Tuesday, April 10, 2012

I'll bet it was a rectal thermometer...

From Steve Goddard at Real Science.





The latest data set from The Met Office shows that the January 1851 southern hemisphere temperature anomaly was 1.800 C.
They calculated the southern hemisphere land temperature (within 0.001 degrees) based on a single thermometer in South America. In fact, it was the only thermometer south of Cuba.


Yet more rigorous science from global warming scientists. Now that the science is settled, let's give them millions billions trillions of dollars and the power to dictate world economics and governance.

My take on the graph:

The one thermometer they used was a rectal thermometer, and it's humanity's rectum.


9 comments:

  1. The "science" of global warming is pretty shoddy.

    Joey

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael,

    To repeat your previous statement; you're not a climate scientist and aren't qualified to comment on the science of AGW.

    This thread proves it. Your sole link is to Real Science, written by Steven Goddard, who has a BSc (in an unspecied field) and a masters in electrical engineering, so he's not a climate scientist, so by your criterion, not qualified to comment on global warming either.

    His blogpost is sparse on details. The purpose of the CRUtem4 is to update recent temperature trends and to increase the number of stations included.

    It might be true that there was only one weather station in 1861, but that's irrelevant. I'm not certain how he gets a temperature anomaly of 1.800 degrees C. Looking at the graph included, the temperature anomaly is negative, with wide error bars (reflecting the denialists' claim that the Earth isn't warming, it's just getting warmer as it comes out of the Little Ice Age).

    The global economy is around $61 trillion a year. Energy accounts for around 10% of that, or about $6 trillion a year. The corresponding figures for America are about $16 trillion and $1.6 trillion a year.

    Global subsidies for fossil fuels are about $450 billion a year. Indonesia spends more ($20 billion) on fuel subsidies than it spends on public education.

    Regardless of global warming, spending on energy, which is an absolute necessity for maintaining our standard of living, is enormous, and will need to be spent regardless of where the energy is coming from.

    Continuing to rely on fossil fuels means that we will be still liable for economic shocks, such as happened in 2007, with a spike in oil prices, leading to financial stress in mortgage borrowers, part of the reason for the GFC of 2008.

    It's a fact that fossil fuels must get more expensive, as the sources tapped become less accessible, and global demand for energy increases as the population increases to 9 billion in 2050.

    It would be sensible to be looking for alternate sources now rather than later, and it's going to take governments to fund the development.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "It might be true that there was only one weather station in 1861, but that's irrelevant."

    It's not irrelevant to the point that climate scientists are basing their theory upon scant data. Thermometers were extremely rare 100 or 150 years ago. That's why we use proxy data, which is beset with problems.

    Even so, have a look at the weather stations above. Can we really determine if warming is of a global nature when most of the data seems to come from Europe and North America?

    The bottom line is this: If the case for AGW were airtight, scientists woudln't need to lie, to conceal their doubts, to fudge the numbers, and to fix the peer review process. See climategate.

    JQ

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    Replies
    1. JQ, there wasn't any fudging or dodging going on in the climategate. The emails are out in the open, and beyond an out-of-context sentence "hide the decline" there really wasn't anything that suggested anything malign, other than the typical way that people do talk to each other within circles. There wasn't even any 'hiding' evidence of global warming not being real. The thing that was 'hidden' was merely the fact that tree ring data was systematically deviating from other data sources in recent years for reasons poorly understood. And it was only 'hidden' in the glossy version of the hockeystick graph for the summary report, it was plainly available in the official report along with the usual internal discussion.

      Have you seen the climategate? There wasn't much gate about it. Or maybe you have examples I don't have?

      Delete
    2. JQ,

      My comment was partly poking fun at Michael. In a previous thread, he stated that since he's not a climate scientist, he's not qualified to comment on the science, so he relies on his bullshit-detector (his wording).

      The paper that Steven Goddard is commenting on in his blog, is a science paper, so Michael is relying on a very inadequate discussion (follow the link to the thread) written by someone who is at best an electrical engineer.

      Michael refuses even as a layman to comment on the science, but he's completely happy to accept a layman's opinion.

      Either he's a hypocrite, or I've got a bridge to sell him ...

      Delete
    3. bachfiend,
      ...I've got a bridge to sell him ...

      That's plagiarism!

      Delete
    4. @Leonhard:

      "Hide the decline" is an open admission of scientific fraud. The fact that the data was manipulated specifically in the graph that would be displayed to the public strengthens, rather than mitigates, the case for misconduct.

      The climategate emails were packed with evidence for unethical conduct, including actual crimes (exhortation to destroy data rather than submit it under FOIA requests). There was open admission of rigging peer review, getting revenge on scientists skeptical of AGW, doubts about AGW that were not expressed in the literature nor to the public, etc.

      Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Climategate scandal is the lack of outrage from the scientific community, which suggests that this kind of conduct is quite acceptable in science.

      I do a fair amount of research, and anyone who did any of this in my lab would be fired on the spot.

      Delete
    5. How so? Nothing was said in the public statement that wasn't part of the conclusion in the long form scientific paper, which did openly state this, so how could it be fraud? Why not complain that politicians ought to be climatologists and well versed enough to read the full report? Also it would only be a scientific fraud if they had done a shuffer-drawer on that part of the graph, in the scientific paper, but they didn't.

      As far as I know not a single weather record, or temperature record has been destroyed by the IPCC and its affiliated organizations. The data is mostly available for the public and other organizations have gone through it. There was a project launched by a global warming dissenter, who had the approval of Anthony Watts (going so far as to say that he would (though he didn't) believe whatever conclusions they came to), who went through the data and ended up reproducing the hockey stick graph. Their research has been replicated and the date needed to do a replication is available.

      Its all handy and dandy to hear you broadly claim that they're committing unethical acts. What am I going to do in this comment field, read the emails to you one by one and dissect them? The only real proper answer is "Nuh uh"

      Who knows, they might have done something less than stellar (I think they had flaws), scientists are humans. It wouldn't change that they didn't commit scientific fraud anymore than Nixon being a criminal changes that he opened negotiations with China or started the war on cancer.

      How about giving me a specific example of a scientific fraud they committed.

      Delete
    6. Was a bit too quick on one thing, the report I was mentioning didn't replicate the full IPCC report, but merely an analysis of the temperature record going back to the mid nineteenth century. It substantiated similar reports from NASA, NOAA and the CRU.

      Delete