Cooking the global warming numbers

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting opinion piece today entitled Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess.  In it, the author talks about how the global temperature data has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming, by the IPCC and others.  Scientists or politicians?

1. The warming trend is not that impressive

The earth's paltry warming trend, 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the mid-1970s, isn't enough to scare people into poverty. And even that 0.31 degree figure is suspect.

2. The satellites and weather balloons show no such warming trend

For years, records from surface thermometers showed a global warming trend beginning in the late 1970s. But temperatures sensed by satellites and weather balloons displayed no concurrent warming.

These records have been revised a number of times, and I examined the two major revisions of these three records....The two revisions of the IPCC surface record each successively lowered temperatures in the 1950s and the 1960s. The result? Obviously more warming – from largely the same data.

3. The data has been revised six times in recent years, all in the same direction - towards warming

There have been six major revisions in the warming figures in recent years, all in the same direction. So it's like flipping a coin six times and getting tails each time. The chance of that occurring is 0.016, or less than one in 50. That doesn't mean that these revisions are all hooey, but the probability that they would all go in one direction on the merits is pretty darned small.

4. Some revisions ought to be made in the other direction, but no one wants to make them

Last year we published our results in the Journal of Geophysical Research, showing that "non-climatic" effects in land-surface temperatures – GDP per capita, among other things – exert a significant influence on the data. For example, weather stations are supposed to be a standard white color. If they darken from lack of maintenance, temperatures read higher than they actually are. After adjusting for such effects, as much as half of the warming in the U.N.'s land-based record vanishes. Because about 70% of earth's surface is water, this could mean a reduction of as much as 15% in the global warming trend.

5. Political persecution and suppression of dissent are typical in this branch of science (just as in the evolution discussion)

Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you're liable to be pilloried by your colleagues.

6. Warmer periods in the past resulted in minimal, if any loss of glacial ice - so why do we think it is actually happening now?  Fact or fiction?

Finally, no one seems to want to discuss that for millennia after the end of the last ice age, the Eurasian arctic was several degrees warmer in summer (when ice melts) than it is now. We know this because trees are buried in areas that are now too cold to support them. Back then, the forest extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean, which is now completely surrounded by tundra. If it was warmer for such a long period, why didn't Greenland shed its ice?

7. Questions

Why is the news on global warming always bad? If global warming isn't such a threat, who needs all that funding? Who needs the army of policy wonks crawling around the world with bold plans to stop climate change?

Indeed, it seems to me that the IPCC is not some unpolitical and representative body of scientists, but a bunch of well-meaning scientists swept up in group think and alarmism, wasting our time, energy, and resources with eco-wackoism.  And if you question their foregone conclusions?  You are an idiot, a flat-earther.  This is what science looks like when it is controlled by a narrow orthodoxy trying to suppress dissent in the name of 'scientific purity.' (See The 7 steps to supressing opponents' ideas)

RELATED POSTS:

• Global Warming - or not
• Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming
• Global Warming Politicians being Deceived by their Scientists?
• Global Warming Alarmism (GWA) is Junk Science
• Hey Al, I thought you wanted scientific honesty?
• 10 alarming facts about global warming

Comments

[Silver Hallide]

Oh my, we are going to start this up again Seeker. Anyone can write an Op Ed piece...doesn't mean it is credible.

OK. So, I dug up this guy's credentials and his credentials are as solid as swiss cheese.

I would put the full thing up in all its glory, but the SPAM bot would most certainly kill it.

So, I will post a link: Bio of Patrick Michaels

My personal favorite is that he has accepted financial backing and published research for the fossil fuel industry. Highly suspect.

I could go on, but we have covered this topic so many times here that if you had a full on Google search enabled here, I could just list the links and comments.

-S

[seeker]

I bring it up again because I still think it's probably a bunch of hooey, and I won't let it die because I don't buy the "the argument's over" B.S. GWA may be taking billions in resources to fight a non-existent threat, while more important issues go unresolved. Such pseudo-science may end up being criminally stupid, not environmentally enlightened.

Regarding Michaels being in the pay of fossil fuel companies, I followed the link back to a 1995 Harper's magazine article (is that the best you can do? 12 years ago?) that said:

"Last May, Minnesota held hearings in St. Paul to determine the environmental cost of coal burning by state power plants. Three of the skeptics—Lindzen, Michaels, and Balling—were hired as expert witnesses to testify on behalf of Western Fuels Association, a $400 million consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities."

So, Michaels was already a skeptic BEFORE the oil companies hired him, and they hired him to testify, not to create false data or anything like that.

I'd say your accusations of his credentials and honesty are swiss cheese! Besides, you should argue with this assertions, not just question his motives.

[psykotedy]

This is an old song and dance for you, Seeker. How about tackling something more personally impacting, like recycling?

[seeker]

It's old for me, but I keep fighting the fight until the GWA's stop promoting panic and threatening to take and spend billions of our tax dollars.

Recycling? I recycle already. While I am all for conservation and scientific environmentalism, those aren't my main causes.

I like to fight in the realm of ideas - partly because implementation is such a pain, and partly because I believe that ideas have bigger consequences. I fight GW alarmism because it could have disastrous human consequences, not because I am an environmentalist.

[Silver Hallide]

but I keep fighting the fight until the GWA's stop promoting panic and threatening to take and spend billions of our tax dollars.

Strange...why don't you focus your efforts on fighting the half trillion dollars of government spending that is already being ill spent?

The economic costs of implementing even 1/10 of the regulations aimed at curbing pollution that supposedly aids GW is nothing in comparison.

I think that you should focus on that. Make the government curb spending on existing programs. Those saving alone could address a lot of the social issues that you are supposedly concerned about.

- S

[seeker]

Strange...why don't you focus your efforts on fighting the half trillion dollars of government spending that is already being ill spent?

Why don't you? I choose my own priorities, and I think bogus science is important to fight. You think attacking wasteful spending is important, I agree! Go for it!

[seeker]

Make the government curb spending on existing programs. Those saving alone could address a lot of the social issues that you are supposedly concerned about.

Oh, and btw, I don't believe that better spending will solve social issues at all - liberals believe that the state can solve social ills, but me, I think helping people adopt better *thinking* is more important, which is why I focus on that. Government is not the savior of the people.

[Silver Hallide]

I choose my own priorities, and I think bogus science is important to fight.

Fine, fight the science, but not the regulations. Even if the regulations aimed at cutting emissions that might contribute to GW in fact don't, the cost in monetary resources is small in comparison to the wasteful spending that already exists. We get cleaner air out of anyway.

I think you need to be more clear...are you fighting bogus science or spending on curbing emissions that may be based on bogus science–even though the result will still be cleaner air with the added regulation.

For someone that shrills against GW alarmists, you are demonstrating in this forum an alarmist shrill about the bogus science. If it is bogus, then make a case without the shrill.

[seeker]

Even if the regulations aimed at cutting emissions that might contribute to GW in fact don't, the cost in monetary resources is small in comparison to the wasteful spending that already exists.

Maybe so, but if they want to raise my taxes, either income or gas, or whatever, to fight these ghosts, let them take it out of someone else's pocketbook.

Cleaner air? I'm not convinced that CO2 is unclean, but other pollutants, sure. Ones that are PROVEN to do harm.

you are demonstrating in this forum an alarmist shrill about the bogus science

Well, when a movement gains so much momentum with so little science, we should be alarmed, esp. when it's forcing it's way into our politics and pocketbooks.

[seeker]

And btw, I don't think there is anything shrill about this post - it's all 'facts,' baby.

[Benjamin9]

"Well, when a movement gains so much momentum with so little science, we should be alarmed, esp. when it's forcing it's way into our politics and pocketbooks." --->

aka: liberal fascism
def: fascism's so-called "third way" - neither capitalism nor socialism - and liberals who use the same phrase today to signify an attempt to compromise between business and labor, in attempt, among other things, to generate more tax dollars.

[Benjamin9]

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/06/video-they-must-be-polar-bears-in-disguise/

The reason why I divorced myself(even more forcefully than BO from the good Rev)from the MSM long ago.