temperature data.
Apparently there are only two kinds of data for the "warmunists": Good data are any data that support their climate models, and all other data are bad data to be ignored, attacked, or "adjusted".
Leftists treat climate change as their religion.
Religion and science are opposites.
Leftists will lie to keep their CO2 boogeyman and highly subsidized “green” industry alive.
They claim to seize more political power to “save the planet" ... but what they really want to do is to tell everyone else how to live (the planet does not need saving).
With their wild guess predictions of a coming climate change catastrophe, wrong for 40 years so far, climate modelers have destroyed the integrity of science, and the reputations of real scientists.
This will be a long -term problem, with potentially serious consequences, for two reasons:
(1) The unjustified anti-science attack on fossil fuels is really an indirect attack on economic growth and prosperity, and
(2) Some time in the future scientists may discover a real problem, unlike CO2, but they will be ignored because too many greedy scientists in the past took government money in return for the climate catastrophe scam.
The climate catastrophe scam is:
(a) Falsely claiming they can predict the future climate, and
(b) 40 years of wrong predictions of a coming environmental catastrophe … that will never come.
I’ve been watching the climate for 63 years so far -- my observations are helped by living in the same place for a long time -- living in the same house since 1987… and living less than 4 miles south of my current house in the 10 years before 1987.
My conclusion is the climate keeps getting better and better ... with the exception of February 2014 when it was so cold that the water meter in my garage froze and cracked, costing me $300 (it froze for the first time since I moved into the house in 1987) !