The UN's IPCC
says it is
“certain that
global mean
surface
temperature (GMST)
has increased
since the late
19th century”
and estimates
the increase
from 1850–1900
to 2003–2012
was +0.78°C
[ +0.72 to +0.85 ]
based on the
Hadley Center
Climatic Research Unit
dataset (HadCRUT4)
The IPCC itself admits
its temperature
reconstructions
are highly uncertain:
IPCC’s estimate
of +0.78°C
[ +0.72 to +0.85 ]
from 1850–1900
to 2003–2012
is not an observation
but an estimate
based on a long chain
of judgements about
how to handle data,
what data to include
and what to leave out,
and how to summarize it
into a single
“global temperature.”
The IPCC’s
temperature estimate
cannot be tested
because it has
no empirical existence.
Insight into the flaws
of the HadCRUT dataset
comes from emails leaked
from the Climatic Research
Unit in 2009.
A file titled “Harry Read Me”
contained some 247 pages
of email exchanges
with a programmer
responsible for maintaining
and correcting errors
in the HadCRUT climate data
between 2006 and 2009.
Reading only
a few of the
a few of the
programmer’s
comments
comments
reveals
the inaccuracies,
the inaccuracies,
data manipulation,
and incompetence
that render
the database
unreliable:
“Wherever I look,
there are data files,
no info about what they are
other than their names.
And that’s useless ...”
“It’s botch after botch after botch”
“Am I the first person
to attempt to get the CRU
databases in working order?!!"
“As far as I can see, this renders
the [weather] station counts
totally meaningless”
“COBAR AIRPORT AWS
( data from an Australian weather station )
cannot start in 1962,
it didn’t open until 1993!”
“What the hell is supposed to happen
here? Oh yeah – there is no ‘supposed,
’ I can make it up. So I have : - )”
“I’m hitting yet another problem
that’s based on the hopeless state
of our databases.
There is no uniform data integrity,
it’s just a catalogue of issues
that continues to grow
as they’re found” .
“Harry Read Me” was in charge
of “quality control” at the time.
Relying on such haphazard data
violates the Scientific Method.
This is the actual
temperature record
relied on by the IPCC,
and climate scientists,
who claim to know
how much the mean
global surface temperature
has changed since 1850.
The warming
since 1850,
since 1850,
if it occurred at all,
is meaningful data
only if it exceeds
natural variability.
Proxy temperature records
from the Greenland ice core
for the past 10,000 years
demonstrate a natural range
of warming and cooling rates
between
+2.5°C and -2.5°C / century,
significantly greater than
rates measured for Greenland,
or the globe, during the
twentieth century.
The ice cores also show
repeated
“Dansgaard–Oeschger” events
when air temperatures
rose at rates of about
10 degrees per century.
There have been about
20 such warming events
in the past 80,000 years.
In its Fifth
Assessment Report,
the IPCC admits the
global mean
surface temperature
stopped rising
from 1997 to 2010,
reporting the
temperature increase
for that period
was only +0.07°C.
This “pause”
extended 18 years
before being interrupted
by the major El Niño events
( Pacific Ocean heat releases )
of 2010–2012
and 2015–2016.
During “the pause”
humans released
approximately one-third
of all the greenhouse gases
emitted since the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution.
If CO2 concentrations
drive global temperatures,
their impact should have
been visible during this period.
Temperatures quickly fell
after each El Niño event,
though not to previous levels.
Weather satellite
temperature data
cover almost
the entire planet,
something that
surface-based
surface-based
temperature stations
can't do.
They are free from
human influences
other than
greenhouse gas emissions
( such as change in land use,
urbanization, farming, and land clearing ).
Despite the
known deficiencies,
the IPCC and many
government agencies
and environmental
advocacy groups
continue to rely on the
surface station
temperature record.
The satellite record
shows only
+0.07°C to +0.13°C
per decade warming
since 1979,
while the
surface station record
for approximately
the same period
( ending in 2016, rather than in 2017 )
shows +0.16°C to +0.19°C
per decade warming,
about 40% higher.
Geologists point to
how short a period 40 years,
or even a century are,
when studying climate.
Even a century’s
worth of data
would be a mere 1%
of the 10,000 years
of the Holocene Epoch.
Earth does not have
just one temperature.
It is not in global
thermodynamic equilibrium
– neither within itself
nor with its surroundings.
There is no
physically meaningful
global temperature
for the Earth
-- the method of deriving
a global average temperature
must be arbitrary
since there is an
infinite number of ways
it could be calculated
from available data.
Weather stations
are not
evenly distributed
evenly distributed
around the world.
Efforts to manipulate
and “homogenize”
divergent datasets,
fill in missing data,
remove outliers,
and compensate for
changes in
sampling technology
are all opportunities
for subjective
decision-making,
and deliberate lying too.
Governments need to
assign numbers to the things
they seek to regulate or tax.
Saying the world has
a single temperature
– 14.9°C (58.82°F) in 2017,
according to NASA’s
Goddard Institute
for Space Studies,
violates many
of the principles
of the Scientific Method,
but it fills a need
expressed by
government officials
at the United Nations
and in many
world capitals.