"THE greatest difficulty facing the promoters of the theory that human emissions of carbon dioxide cause dangerous global warming is the inconvenient truth that it is impossible to measure the average temperature of the earth’s surface by any known technology. Without this information it is not possible to claim global warming" writes Vincent Gray in his most recent 'Truth Newsletter'.
The newsletter continues with an explanation of how a mean global surface temperature anomaly was calculated, and then switches to compare output from General Circulation Models (GCMs) with an all together different method of calculating a global mean temperature using microwave sounders...
"In order to fake this claim the Mean Global Surface Temperature Anomaly Record
(MGSTAR) was fabricated from temperature measurements made at meteorological weather
stations.
It did not matter that
· There is no standardized method for making these observations,
· They are unrepresentative of the earth’s surface,and worse the further back you go.
· Their locations are mainly close to cities,
· Only maximum and minimum temperatures are measured,,
· The number and location of stations changes daily
Despite these disabilities, which would have killed the idea in the days when genuine scientists controlled the scientific journals, the public have been persuaded that this dubious procedure is a genuine guide to global temperature change. They even seem to accept that a change in it over a century of a few decimals of a degree is cause for alarm.
John Christy and Roy Spencer in 1979 at the University of Huntsville, Alabama established an alternative procedure for plotting global temperature anomalies in the lower troposphere by using the changes in the microwave spectrum of oxygen recorded by satellites on Microwave Sounder Units (MSUs). This overcame several of the disadvantages of the MGSTAR method.
It is almost truly global, not confined to cities. Although it misses the Arctic, this is also true of the MGSTAR. There have been some problems of calibration and reliability but they are far less than the problems of the MSGTAR record. They are therefore more reliable.
From the beginning the two records have disagreed with one another. This created such panic that the supporters of the IPCC set up an alternative facility to monitor the results at Remote Sensing Systems under the aegis of NASA and in the capable hands of Frank Wentz, an IPCC supporter. It was confidently believed that the 'errors' of Christy and Spencer would soon be removed. To their profound disappointment this has not happened, The RSS version of the Lower Troposphere global temperature anomaly record is essentially the same as that still provided by the University of Huntsville. It is also almost the same as the measurements made by radiosonde balloons over the same period.
The MSU record has now been going for 34 years. Spencer has recently published a
comparison between temperature predictions made by a large number of IPCC climate
models and their projected future and the temperature record as shown by the MSUs
and the balloons.
at
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
It is surely obvious that all the models are wrong and that their projections are
nonsensical.
I might also add that the central line is also meaningless.
Vincent Gray
Wellington
New Zealand"
Click on the graph for a better, much larger view...
Little Lukie states:
"But back to the thread instead of random AGW sooking – don’t you lot find how well the surface temperature series matches the MSU record time series? (alternatively bring up heaps of diversionary gunk)"
Yes, back to the IPCC CLAIMS of AGW. I notice you haven't mentioned the HOT SPOT lately Little Lukie. Unfortunately for you most of those Climate Models, especially the ones showing warming, all have it!! As IT is about twice the warming rate of the surface, and IT should have been occurring for the last 30-40 years, I leave it to you to decide why we have decided the models are garbage and you are a joke!!!
Yup, those close matches are really great Little Lukey, for us DENIERS!!!
Then there are the numerous papers which have compared the model runs used by the IPCC against real world features such as SST's, precipitation, ice cover... Most of what the models show are NOT close to the real world. Those models may be great, but, they must be modeling some other string than the one we occupy!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Hi toby,
Thanks for responding. Your point about signal-to-noise ratio (even though you didn't call it by that name) is spot-on for the short term. The longer term is a different story. According to climate cycle boffins, we're due to for another major advance of continental glaciers--aka an "Ice Age"--some time within the next 2000 years.
If we continue taking various kinds of "meaningless" climate-related measurements, and put ALL of the undiddled raw data online, the eventual downward trend will become obvious even to the Vincent Grays of this world. That will happen well before the frozen fit hits the shan. And the early heads-up will buy everyone some valuable time to prepare for the inevitable.
BTW, your charming backwater continent will become very attractive to panic-stricken snowbirds from the UK and N Europe. But that boat is nearly full already.
I'd like to say a bit more about Vincent's Gray logic, in connection with a water management issue that Jennifer has written about. There's political controversy (albeit considerably less scientific controversy) about the history of the Lower Lakes. Dishonest and uninformed politicos claim that the Lower Lakes had a mostly freshwater history, before we 'evil' humans arrived on the scene. And that's the main official rationale for the barrages.
By way of contrast, Jennifer mentions research on the remains of microorganisms--called Foraminifera--in the sediments there. Keying the identities of these various beasties supports the hypothesis that the LLs have had a very mixed and Politically Incorrect salinity history. Hey politicians! Can you say, "estuary?"
Unfortunately, there are two flies in the ointment. First, the sediment studies involved proxies. Horrors! We really should have recruited Dr Who, his Tardis, and his long scarf to travel back a wee bit in time, to measure the salinity directly.
Moreover there was sampling error. They did not examine samples from every square meter of the lake bottoms. When I apply my imperfect mortal understanding of Vincent's Gray logic, I find that the studies are absolutely meaningless.
Nice try, Jennifer. And nice try, principal investigators. Back to the drawing board. And no soup for you! The inerrant precepts of His Grayness trump everything else.
Following his sterling example, all environmental blog posts should be nuance-free zones. Catchy slogans too! If you disagree with someone, dismiss his claims as meaningless. That's real highbrow stuff.
Now where can I get a good Vincent Gray T-shirt and coffee mug? I'll skip the tattoo for now.
Larry you make some very interesting points. currently a mean global temp number is pretty meaningless because of a variety of reasons you discuss ( but potentially you say this could be fixed by having a vast number of sites manned by "true sceptics"....hugely expensive and unrealistic, but your point is potentially valid) . Personally I have a problem with the numbers because the error factors from each station and for the global mean are very likely greater than the actual change being measured....so how could this number have any real meaning? I am no statistician and standard deviations are no strength of mine. But it is reasonable to adjust temperature data for a variety of reasons ( I just dont like how they always seem to be 'up' lately and 'down' in the past to exacerbate the trend {they wouldnt do that would they!haha}.
I recall john daly writing about this in relation to topex data http://www.john-daly.com/altimetry/topex.htm. he provides a lovely example of measurements from london to new york "How many stages of statistical averaging can take place from a body of raw data before the statistical output becomes hopelessly decoupled from the raw data which creates it?"
so given your scenario i would still be sceptical of the "mean" because of measurement error and th required statistical averaging?
I hope I have said that in comprehensible way?
Valid calculations will only come from valid analysis of natural climate cycles. We will experience slight cooling until 2028, then 30 years of warming by about half a degree. Big deal!
Let's consider some facts. Is the Arctic warming? Yes, like everywhere else, with a long-term trend for 500 years rising out of the Little Ice Age at the rate of about half a degree per century, due to turn to cooling at least within 200 years. But is there a hockey stick? No.
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/2865/xkbx.jpg
In fact the Arctic is no hotter than it was in the late 1930's and early 1940's.
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/5030/pso0.jpg
Is there a super-imposed 60 year natural cycle that caused all the alarm during the 30 years of rising prior to 1998? Yes.
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/2496/otc3.png
But it's all natural - every bit of it. And it's nothing whatsoever to do with carbon dioxide, radiative forcing, back radiation, greenhouse effects or any such travesties of physics.
Ah Luke, clearly it's you who loves the biffo. Bet you were crawling over the screen tonight.
I suppose we have to wait for the return to sanity in our media now the red Queen is dead
Comment from: cohenite June 24th, 2013 at 7:20 pm
"The benchmark for the fallacy of a global mean standard temperature [GMST] is still Essex, McKitrick and Andressen:"
In the past, you've done a great job keeping up with the AGW mythology, and with the debunking thereof. However I feel that you're way out of your depth on this one. Naked link dropping does not qualify as intelligent discussion. And neither does your apparent playing of the Settled Science card. That second gambit, by the way, is straight out of Big Al's playbook.
I'm not motivated to check out that particular link. I'm not asking for a detailed summary. But if you had written a short paragraph that mentioned the most important point, I'd have taken it seriously. I tend to ignore Argument from Authority.
We both agree that scientific fraud exists--especially in this politically charged arena. But when REAL scientists wear their scientists' hats, they always tell the bloody truth--warts and all.
I've already mentioned the two flavors of measurement uncertainty. (This includes the special case in which the noise level drowns out the signal that you're trying to measure.) They are part and parcel of the scientific process. In no way, does their existence invalidate the concept of a GMST. Now I'll put the monkey on your back.
Suppose that the No Such Agency in the USA had diverted half of its black budget--from illegal spying on law abiding citizens, to climate monitoring. Suppose further that they had put a vast network of temperature stations at intervals no greater than 20 miles apart over the entire planet. And yes, this would include temperature stations on small ships to cover the 70% of the Earth's surface that's open ocean.
It would also include a temperature station on an amphibious vessel/vehicle for the North Pole. This would cover both bases for the geographic pole: the iceberg scenario and the open ocean scenario.
All of the stations would be manned by self-avowed AGW skeptics, which would cut way down on the cheating.
Why would an average temperature taken from all of these sources be meaningless?
For whatever it's worth, most people, including those who fancy themselves to be Freethinkers, short-circuit the analytical process, and rely on BS opinion leaders and overrated 'expert' witnesses to do the hard thinking for them. Go ahead, make my day. Prove that you're a Freethinker. Tell me something that I don't already know. Please, just one itty-bitty, information-dense paragraph.
But Psychic Larry plays the odds. He predicts that you won't, because you can't. He also predicts that you'll attempt to change the subject, or to engage in more naked link dropping, rather than answering my simple question.
Thx for your observations SD, as always intersting