April 1, 2013

Global Warming? Oops! Never Mind!

By Jonathon Moseley

What was the Earth's temperature yesterday? Nobody knows. In fact, it's a ridiculous question. Almost every place on Earth today has a different temperature from that of any other location. So, is our planet's temperature rising? Do we even know?

However, it is officially admitted: Global warming stopped 15-20 years ago. The mainstream media is struggling very hard to explain this away. They admit that the Earth stopped warming 15 to 20 years ago. But just you wait -- disaster is coming unless we vote liberals into office. They cannot explain the pause. Yet they "know" global warming will kill us all unless we vote Democrat.

So was global warming ever real? Or is this hysteria a hoax, like the Y2K computer disaster that never happened?

Just concerning today's temperature first, we would have to measure hundreds of thousands of locations and then average temperatures from all over the planet. We don't have that many weather stations. So we don't even know what yesterday's temperature for the planet was. We certainly don't know what the temperature was a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago.

Are today's weather measurements accurate? Heck no. Weather stations are measuring the jet blast from airplanes taking off at airports, the heat from air conditioners on office building rooftops, the heat of asphalt parking lots and streets and cities.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts is one of the greatest heroes of truth and freedom. His blog "Watts Up With That?" has changed the world and is one of the most influential resources on global warming. Watts became truly famous with his recurring "How Not to Measure Temperature" series reviewing the world's automated weather stations.

For example, concerning Henderson Field, in the Solomon Islands, Watts reported that jet exhaust from taxiing airplanes blows straight into the weather equipment. Do we care about the Solomon Islands? Well, if you are trying to track the planet's overall temperature, yes, you must include the whole world. Otherwise, you are simply watching weather variations moving around from one part of the planet to another.

Rooftop weather stations were busted. Many weather stations are on the roofs of major office buildings, where they are affected by the heat blast from massive industrial air conditioners. The sun also heats the top of the building and the surrounding buildings and streets. So the weather station is actually measuring the "heat effect" of the city -- not the climate. They are also measuring the nearby air conditioner. "How Not to Measure Temperature, Part 48" exposed a building-top station in Baltimore.

In "How Not to Measure Temperature, Part 93," Watts reports how the weather station most responsible for claims of warming temperature in England is stationed next to a massive air conditioner on the ground and a brick building. And they are all together inside a ground depression. This traps artificial heat, causing an inaccurate temperature reading. The temperature reading is also near industrial activity in London.

In "Part 90," Watts reports on a station set in a small parking lot, on the asphalt, next to an air conditioner. The blog "Gust of Hot Air" reports on a weather station at the Marysville, California Fire Department. It used to be in a grassy yard. Now the yard is a parking lot. And the measurement equipment is within 10 feet of an air conditioning unit that cools cell tower electronics and the bar-be-cue that firefighters cook with a couple times a week.

Nearly all of the weather stations in the world were created only after the invention of the airplane (at least those which report organized, historical records). Very few spots on the Earth were being sampled before World War I. But the farther back in time we go, the worse it gets. So the sampling of the Earth's temperature was changing over time. We are comparing apples and oranges when we compare the sample set that exists today with the much smaller sample sets the farther we go back through the decades of data.

But isn't sampling an accepted scientific tool? Only if it is truly random according to careful rules and techniques. Weather station samples are fixed in certain locations, always the same, not randomly selected for each year. And the Earth's weather is tremendously variable. But it is not random in the sense necessary for statistical measurement. We may not understand all the highly complex weather patterns. But the sample of weather stations is fixed -- or in other words, not random.

We are measuring not changes in the climate, but rather the "heat effect" of expanding cities due to urban sprawl. Most temperature measurements are at airports. A great many airports were built out in the empty countryside, perhaps 5 to 25 miles from the city they serve. But urban sprawl has now extended outward to those airports. So as we compare data over past decades, we are seeing the increase in temperature caused by expanding cities -- not a change in the planetary climate.

It is well-known that there is a "heat effect" when asphalt roads and concrete buildings replace trees, grass, and open fields. This creates a localized increase in temperature at ground level. (However, this affects the distribution of heat, since sunshine is still the same over the entire planet. It probably does not change the global temperature overall. It will increase convection and temperatures near the ground.) Yet it's actually worse than that. And the heat content held within water, air, and rock is different from one to the next. So temperature swings in the air may be misleading.

Although the concept of a thermometer is thousands of years old, no scale of precise standardized measurement was invented until the 1700s. Therefore, we have no meaningful records of temperature earlier than the Industrial Revolution, in terms of the ability to compare measurements recorded over time. Even then, scientific instruments must be calibrated for accuracy. Even a thermometer attempting to measure temperature on a standardized scale may not read the same as another thermometer. Accuracy in scientific instruments requires standardization and careful calibration. Quality has not been consistent since the 1700s.

So global warming hysteria is based not on any accurate measurements of global climate, but rather on "proxies." That is, scientists give their interpretation of tree rings and bacterial samples in fossils. Global warming "science" is strikingly similar to a witch doctor reading the entrails of a goat.

Here's the problem, and it is a foundational precept in science: you cannot analyze data to a greater precision than the original measurement. So if you have data measured only in yards, you cannot analyze that data to draw conclusions at the level of inches. You will get errors. With global warming, we don't know historical temperatures with precision. Therefore, imprecise historical data cannot support the attempted predictions.

Well, then, how can we say that global warming stopped 15-20 years ago if we really don't know what the temperature is or has been? We have no valid basis for saying that the world is warming. We can't say that it is or it isn't. But the whole global warming concept is simply...well...hot air.

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