One Citizen Speaking ... a little explanation
THE LIBERALS FORGOT TO CHECK: AURORA, COLORADO ALREADY HAS STRICT GUN LAWS AND THEY WERE IGNORED!

GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED BY BAD NEIGHBORS?

In numerous blog posts I have often complained about corrupt politicians distorting science to push their power-grabbing and wealth re-distribution schemes. I do not deny that the Earth was warming after emerging from the Little Ice Age, but I believe that man cannot alter his environment to effect change on a global scale.

I believe …

  • That carbon dioxide was selected to be demonized and controlled because it is an integral part of the energy cycle. And whoever controls the creation, storage, transmission and usage of energy controls our economy and our nation’s ability to defend itself from its enemies, both foreign and domestic.
  • I believe that man-made carbon dioxide has been scapegoated because our Planet has been hotter, colder, with more atmospheric carbon dioxide and less atmospheric carbon dioxide in a period pre-dating the Industrial revolution.
  • I believe that records indicate that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide lags the rise in temperature so it cannot be considered “causal.” The explanation is simple: warming oceans – to be expected as the Earth warms after emerging from the Little Ice Age – outgasses dissolved carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; which accounts for the observations of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.
  • As for those who believe carbon dioxide adds heat to the atmosphere, they need a lesson in physics. The Sun is the greatest source of energy. Scientists believe a portion of this energy is captured by carbon dioxide molecules and re-radiated at a later time. The observable effect would not be an increase in temperature, but a delay in the cooling trend on a local basis.
  • Most computer models were patterned after the work of one activist/scientist. His original model suggested that the Earth was undergoing global cooling and the prescription was exactly the same: control carbon dioxide. These models are significantly flawed as they cannot model a “chaotic system” such as global climate. Some observations are substantially wrong and do not reflect current or historical observations. They cannot correctly account for the effects of the largest greenhouse gas, water vapor, in any meaningful way.
  • These models contain incomplete of flawed assumptions and potential statistical errors. The fact that they purport to give results to an accuracy of a tenth of a degree is ludicrous. In fact, most findings are well-within the natural variability of the climate cycle and it is almost impossible to extract a meaningful indication from the background noise. Because you can compute numbers to multiple decimal places, do not make those numbers correct or accurate.
  • The data upon which these models rely has been compromised in a number of ways which indicate inappropriate statistical manipulation or something much worse. Possibly to the extent of cherry-picking input numbers to produce a pre-ordained result which will result in the continued billion-dollar government funding of research institutions, scientists and projects.
  • And that there is a systemic bias towards the prevailing theories because institutions and scientists are loath to run experiments contrary to the wishes of their funding sources. Knowing that you can obtain funding by examining the positive aspect of climate change rather than disputing the work of others provides for the natural selection of more “pro” positions than “con” provisions.

Those that demonize those of us who ask questions and demand answers do not understand that science is a continual pattern of professional skepticism. You advance a hypothesis, you perform and experiment, you draw conclusions which are then published. Others can confirm your findings, modify your findings or dispute your findings. You adjust or abandon your hypothesis and move forward. However, when this process is subverted or manipulated for political purposes, the reliability of the science needs to be questioned.

Researchers E. Steirou and D. Koutsoyiannis at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece have published a paper titled “Investigation of methods for hydroclimatic data homogenization" with some surprising findings … 

In the author’s words from the published abstract … 

We investigate the methods used for the adjustment of inhomogeneities of temperature time series covering the last 100 years. Based on a systematic study of scientific literature, we classify and evaluate the observed inhomogeneities in historical and modern time series, as well as their adjustment methods. 

It turns out that these methods are mainly statistical, not well justified by experiments and are rarely supported by metadata. In many of the cases studied the proposed corrections are not even statistically significant.

From the global database GHCN-Monthly Version 2, we examine all stations containing both raw and adjusted data that satisfy certain criteria of continuity and distribution over the globe. In the United States of America, because of the large number of available stations, stations were chosen after a suitable sampling. 

In total we analyzed 181 stations globally. For these stations we calculated the differences between the adjusted and non-adjusted linear 100-year trends. 

It was found that in the two thirds of the cases, the homogenization procedure increased the positive or decreased the negative temperature trends.

One of the most common homogenization methods, ‘SNHT for single shifts’, was applied to synthetic time series with selected statistical characteristics, occasionally with offsets. The method was satisfactory when applied to independent data normally distributed, but not in data with long-term persistence. 

The above results cast some doubts in the use of homogenization procedures and tend to indicate that the global temperature increase during the last century is between 0.4C and 0.7C, where these two values are the estimates derived from raw and adjusted data, respectively. <Abstract Source>

From their presentation …

Conclusions

  1. Homogenization is necessary to remove errors introduced in climatic time series.
  2. Homogenization practices used until today are mainly statistical, not well justified by experiments and are rarely supported by metadata. It can be argued that they often lead to false results: natural features of hydroclimatic time series are regarded errors and are adjusted.
  3. While homogenization is expected to increase or decrease the existing multiyear trends in equal proportions, the fact is that in 2/3 of the cases the trends increased after homogenization.
  4. The above results cast some doubts in the use of homogenization procedures and tend to indicate that the global temperature increase during the last century is smaller than 0.7-0.8°C.
  5. A new approach of the homogenization procedure is needed, based on experiments, metadata and better comprehension of the stochastic characteristics of hydroclimatic time series. 

<Presentation Slides>

What does it mean?

In the limited data sample examined by the authors, about two-thirds of the adjustments that were made to “homogenize” the data in preparation for analysis were questionable and which led to increasing positive (warming) trends; decreasing negative (cooling) trends or reversing negative (cooling) trends to positive (warming) trends. The United Nations’ IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has put forth that climate changes were trending positive (0.7-0.8°C). Taking into account the author’s findings, that the change was trending positive (0.42°C), it appears that half of the observed global warming disappears when the data is re-examined.

What does this have to do with “bad neighbors?”  

When neighboring manned or automated weather stations have missing temperature data that would significantly affect computations or have wildly divergent data (bad instruments, errors, etc.), the data is subject to “correction” using statistical methods which may be questionable. This is the process of homogenization. One might expect that such a process would have a neutral, not strongly net positive bias over a region.

But this is not the only problem …

In another recent research report, the authors found that there were large errors in determining the solar radiance because the researchers conveniently ignored the largest greenhouse gas, water vapor. 

In the author’s words from the published abstract …

Radiation calculations in global numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate models are usually performed in 3-hourly time intervals in order to reduce the computational cost. This treatment can lead to an incorrect Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) at the Earth's surface, which could be one of the error sources in modelled convection and precipitation.

In order to improve the simulation of the diurnal cycle of GHI at the surface a fast scheme has been developed in this study and it can be used to determine the GHI at the Earth's surface more frequently with affordable costs.

The scheme is divided into components for clear-sky and cloudy-sky conditions. The clear-sky component has been described in part I. The cloudy-sky component is introduced in this paper.

The scheme has been tested using observations obtained from three Atmospheric Radiation Measurements (ARM) stations established by the U. S. Department of Energy.

The results show that a half hourly mean relative error of GHI under all-sky conditions is less than 7\%. An important application of the scheme is in global climate models. The radiation sampling error due to infrequent radiation calculations is investigated using the this scheme and ARM observations.

It is found that these errors are very large, exceeding 800 W m-2 at many non-radiation time steps due to ignoring the effects of clouds. Use of the current scheme can reduce these errors to less than 50 W m-2    <Source>

Bottom line …

We cannot allow corrupt politicians to make public policy when there are numerous legitimate questions about the phenomena of global climate, the ability to model chaotic system, and using historical data to predict future trends. Using such historical data does not work in that other chaotic system, the stock market, and it does not appear to work here.

There are even findings that challenges Artic Ice formation, stabilization and degradation (No Evidence of Polar Warming During Penultimate Interglacial)

In fact, the Arctic may have been colder during the Eemian, with lower heat transfer from the North Atlantic. On the basis of their finding, the authors suggest that previous records may reflect other phenomena and caution against the use of the Eemian as an analog of the present. Their finding also challenges climate models that predict extreme warmth and ice-free conditions in the Arctic in response to greenhouse gas warming in the 21st century.

 

Before you allow any politician to pluck your pocket, reduce your personal freedom or significantly reduce your lifestyle on the basis of “settled science,” be aware that this may be a sham. Many scientists do not speak out because of the fear of losing their project funding or condemnation from their institution or activist peers. They publish their works and leave it to other scientists, the media, and the public to decode what they are saying.

The most prominent interpretation: the science is not settled and we do not know enough to allow corrupt politicians a free hand based on a phenomena that we do not fully understand; and if man could alter the global climate, the results might not be apparent for 1,000 years.

Let the buyer beware! Let the voter beware!

-- steve

Reference Links …

Investigation of methods for hydroclimatic data homogenization – Abstract (Geophysical Research Abstracts; Vol. 14, EGU2012-956-1, 2012;EGU General Assembly 2012)

Parameterization of instantaneous global horizontal irradiance at the surface. Part II: Cloudy-sky component – Abstract (J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2012JD017557, in press)


“Nullius in verba”-- take nobody's word for it!
"Acta non verba" -- actions not words

“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”-- George Bernard Shaw

“Progressive, liberal, Socialist, Marxist, Democratic Socialist -- they are all COMMUNISTS.”

“The key to fighting the craziness of the progressives is to hold them responsible for their actions, not their intentions.” – OCS

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius

“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves, and traitors are not victims... but accomplices” -- George Orwell

“Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." (The people gladly believe what they wish to.) ~Julius Caesar

“Describing the problem is quite different from knowing the solution. Except in politics." ~ OCS

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