if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Black Is White; June Is August; Friday is Saturday
by Hal_10000
This sort of shit drives me crazy:
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its “worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
This doesn’t change the reality of global warming, of course, which is based on thousands of pieces of data. But it does give crates of ammunition to the global warming deniers.
Errors happens in science. The beautiful thing about science, however, is the corrective mechanism of other scientists trying to reproduce the same results. In this case, other scientists found the mistake. However, this was no ordinary scientific blunder. If I make a mistake in my sums, someone corrects it in a snarky aside in an article in the Astrophysical Journal. Global warming science, however, moves the world. Policy is based on such discoveries.
This was not a difficult error to detect at all. Aside from the contradictory data in weather patterns, we’re in the midst of a Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which has been counter-acting global warming for the last decade and is likely to for the next decade. Of course, it’s an oscillation, not a trend, so it will eventually reverse and the world will warm faster than global warming predicts (as it did from the 70’s to the 90’s).
A warm October would have been a huge stunning result. Most scientists, when they find something so unexpected, immediately suspect an error and check everything down to the last nut and bolt. But this group’s reaction was: “Warm October! This is something to panic people over!”
Pathetic. The reason I push conservatives and libertarians to accept the likelihood of global warming is precisely so that we can get the scientific, political and economic debate out of the hands of morons.
Comments
One thing the article doesn’t seem to consider is that maybe this guy is just lying to boost his political agenda. Why do the errors always happen on the side of more warming?
Why do the errors always happen on the side of more warming?
Because that is the side of the religious whackjobs that push this shit. I recently read that Al Gore is second only to L. Ron Hubbard in creating a modern global religion. I think he got it wrong, there are far more Kool-Aid drinking envirotards than there are Scientologists, and they have far more public acceptance.
Of course, now that the economy is in the toilet and people don’t have time to indulge themselves in their little green fantasy, as well as getting a taste for what life will be like under the greens, the envirotards are starting to panic. Right now their only hope is that the next solar cycle will be a motherfucker, which it most likely won’t be.
In ten years Gore will either STFU or have switched to another topic as “global cooling” will, once again, be the fad of the day.
Hal,
I don’t know how old you are but if you were to look back to the mid seventies the very same crowd was screaming “Global Cooling”.
Time did a cover page in, I believe, June of 1974. And both of these politically charged occurences happened during troubled war times.
The view isn’t always clear from your ivory tower but you have exhibited a little more common sense that most at that dizzing height.
Errors happens in science.
They happen everywhere else, too.
Oh please, Mississippi. So if someone has been wrong once, that invalidates anything they say? In 1974, the globe *was* colling, because of the pacific decadal oscillation and industrial pollution of the upper atmosphere. But when the oscillation reversed, it compounded global warming contributing to a much more rapid rise in temps over the next 25 years.
Shorter Hal:
“Shut the fuck up Mississippi until you know what you’re talking about.”
Well done, sir.
:-)
I didn’t mean to sound like that, Gad, but the “cooling” counterpoint is one that’s grown tired. It’s a point, but not an important one.
The reason I push conservatives and libertarians to accept the likelihood of global warming is precisely so that we can get the scientific, political and economic debate out of the hands of morons.
There are a number of huge and quite unsupportable assumptions in this statement.
[/snark :) ]
I still can’t believe you buy into the steaming pile of shit that is “global warming”....
SO, a month ago, you posted some equally bad science that showed that global warming had not happened in the past 10 years. I don’t remember anyone jumping up and down and waving their arms about that one.
This doesn’t change the reality of global warming, of course, which is based on thousands of pieces of data.
Calling BS. So when the earth cools it’s an oscillation. When it warms it’s a trend. hmmm, I see.
Wiser, there is more than one thing affecting the Earth’s temperature. The two I mention are:
Pacific Decadal Oscillation—which varies and contributed to rapid warming from 70’s to 90’s, cooling at other times.
Global warming - a slow gradual increase that does not reverse.
Think of the planet’s temperature as being like the stock market. There are bubbles and bursts, but the trend is unmistakably up for the last 70 years.
Yeah, but the temperature collection methods weren’t reliable until recently. So we don’t really know.
The “hockey stick” has been debunked and GW scientists have it in their interest to generate studies that support the sources of their funding.
Sorry Hal but I, like many, are just not convinced.
SO, a month ago, you posted some equally bad science that showed that global warming had not happened in the past 10 years.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t. First of all, I typically don’t supply links - you have Google, look shit up on your own…
On the other hand, the planet has been cooling off for the last decade - even that moron Al Gore has admitted it…
Hey Hal, why are we on track for a colder than “normal” year? Ocillations be damned.
Oh and *no fly zone* GAD-fly suck my dick you blow hard.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t. First of all, I typically don’t supply links - you have Google, look shit up on your own…
No, you didn’t supply links. I looked it up, and I trashed your argument. End of story.
I wasn’t planning to go over the same old territory, myself, but I am sure you can find it if you go back through the archives.
No, you didn’t supply links. I looked it up, and I trashed your argument. End of story
Is that how things are in your world? How are the unicorns?
Is that how things are in your world? How are the unicorns?
Unicorns? I am not the one who posted a bogus argument.
If this oscillation is such a well established scientific fact how come temperature predictions were so off the last few years? Remember when 2005 was going to be the hottest year on record? How about 2006? Or 2007? How about how the hottest year on record was revised from 1998 back to 1934? How’s that for a “a slow gradual increase that does not reverse”? Except when it does, apparently.
You also maintain that the warming from the 70’s to 90’s was the sum result of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and a long-term warming trend. However, you are basing this conclusion on the assumption that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has a consistent amplitude. Since the mechanism of this oscillation is not understood, that assumption is based only on historical data. The change in temperature could be interpreted just as easily as evidence that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation’s pattern is changing, rather than evidence in support of the theory of global warming.
Come on Hal, you’re a scientist. If you make predictions based on a hypothesis and your predictions fail repeatedly, what does that say about your hypothesis? Either the experiment wasn’t well controlled or the hypothesis is incorrect. The former suggests the researchers don’t understand climate nearly as well as they claim, and the latter is self-explanatory.
The funny thing about the variations in temps over the last 100 years or so is that they match up almost exactly with changes in solar output. Sun gets a little busier, we get hotter. Sun cools down, we get cooler.
And Hal how do you explain the fact that Mars’ temp changes mirrors the Earth’s? That’s some powerful Pacific Deacadal thingy whatsit if its been lowering the temps on Mars.
The funny thing about the variations in temps over the last 100 years or so is that they match up almost exactly with changes in solar output
The jury is still out on this one too.
The funny thing about the variations in temps over the last 100 years or so is that they match up almost exactly with changes in solar output
The jury is still out on this one too.
Sorry dude, but citing the BCC in this debate is like citing Al Gore. Not exactly a neutral referree. Take a look at some actual data and you will see that when the sun is less active, we are colder; when it is more active we are warmer.
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I still can’t believe you buy into the steaming pile of shit that is “global warming”....