The big issue of unreliable data
There are four basic positions on global warming.
1. The earth is warming and man is causing it. 2. The earth is warming as a result of natural forces. 3. The earth is not warming. 4. We can’t tell.
Most likely winner in the reality contest: Option Four. A review of the relevant data sources produces a mixed result. The most direct measurements of warming are, of course, surface weather station temperatures. As Anthony Watts as shown, the quality of the data set is quite poor, plagued by numerous problems in how weather stations are sited. Some stations are trending up, others down, still others flat. As many bloggers on this subject have pointed out, there are very few weather stations above 45 degrees of latitude even though stations near the poles are crucial for analyzing one of the warmists’ most public claims, namely, that the north and south poles are melting. Bottom line on weather stations: There aren’t enough of them, and the shortage is most severe in the most crucial areas, some are trending all over the map, and the ones that are trending warmer tend to be in sites that make their results suspect.
Similarly, measurements of ocean temperatures are based on a floating network of buoys so widely scattered that patches of ocean the size of the state of Georgia may be represented by a single thermometer. And is anybody calibrating these things regularly to see if the instrument cal drift is bringing in a systematic error? (Answer: no.)
Finally, the data set is subject to some unpublished degree of instrument uncertainty. As I mentioned here, I have a modicum of real-world experience with industrial temperature measurement which has made me intensely suspicious of claims that global temperatures have changed by so many hundredths of a degree. Such claims embody an assumption of accuracy which most temperature measurement devices do not possess.
There are other sources of information such as satellite infrared measurements of the earth’s surface. Again, with my industrial experience in infrared measurement, I simply do not believe the warmists know what they claim to know. Not to strip your brain gears with technical jargon, but measuring the surface temperature of the earth requires correctly characterizing the emissivity of the Earth’s myriad surface features as well as the ever-changing value of the transmissivity of the atmosphere. The peer review process of science desperately needs to be applied here to convince the public that this is been done, and done right. Reason: The public is being asked to crash the economy and surrender its civil liberties in order to save the planet. In view of the staggering cost of what warmists are demanding, it’s not being picayune and nettlesome to ask them to prove it using data and methods that are completely reliable and completely open to all members of the public.
The issue of leftists grabbing for power
The lesson of ClimateGate is precisely this: There is a creepy nexus between leftists’ totalitarian political goals and warmists’ data scandals.
Related, there is an equally creepy sense of on the part of the principals involved in ClimateGate that, as scientists, their motives and methods ought not be challenged. This is bizarre. If warmists’ suggestions for a remedy reflected something other than a giant grab for power and money, their sense of injury at being questioned might look like something other than a cover-up masquerading as a personal affront. What seems to be escaping the whole warmist camp is that nobody in the public has any personal grudge against any of them. But the solutions being proposed for this problem exhaust all the English superlatives for extreme totalitarianism. The one entity common to absolutely every aspect of modern living is energy. And energy is what they want to control. From the gas pump to the electric power plant, from the massive factory machine right down to your cell phone charger, they want control over every last power-using doodad on the face of the planet.
I’m not willing to discuss that unless and until it’s proven that there is no other way to save the human race. Come to think of it, maybe not even then. I know it’s old-fashioned, but “better dead than Red” still works for me.
otherbrothersteve@gmail.com
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