Ross McKitrick made the same argument over a decade ago: Why Should We Trust A Statistic That Might Not Even Exist?
“Discussions on global warming often refer to ‘global temperature.’ Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility,” says Science Daily, paraphrasing Bjarne Andresen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, one of three authors of a paper questioning the “validity of a ‘global temperature.’”
“The temperature obtained by collecting measurements of air temperatures at a large number of measuring stations around the globe, weighing them according to the area they represent, and then calculating the yearly average according to the usual method of adding all values and dividing by the number of points.”
But a “temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system,” says Andresen. The climate is not regulated by a single temperature. Instead, “differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate”.
There is even no continuity of measurement. At some point in recent history weather stations were mechanized, essentially starting measurement anew. I wonder how isolated rural weather stations have fared as far as trends go. My guess is very little. I suspect 100& of warming has taken place in the oceans and near the poles where a there is little recorded temperature history and what you do create can be extrapolated over a huge area.
You should check out Wattsupwiththat.com, Anthony Watts specializes in weather station location.
But yoou are correct, it appears that warming is inversely proportional to weather station density 🙂
If you want the Temperature trend of the Earth, better that all Thermal measuring devices be buried ~29″ into the ground…Of course that would not allow for the Mann manipulation of records….
Like any patient getting a check up the doctor needs a good place to jab in a thermometer. That place needs to be representative and relatively free from external factors affecting accuracy. Oh and there needs to be a carefully recorded baseline history to compare against for trend analysis. On that account I really like the peak ice % measurements taken for the Great Lakes. Peak ice reflects an actual accurately caculatable minimum energy level that can be compared year to year. Its like taking a temperature because temperature changes throughout the year affect the heat energy stored in the Great Lakes system. Sure there are other variables (like winds, cloud cover, regional rainfall, heavy shipping traffic) but overall temperature is the primary driver to peak ice. Given that the Great Lakes covers a large part of a continent also makes the temperature trends observed more representative of General more global changes. The 47 years of data that now exists is also somewhat statistically significant too. I may have said this here before but if this upcoming winter attains similar peak ice to last winter (i.e. ~80%) there will be essentially a totally flat trend on either side of the minimum peak ice seen in 2002. That in my estimation would de-bunk any claims that CO2 has a measurable warming contribution. Simply because if it did the minimum heat energy in the Great Lakes should be rising with less and less peak ice.
For years I’ve been screaming that the entirety of CAGW is founded on statistical nonsense. Rubbish statistics that have been processed and homogenized to “reveal” an intended outcome. None of it is “science”. It is rooms full of political hacks at computer terminals falsifying data. Inventing data. And hiding data.
YOU are being LIED to … about Global Warming, Climate Change … and “EXTREME” weather.
So I graphed all the monthly average temperatures – monthly mean, mean highs, mean lows, extreme highs, extreme lows – at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) as recorded by the Canadian government since 1937.
Guess what I found?
Starting in 1986-87, the mean low temperatures show an up-tick, a SIGNIFICANT up-tick. Then they level off. But only the mean low temperatures. The mean high temperatures rose, too, but insignificantly.
What happened in the Vancouver area in 1986? Expo 86. And guess who opened Expo 86? You got it, Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
(Side-bar: Guess who is the Prince of Green these days? Prince Charles himself.)
22 million people went through the gates of Expo 86. It was a smashing success. Even some Hollywood glitterati came to look it over. Vancouver has been transformed into Hollywood North. Downtown Vancouver today makes 1986 downtown Vancouver look like zilch. Have you seen the number of towers?
What has happened to the growth of Vancouver since then? How about YVR itself?
Would you say that both have grown a tad? Just a bit?
I wonder how that affected YVR’s night-time temperatures because of heat-retention in more buildings. Hmmmm.
I have had the good fortune over the last 10 years to listen to and question real climate scientists – Dr. Fred Michel, Dr. MIchael Hart, and Dr, Ian Clark.
Each of these scholars quietly and convincingly made the case that there is absolutely nothing remarkable or precedent-setting about earth’s present weather patterns/climate.
All of them spoke at public meetings that had been advertised well in advance. And the ads clearly said that everyone was welcome and that there would be an open question-and-answer period. Two things became quite apparent: (a) the tree-huggers never showed up to ask questions, and (b) the press left as soon as they heard the magic words that human activity did indeed affect the weather….to an infinitesimally, inconsequential degree. But their headlines and editorials in the following week’s local rags screamed “Climate Scientists confirm AGW!”.
I often start with: “Assuming there is a global temperature and we can measure it …” then I continue with something like ” … yes there has been slight warming since …” “…but you/they must prove that this is not due to natural causes”. Which of course they do not and cannot.
Some half-informed half-wits say, GHGs theory must be true because, withoput GHG effect, the planet would be too cold for liquid water. Therefor CO2…. Of course, then you must point out to them that water vapor, AKA H2O, is the greatest of all GHGs keeping our planet nicely warm thankyouverymuch.
methinks the argument will fail as usual, because the swirling masses cannot begin to comprehend the science and technical nature of the topic. the swirling masses depend on the mandarins to tell them what to think.
kinda like the way its been since there was language, swirling masses, mandarins and weather.
You should check out Wattsupwiththat.com, Anthony Watts specializes in weather station location.
But yoou are correct, it appears that warming is inversely proportional to weather station density 🙂
They keep saying you have to listen to the science of global climate change. The major problem with their theory being that the only ‘SCIENCE’ being used is POLITICAL SCIENCE, not actual physics, or chemistry, or any of those boring, old, non-gendered theories. We should maybe go back to using those old sciences.
Computer models seem to be the basis for the hysteria. As they say, garbage in, garbage out.
Well Duh.
And accurate to 0.001 degrees C no less.
This is Climatology,where noise is signal and no one will dare to state the error range of the assumed setpoints.
When this scam is over and the hysteria dies down or gets openly mocked,serious questions must be answered..
What happened to the scientific method?
Who accepted the UN IPCC’s work as good enough for policy making in Canada?
Why should we continue the existence of all our government watchdog agencies,when they were the perpetuators of this fraud?
Why did we allow the wastage of so much resources on this stupidity?
What of the politicians who tried to ram this crud down our throats?Obviously they are too gullible to be trusted in any position of authority, so can we cull them?
Ditto the “public service” who have enabled and promoted this hysteria,in their lust for power over the citizens,shall they go unpunished?
Is it time to arm the taxpayer and strip the tax takers of all weapons?
We have seen how low these fools and bandits are willing to go,do we continue to tolerate their stealing??
We’ve accurately calculated the average temperature of the earth to 3 decimal places, from data recorded on devices that are accurate to +/- 1 degree C. Next year we will do it to 4 decimal places!
“then calculating the yearly average according to the usual method of adding all values and dividing by the number of points.”
That is the first problem. The second problem is in thinking all those averages somehow lead to very accurate temperature values because you have added them all up and divided by the number of points – which they don’t. That only works for stationary measurements (that do not change over distance or time during the measurement period). So talking about a trend of 0.03 deg per year means nothing. You would have to wait about 30 years just to get to the noise level of the numerator.
Listen To The Trees. Tree stumps have been found on the Arctic coast that have been dated at 9000 years of age. In order for them to exist the global average temperature would have been 6-8C warmer than it is currently. So 9000 years ago it was 6-8 deg. C warmer and mankind was happily breeding and raising families the birds were happy all mammals were happy. Nobody was incinerated. There was no manmade CO2 from civilization. How much more evidence do you need to tear down the Church of Manmade Global Warming and Taxation. And to pick up your Newfy Seal Club, and start Clubbing the Shreekers and Con Artists on all sides who are telling you how to live and taxing the shit out of you and your family. Start shouting them down and start telling them they are Fooking Imbeciles that should under constant supervision. In therapy in fact.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/08/22/listen-to-the-trees/
Watcher,
I enjoyed that article too. Those same points have been brought up time and time again, but are ignored by the politicians and political scientists.
And then after screaming that civilization will end if there is a 4C temperature increase, these same politicians fly off to vacation in some place that is 20C warmer!
Game Over For Global Warming.
https://ep.probeinternational.org/2016/04/15/lawrence-solomon-why-it-looks-like-game-over-for-global-warming/
You would have to be crazy to buy The Great Climate Scam.
Chicken Little been around longer than dinosaur crap.
Hard to believe people were smarter in the disco 70’s.
Gotta love those expert scientists and their consensus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe500eIK1oA
1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”
7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.
8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.
12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in his 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.
13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out.
14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.
16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”
18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
// But a “temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system,” says Andresen. //
By that logic it would make no sense to ask “what’s the temperature” outside today.
Or take your own temperature.
From a 2009 report on an “alternative” climate conference [to the Copenhagen meeting]
// The speakers list was also a well-known group. Usual suspects: Roger Pielke, the infamous former scientist Fred Singer, the failed politician and former journalist Christopher Monckton, and oil and gas company director Leighton Steward filled in as the out of town talent. Locals included the astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, from the Technical University of Denmark, Bjarne Andresen of the University of Copenhagen and hometown boy Ole Humlum of the University of Oslo. //
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/does-a-global-temperature-exist/
The only way to measure global temperature would be via satellite sensing using a fleet of them to take readings on a truly global basis.
But has that even been set up yet? If it has it hasn’t been in operation for very long – certainly not long enough to get a statistically certain dataset.
And without quality satellite data that goes back to say the 1950s when anthropogenic CO2 emissions were significantly lower it’s going to take decades to get conclusive proof one way or the other on whether ACO2 is a significant cause of warming if indeed there is any.
Here is why they are idiots. The Sun produces so many watts per sq. meter on earth’s surface. Depending on earths distance from sun, this does change due to elliptical orbit, this they ignore. They then take the total surface area of the planet and lay it flat, then say it is eating up look see. Without doing their calculations on the surface of the planet that is facing the sun. They are flat earthers.
This guy explains it better than anyone about how they do their calculations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDMlcDLi1VY
I note that CBC is no longer allowing comments on their incessant stream of fake news climate alarmist articles. Too much counter evidence being presented.
Average global temperature is a mathematical construct that is meaningless in reality. Just like national popular vote. For different reasons, but both meaningless. Average global temperature is scientifically meaningless. The error bars for wide swaths of the Earth would swamp any other data, and make analysis based on fractions of a degree change ludicrous. National popular vote is Constitutionally meaningless, just like total runs scored in a World Series. Anyway, fraudulent votes in California and New York would swamp any meaningful total. On second thought, maybe the reason they are both meaningless isn’t so different after all.
I can think of a few more meaningless mathematical constructs. Determining the “true” winner of a World Series by total runs. Extreme example, the 1960 Yankees obliterated the Pittsburgh Pirates by 55-27 total runs. Average temperature for your two hands. Put a hand in a bucket of boiling water, and the other in a bucket of freezing water. On the average, you are comfortable. The mean per capita national wealth is almost meaningless because the graph is highly skewed. You cannot apply any analysis developed for Gaussian distributions. That is why all the data are given for median figures.
Talking about a “mean global temperature” is akin to talking about the average colour at The Gap. It’s statistically meaningless and even with that the data used by the AGW crowd in their historical trends are not contiguous and extrapolate point values well beyond anything remotely justifiable. As John MacLean pointed out in his PhD thesis in some cases the mean temperature assigned for the entire southern hemisphere was extrapolated from temperature measurements from two weather stations in Indonesia. Even a cursory reflection would lead one to question the usefulness of historical values of “mean global temperature”. For example values from the Amundsen Scott station in Antarctica could not have been recorded continuously prior to 1957, the International Geophysical Year because it was not continuously inhabited before then. Before the 1970s, over half the grids used to derive temperatures for global climate models for the southern ocean had no actual temperature readings whatsoever.