Empty Promises On Climate

[HydrogenBond]

Pay no attention to the fact that the originally published data was for the US only and did not correlate to every other data set of global temperatures ever taken. 

 

That's right: the data that "shows" cooling immediately got called out because it was wrong and obviously so. So NASA went back and figured out their error.

 

So you are saying the original presentation of the raw data, in 1989, was a conspiracy? The revised data, using revisionist history, is better? Revisionist history is also being taught in publics school, as though the modern bias of one party trumps the raw data. 

 

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

― George Orwell, 1984

 

 

Raw data is raw data, while massaged data is data this is massaged to reflect the bias of a ruling status quo. Book burning is common with tyrants who then revise what is taught. Has anyone ever presented only the raw data on this site, and then allow everyone to look at that and discuss that? Or does it need to be massaged first due to book burning? 

 

Satellites have only been used to measure surface temperature since the mid 1960's, with the early techniques only good for cloud free areas where it is usually warmer.  

 

Before then surface temperature was measured the old fashion way with thermometers. Data from the 1900 to 1960's is all based on thermometers, while 2010 is a composite favoring space data as we get closer to the present. One concern is satellites attempt global coverage whereas weather stations were only placed here and there in hopes this was a good placement for an average.

 

The placement of the original land stations were not done just for one variable like temperature, but many were place to investigate weather extremes. The station on top of Mt Washington in New Hampshire is there because it has the highest recored surface winds, but this does not reflect the best temperature placement to average New Hampshire. That was not the intent of that station, although temperature will be measured as part of the data collection. 

 

The number of surface weather stations has decreased globally, since the early days, with the USA maintaining the most, although this has gone down from 6000 to 1500. Globally, the numb ryas gone down even more, where there are also surface stations that still work but are not connected to the grid. One can get the data on CD for a cost, but it is not part of the grid in real time. Maybe the revisionists history data is needed to normalize to the present. Has anyone done point data, with the satellite to reflect just the historical land stations? Maybe satellite is not that good for 100 ft2 targets, to create a historical average parallel or simulation.  

 

As far as the emotional argument of Koch Brothers and big oil paying for research, when anyone is singled out by politics, such as with liberals has historical done with oil, even before the global warming scare, you have to defend yourself against slander and lies when you trade and sell with the public. This is defensive research to make sure your POV is heard over political games. What defensive science does is increase the cost of doing business, so the overpriced solar and alternative energy could appear more competitive. The rising price at the pump are then blamed on big oil as being due to greed but not a  need to defend against bullies. 

 

This is why you need to factor in political scams, when dealing with areas of science that use politics to single out certain industries and individuals. 

Edited October 5, 2014 by HydrogenBond

[Buffy]

 

So you are saying the original presentation of the raw data, in 1989, was a conspiracy? The revised data, using revisionist history, is better? Revisionist history is also being taught in publics school, as though the modern bias of one party trumps the raw data. 

 

I believe you are having trouble understanding what was said in the article.

 

The data in 1989 was not raw data, it was adjusted to make readings WHERE THE METHOD OF TAKING THE READINGS CHANGED consistent across time. The data after 1989 did not have that adjustment.

 

To put this in colloquial terms that might be more familiar to you, that is called "comparing apples and oranges."

 

To put it in more literal terms what happened is that the earlier data set was taken with a thermometer that was in a hot box and the later data was taken in the shade. If you graft those two together and then scream "SEE IT'S COOLER!" You'd be correctly interpreting the raw data, but the raw data, because of how they were collected, are not comparable.

 

Now the revision comes in where you say, "the reading in the hot box was too high, so we're going to do some tests and see how much hotter it is compared to our now standard practice of putting it in an insulated box and come up with a formula to adjust it, and we're going to do the same thing with the thermometer in the shade and come up with a similar formula to adjust that." 

 

But while some would yell "THAT'S REVISIONIST! CONSPIRACY! FIXING THE NUMBERS SO THEY FIT THE THEORY! OOOGA BOOGA!" the true scientist actually goes and takes the adjusted data and compares it to the data collected elsewhere and sees if it's *consistent* BOTH for raw and adjusted data to prove that the data is *comparable*.

 

That's exactly what happened here.

 

Now what that foolish (or more probably, paid-off) "scientist" was doing was taking the published data which had this mixing of incomparable data and then claimed that that was the "true" picture.

 

Did he bother to go try to find the raw data from the earlier period? No, he took the earlier period *adjusted* data and left it there.

 

Do you know why?

 

Well it's because if he'd taken the "raw" data from the earlier period, it wouldn't have shown a shift from warming to cooling, and that would have blown apart his argument.

 

This makes your whole argument about revised data being the source of "untruth" more than a little bit um, unfounded.

 

 

What also disproves your argument is the fact that the reason this data was called into question at all is that the unadjusted comparison, which was FOR THE US ONLY, was in direct contradiction with a much much larger body of many many many sets of data collected around the world that showed warming where the US-only data seemed to show decline.

 

What does that mean? It means that even if the original graph were true (which it's not) either:

• The cooling is only happening in the US, and the rest of the world is getting warmer.
• Or there is a worldwide communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our temperature readings.

I understand that the latter is your primary argument here, but that's not an argument based on science. What this comparison to other data sets is in fact an independently replicable process whereby individuals can view and compare the published data sets and see the consistency of them, and in this case fully justifying and proving the validity of the "adjustment" NASA applied to the data.

 

When you see the most widely cited "skeptics" have nothing more than these easily disproven arguments that so transparently violate the most basic and fundamental elements of the scientific method, it means that that skepticism is not worth the pixels it's printed on.

 

The arguments you site are disproven rather categorically, and hysterical appeals to the "modern bias of one party" are a waste of everyone's time.

 

Unfortunately your unwillingness to even acknowledge this line of argument and your constant reliance on unsubstantiated claims of "bias" and conspiracy show that you do not have the knowledge or logic required to discuss the subject rationally.

 

I'm happy to continue to demonstrate your lack thereof in public.

 

 

 

Satellites have only been used to measure surface temperature since the mid 1960's, with the early techniques only good for cloud free areas where it is usually warmer.  

 

Absolutely! You've just presented two reasons why in order to be comparable, the data has to be adjusted! See? Not difficult to understand!

 

 

Before then surface temperature was measured the old fashion way with thermometers. Data from the 1900 to 1960's is all based on thermometers, while 2010 is a composite favoring space data as we get closer to the present. One concern is satellites attempt global coverage whereas weather stations were only placed here and there in hopes this was a good placement for an average.

 

"Composite favoring space data" is actually categorically false. There are in fact more ground based stations, and more independently operated ones than ever before, and this is an essential mechanism in VALIDATING the space data.

 

If you want to try to convince people that "oh, we switched to space data an never bothered to check whether it was valid or comparable to the old data" you'd better try to come up with some actual data that supports it.

 

That's not the way science is done.

 

What we have been doing for years is taking these new methods and taking multiple, independently gathered data sets from around the world and comparing them everywhich way from Sunday.

 

And you know what? They are UNBELIEVABLY consistent! That of course is what's getting in your way of understanding this: you can't believe that the data showing warming could possibly be this incontrovertable. To re-present and image I showed earlier in the thread:

 

 

The separate lines are from completely separate analyses and models and sets of raw data. It does not take an expert to see that they are virtually identical in both short and long term changes.

 

How do you get such consistency? Well again it's either:

• You analyze the data, understand how to make it comparable and then VALIDATE those adjustments to make them a highly accurate representation of reality..
• Or there is a worldwide communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our temperature readings

I know you are sure it's the latter, but I'm sure even you can follow this logic if you try. And I know you do accidentally try from time to time:

 

The placement of the original land stations were not done just for one variable like temperature, but many were place to investigate weather extremes. The station on top of Mt Washington in New Hampshire is there because it has the highest recored surface winds, but this does not reflect the best temperature placement to average New Hampshire. That was not the intent of that station, although temperature will be measured as part of the data collection. 

 

Yep. That's exactly the nature of the "adjustment from raw data" that you are otherwise railing against.

 

What's important to note is that the multiple analyses of these data sets does NOT just toss out the data from the top of a mountain because it's extreme: that data is used to VALIDATE trends: if the "normal station in town" goes up on the average of 1 degree over 10 years and the average at the top of the mountain does too, that VALIDATES that the temperature rise is occurring and that the temperature in town is probably valid and doesn't need as much adjusting.

 

 

The number of surface weather stations has decreased globally, since the early days, with the USA maintaining the most, although this has gone down from 6000 to 1500. Globally, the numb ryas gone down even more, where there are also surface stations that still work but are not connected to the grid. One can get the data on CD for a cost, but it is not part of the grid in real time. Maybe the revisionists history data is needed to normalize to the present. Has anyone done point data, with the satellite to reflect just the historical land stations? Maybe satellite is not that good for 100 ft2 targets, to create a historical average parallel or simulation.  

 

Gosh the way some folks cherry pick their data is sometimes just breathtaking. 

 

Yes, weather stations managed EXLUSIVELY by NOAA has gone down from 6000 to 1500, but that does not include the over 5000 weather stations managed by the National Weather Service (many of which were transferred to it from NOAA), and the (at the last count I can find) 37,000 independently reporting private weather stations that are now networked in the US alone.

 

As I said, trying to imply that they're all being thrown out and ignored to be replaced by somehow "less accurate" satellite data is just plain silly. That ground data is constantly being used to VALIDATE the data gathered from space.

 

And that's why all the DIFFERENT surveys report IDENTICAL CONCLUSIONS of warming.

 

As far as the emotional argument of Koch Brothers and big oil paying for research, when anyone is singled out by politics, such as with liberals has historical done with oil, even before the global warming scare, you have to defend yourself against slander and lies when you trade and sell with the public. This is defensive research to make sure your POV is heard over political games. What defensive science does is increase the cost of doing business, so the overpriced solar and alternative energy could appear more competitive. The rising price at the pump are then blamed on big oil as being due to greed but not a  need to defend against bullies. 

 

The only reason for bringing up the sources of funds for the denialist side here is due to the fact that just about the only justification that is being made for why scientists all agree on global warming is that they make money from it.

 

Oh my gosh! Really? Do you have any idea how much more money these guys could make if they'd just do what David and Charles Koch want them to do? Then they are all idiots, because of *course* money is the only possible motivator for them!

 

And of course the Koch's have to defend themselves! The primary reason they want to prove there is cooling is because of the massive push to stop the extraction of Canadian tar sands for which they are the single biggest investor, standing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars if projects like Keystone XL are shut down.

 

Now please tell me, who has the most to gain from proving or disproving warming? A poor professor who gets a few thousand dollars of additional grant money, almost all of which gets turned around to starving grad students, or David and Charles Koch?

 

 

This is why you need to factor in political scams, when dealing with areas of science that use politics to single out certain industries and individuals. 

 

Yeppers. You might want to look in the mirror dear. I'll stop talking about the Kochs when you stop screaming about money-grubbing, greedy, egotistical climate scientists.

 

 

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it, :phones:

Buffy

[Rade]

 

The separate lines are from completely separate analyses and models and sets of raw data. It does not take an expert to see that they are virtually identical in both short and long term changes.

 

This is a very informative graph. I have a question. From the period between ~ 1940-1960 the temperature levels, and as I recall this was the time a few scientists (but not the majority) were writting about a golbal cooling effect. However, it seems to me, now clear from data after 1960, that the 'cooling' trend was more a result of massive destruction of CO2 producing industry in much of the industrial world during WWII and Korea war. Would this be an accurate conclusion, do we have worldwide CO2 data before, during, and after the 1940-1960 period that can be associated with the temperature trends ?

 

Also, fyi, in 1956, during the period when temperature was leveling (and some were claiming the next ice age around the bend), once a physics professor at Texas A&M (and other universities), Gilbert Plass, predicted CO2 would result in significant global warming by the end of the century, a bold prediction at the time because, as seen from the graph, the world temperature data available in 1956 would have suggested a neutral or opposite trend. However, Plass was aware of the 'general warming trend' as seen in the graph from ~ 1900-1950. History shows that Plass was on target in his prediction, even if there are some errors in his calcuations. See this reprint, with modern commentary at the end, of the 1956 Plass paper in American Scientist:

 

http://afil.tamu.edu/Readings%202012/CO2%20and%20Climate.pdf

 

While Plass apparently was incorrect in some details, temperature data over time cannot falsify his 1956 hypothesis prediction, it is confirmed.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Rade

[Alpine]

 

Climate change was chosen because is easier to spin...

 

 

Hmmm...the social media started throwing around the term "God Particle" instead of using the correct term, which is Higgs Boson. CONSPIRACY!

I bet that Peter Higgs is trying to create more jobs in the field of Physics by putting the fear of God in young minds! He knew he couldn't do that with a scientifically accurate term like "Higgs Boson", so he added the G-word to it.

 

P.S: The term "Global Warming" was first used in 1975 by Wallace Broecker (geochemist) in his article, ""Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?", prior to which the generally accepted term was either Climate Change or Climate Modification.

Thus rendering your "rebranded" theory incorrect. And I've a source to prove whatever I've written too, do you?

 

And Buffy, thank you for that lovely quote at the end of post #17. :)

[Buffy]

This is a very informative graph. I have a question. From the period between ~ 1940-1960 the temperature levels, and as I recall this was the time a few scientists (but not the majority) were writting about a golbal cooling effect. However, it seems to me, now clear from data after 1960, that the 'cooling' trend was more a result of massive destruction of CO2 producing industry in much of the industrial world during WWII and Korea war. Would this be an accurate conclusion, do we have worldwide CO2 data before, during, and after the 1940-1960 period that can be associated with the temperature trends ?

 

Yes, I mentioned this relationship earlier in the thread. Also massive improvements in technology (smoke stack scrubbers, catalytic converters, etc.) all came online in the 60s and 70s due to backlash against smog worldwide.

 

CO2 data going way back has been extracted from glaciers and ice sheets, so yes, lots of work has been done showing correlation between the two going far back into prehistory.

 

 

 

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do, :phones:

Buffy