selected quotes from:
The Global Mean Temperature Anomaly Record: How it works and why it is misleading
by Richard S. Lindzen,
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Emeritus, Massachusets Insttute of Technology, and
John R. Christy,
Distnguished Professor of Atmospheric and Earth Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville
"Executive Summary
At the center of most discussions of global warming is the record of the global mean surface temperature anomaly—often somewhat misleadingly referred to as the global mean temperature record. This paper addresses two aspects of this record. First, we note that this record is only one link in a fairly long chain of inference leading to the claimed need for worldwide reduction in CO2 emissions. Second, we explore the implications of the way the record is constructed and presented, and show why the record is misleading."
" ... it is really the average of widely scattered station data, where the actual data points are almost evenly spread between large positive and negative values. The average is simply the small difference of these positive and negative excursions, with the usual problem associated with small differences of large numbers: at least thus far, the approximately one degree Celsius increase in the global mean since 1900 is swamped by the normal variations at individual stations, and so bears little relation to what is actually going on at a particular one."
"The changes at the stations are distributed around the one-degree global average increase. Even if a single station had recorded this increase itself, this would take a typical annual range of temperature there, for example, from -10 to 40 degrees in 1900, and replace it with a range today from -9 to 41. People, crops, and weather at that station would find it hard to tell this difference. However, the increase looks significant on the charts used in almost all presentations, because they omit the range of the original data points and expand the scale in order to make the mean change look large."
... "Given the noise and sampling errors, it is rather easy to “adjust” such averaging, and even change the sign of a trend from positive to negative."
" ... the average difference between the coldest and warmest moments each year ranges from about 25 degrees Celsius in Miami (a 45 degree Fahrenheit change) to 55 degrees in Denver (a 99 degree Fahrenheit change). We contrast this with the easily manageable 1.2 degree Celsius increase in the global mean temperature anomaly in the past 120 years, which has caused so much alarm in the media and in policy circles."
... "As noted by Lindzen and Spencer (2019), presently estimated changes in the temperature record are most consistent with low sensitivity to increases in CO2, and the related warming is likely to be beneficial. The notion that society is willing to waste trillions of dollars to avoid benefits is sobering."
... "Obviously, warmings or coolings of a tenth or two of a degree are without significance since possible adjustments can easily lead to changes of sign from positive to negative, yet in the popular literature much is made of such small changes."
"The (temperature) anomaly is the small residue of the generally larger excursions ... This residue (which is popularly held to represent “climate”) is also much smaller than the temperature variations that all life on Earth regularly experiences."
... "the difference in average temperature from January to July in these major cities ranges from just under ten degrees in Los Angeles to nearly 30 degrees in Chicago. And the average difference between the coldest and warmest moments each year ranges from about 25 degrees in Miami (a 45 degree Fahrenheit change) to 55 degrees in Denver (a 99 degree Fahrenheit change).
Professor Lindzen has published over 200 scientific articles and books over a five-decade career. He has held professorships at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. He is a fellow and award recipient of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. He is also a member of the National Academy of Science and was a lead author of the UN IPCC’s third assessment report’s scientific volume. His research has highlighted the scientific uncertainties about the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on temperature and climate more generally.
Professor Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, began studying global climate issues in 1987. He has been Alabama’s State Climatologist since 2000 and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society since 2002. He and CO2 Coalition member Dr. Roy W. Spencer developed and have maintained one of the key global temperature data sets relied on by scientists and government bodies, using microwave data observed in the troposphere from satellites since 1979. For this achievement, they were awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement
... the CO2 Coalition seems to have become a “publisher of last resort” for scholarly work that falls outside an enforced, dual narrative: that there is an existential climate crisis from emissions of indus- trial warming gases, and that society can replace the fossil fuels that are the source of those emissions with wind and solar power, at no cost to our economy or health.
... I regret to report that there has been a steady, silent takeover of academic publishing in science and economics by the “climate crisis” and “easy to change sources” narrative. So, this paper, which in earlier days would have, as a matter of course, been published by a scholarly journal, now finds a home with our advocacy group.
Fortunately for our readers, both among experts and in the general public, we also rely on peer review, with rigor and expertise equal to that of the professional journals. And I believe that our process provides far better expertise than that of UN and U.S. governmental reports on climate science and energy economics, which are ultimately edited by a non-specialist bureaucracy and approved by governments. Our reviewers are the full board and selected members of the Coalition, a number of whom have been peer reviewers for the scholarly journals, the UN IPCC and agencies of the U.S. Government."