Scientists measurement of global average temperature is nonsense
Climate Scientists do try, but they ignore the obvious flaws in their approach and avoid dealing with the laws of physics
An “alarmist” website called “Carbon Brief” uses pretty pictures to lay out the “warming” claimed as the result of rising CO2 levels and explains in detail how “scientists” attempt to meaure “global average temperature”.
The explanations are lucid, complete and quite useful to demonstrate just how flawed the measurement approach widely used is and has always been. The page deals solely with “warming”, of course, and relies on “measurements” going back to 1880 to create another chart laying out the “warming” trend comparing results from four different scientific institutions. It isn’t necessary to point out that if the data were accurate it would not be necessary to compare these approaches nor to use a scale the entire range of which is 1 degree Centigrade when (as I will demonstrate) the measurements themselves have error terms larger than the entire range.
As the article explains, scientists break down Earth’s surface into rectangles bounded by sides two degrees of longitude and latitude in length. At the equator, one degree of either longitude or latitude comprises a distance of 111 kilometers, so these rectangles have an area as large as 222 x 222 = 49,284 square kilometers. 222 kilometers is farther than from London, Ontario to Toronto or from Toronto to Bracebridge. The temperature on any given day between these locations differs by quite a bit - at this moment Toronto is 3 deg. C and Bracebridge is 1 deg. C. Pretending there is an “average” - a single data point - that is useful for a given 49,284 square kilometer rectangle is nonsensical. For whatever measuring stations that lie within a given area, one can certainly calculate an “average” as well as a median, standard deviation, range, and all the usual statistics. If Toronto and Bracebridge were the only measuring stations in a given rectangle, the “average” would be 2 deg. C and this would be used as input to the calculation of “global average”, ignoring of course the diurnal ranges for any area. In Toronto, the diurnal range is about 10 deg. C in August suggesting a standard deviation of 2.5 deg. C (one quarter of the range is a rough and dirty estimate of standard deviation). Scientists will use the “average” of 8.55 deg. C in calculating the “global average” despite it having an error term since the annual “average” lies between 4 and 13.2 deg. C.
Even the number “4” is problematic since with one significant digit the value “4” lies between 3.5 and 4.49, a range of .99 degrees.
When you add numbers you also add their error terms. For example, the number 10 lies between 9.5 and 10.49. Add that to the number 5 which lies between 4.5 and 5.49 andyou get 15 but what you really get is a number that lies between 14 and 15.98, and the error term has grown to 1.98. Error terms grow with each successive addition.
Multiplication is even worse. Multiply 5 x 15 and get 75. Multiply 4.5 x 15.49 and get 69.7, which differs from 75 by 5.3.
Climate scientists ignore the error propagation inherent in their manipulation of the data and ignore the unreliability of the measurements themselves. The result is GIGO.
Take the approximately 5,000 weather stations on Earth, calculate what you claim to be the “average temperature” for each station, and divide by the number of stations and call the answer the “global average temperature”. Then run a regression through those “global averages” since 1880 and create chart of the result and claim it shows “warming” of about 0.75 deg. C when what it really shows that temperature has not changed since the so-called “anomalies” all lie within the error term of measurement and do not demonstrate any trend whatsoever. It would be remarkable if after all that arithmetic the so-called “global average” in every year was identical. It is not. Because it is not, you can can claim “warming” or “cooling” depending on how you want to interpret the data.
In the 1970’s, left wing ideology was promoting the idea that Earth was heading for a new ice age. That alarm didn’t work, so they shifted to “global warming”.
The claim is often made that the Arctic temperature is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe. Surprising that claim is true since twice zero is zero. The Arctic is host to 32 temperature measuring stations in its 4.5 million square kilometers, one every 140,000 square kilometers. The Antarctic is host to 92 temperature measuring stations (I am indebted to National Geographic for data) in its 13.5 million square kilometers, one every 146,000 square kilometers. Within those areas, the temperature differential from one border to another can be as great as fifteen deg. C and the diurnal range is often even larger. The annual range of temperature in the northeastern part of Eurasia is as high as 60 deg. C. Yet “climate scientists” are content to pretend a “global average” has meaning, run their linear regressions through the data from a complex, non-linear and chaotic climate system, and shout “warming” alarms.
They quickly jump on the bandwagon to claim the tiny differences in annual data they have calculated not only comprise “warming” but also are caused by fossil fuel emissions, heaping nonsense on nonsense. The simplicity of the physics demonstrating the alarmist claim is nonsense is well within the capability of most high school students, and is lucidly set out in this recent article by Dieter Shildknecht “Saturation of the Infrared Absorption by Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere”.
Shildknecht should get a Nobel prize for his observations and his article should be mandatory reading for every progressive we are foolish enough to elect to hold office in any legislative body in North America. An even more thorough review of the tripe passing as science is set out in Steven Koonin’s popular book “Unsettled” available on Amazon.com for about $25.00. Buy a copy and mail it to your congressman or other representative. I have already had copies sent to over 30 members of Canada’s Parliament none of whom who have thanked me or commented on the evidence that Canada’s “climate action” squanders billions and serves society poorly.
I am surprised none of the world’s climate scientists have tried calculus rather than linear regression to analyze their data. The parallels between trying to integrate the curves of temperature across the surface of the earth into a single “global average” has many parallels with the mathematics advanced by Graham Stokes. Stokes Theorem generalizes Green’s Theorem extending it from planar regions to three dimensional surfaces (like the surface of the Earth). I recall in one of my pure mathematics courses at Royal Military College of Canada the only question on the final examination was “ From first principles, develop and prove one of Green’s theorem, Stokes’ theorem or the Divergence Theorem.” I did that, but Jack Hiscocks - the professor who taught the course - gave my an 80% grade rather than a 100% grade saying he had never seen Stokes’ Theorem developed and proved that way, it was not how he did it in class, and while he thought it was correct he couldn’t convince himself that it might not be flawed in some way.
Much later, after graduation and long after it mattered since I had switched into Arts and earned the highest grades in the faculty of Arts and the History Medal, Professor Hiscocks took me aside at a graduation event and said he eventually concluded my work was correct and he was disappointed I had not remained in the engineering physics program.
By the time I switched to Arts, I had completed all the work needed to graduate in Engineering, was bored with the tedious nature of Laplace Transforms, Fourier Series and Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces and found it more interesting to study Voltaire, Hume, Kant, and Eric Arthur Blair (writing as George Orwell). Voltaire’s real name was Francois-Marie Arouet and his famous line “If you can persuade people of absurdities you can make them commit atrocities” is uniquely appropriate to the “climate change” alarm promoted by left wing politicians who would gladly relegate billions of people into perpetual poverty by denying them the benefits of cheap and reliable fossil fuels in return for having a political platform that pretends to be saving the world from a non-existent threat with no ability of the electorate to understand the flawed foundation of the claim and no need for the left wing leaders to demonstrate any measurable positive outcomes of the pain they inflict on society for the “public good”.
Even though its nonsense, most in the west believe it, so not much can be done. I used to research the subject and was skeptical from 2001-2009, but Climategate made me a disbeliever. Satellite are only used since 1979, because some warming started in the 1970's. That said even they show little warming. Most of the world has poor measurement records, eg India, Africa, Siberia etc etc The ocean is 2/3 of the earth and only in the last 20 years have buoys, each one covering an area the size of California been deployed and even then only spend part of the time on the surface. Old news papers show much warming in the 1930's, very cold in the 1700's etc etc. Follow the money, 100's of billions flow into this area each year. Al Gore has made at least $500million of it. Its really a joke, the science is crap. Science is supposed to be skeptical, but say anything critical and you get deplatformed, defunded, and even fired from the University(they dont want to loose their funding. Very sad, China and India are laughing as the west destroys itself.. sad
FWIW https://www.drroyspencer.com/2023/03/uah-global-temperature-update-for-february-2023-0-08-deg-c/
"If you can persuade people of absurdities you can make them commit atrocities" could be the slogan of the current liberal govt of Canada, the Democratic party in the US, and mainstream western media practically in its entirety. Thanks for a great article.