RoR: Forum

I agreed with almost everything I read, which, in fact, makes me wary of succumbing to the confirmation bias. Where I disagree is Matt Ridley's seemingly irrelevant assertion: "That the earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare is pseudoscience." If he is claiming that Edward deVere is not "Shakespeare" then that is one topic where he is out of his league. If he is claiming that the entire question is beyond science, then that is a different errror, but an error nonetheless. That then comes back to the main thesis of this piece: that climate activists would apply a tourniquet around the neck to stop a nosebleed.

In other words, according to Ridley, the climate is warming and human action is a factor. Ridley asserts, however, that restrictions on industrial activity are consequentially worse than the damages to all of humanity foreshadowed by global warming. With that I agree in principle. However, there are no credible measures of the consequences of global warming. Granted that the Club of Rome was widely, broadly, and deeply wrong in its doomsaying, does that in any way negate the validity of different, yet similar warnings about the next 50 years? How would you know?

Myself, I think that "consequences" (so-called) are just other people's complaints about your happiness. I like 110-degree weather. Before I moved from Ann Arbor to Austin, I was going to open a d/d/a and mailbox in the name of the Michigan Citrus Growers Association.

Bottom line: I agree with Ridley emotionally, which in fact makes me aware of his lack of empirical data.

Post 1

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - 8:40pm

Michael,

The burden of proof is on the one who is making the claim, especially if the claim is that we are to impoverish ourselves to prevent a climatic catastrophe when the evidence is insufficient to justify it. As Carl Sagan once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Great article! Thanks Joe for posting this!

Post 2

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 2:30am

William, it is also required that someone who makes a claim accept a standard of falsifiability. Just piling on more data proves (literally, "proves") nothing. A causal claim is required. Against that, while a "single" instance can disprove a generalization, it is also true that mere outliers and unrepeatable anomalies do not. The instances of disproof must also meet the same criteria of scientific method.

If we do not have that, then no matter what the global warmers claim, you can say that they have not proved it ad infinitum.

What would it take to convince you?

Myself, I do not care about global warming. I do care about laws that restrict trade and commerce. I am willing to accept anthropogenic global warming and still remain opposed to legal remedies for it. That said, I trust that you will agree that much of what we call pollution would not be a problem if property rights were clearly defined and enforced.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/23, 2:32am)

Post 3

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 8:09am

Great essay, Joe.

Matt Ridley is awesome (like you had earlier said).

Ed

Post 4

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 9:27am

Michael:

What would it take to convince you?

I have some background in -calibrating- atmospheric models, from my salad days at Princeton and my sr thesis work for my advisor, the then head of GFDL on the Forrestal Campus off of Rt 1. I've also (last 10 yrs) been involved with processing of -weather- models, and understand why they are published daily as _ensembles_.

Ensemble: 'things we just don't know.' So the input parameters to the model are paramaterized, and the models are run over a range of input values. Every single day that arrives, there is an opportunity to -calibrate- those weather models, year by year, day after day... and still, state of the art is maybe 10 days(if you dive into the depths of the 'spaghetti' results at 10 days to discover significance with some effort..and plenty of squinting.)

I understand how daily -weather- models are calibrated (with great difficulty), and it is that understanding which also allows me to understand that -climate- models are inherently uncalibratable.

And so, what it would take to convince me does not include _some_ of the _ensemble_ results from inherently uncalibratable _climate_ models.

What it would take to convince me is the following:

1] Up front disclosure of the nature of 'the' global temperature being discussed: how many of those who believe the issue is 'settled' even understand if the number being bandied about is an area averaged or mass averaged 'the' global temperature? How many of those same folks realize that over 99.9% of the earth's atmospheric mass is tied up as liquid oceans? How many of those same folks are familiar with the _present_ uncertainty in the ocean distribution of thermocline, much less, over any time scale at all?

2] Full disclosure of uncertainty analysis and methods assumptions in the reported data, to weigh the significance of a reported global 1 degree C change in anything, no matter how defined or arrived at. How many of the folks nodding their head at MMGW have ever even heard the phrase 'uncertainty analysis,' much less, understand its significance?

3] GW is undeniable; I don't need any convincing. There used to be glaciers covering the island of Manhattan, case closed.

4] MMGW, and even increased _greenhouse gas effect_ from _any_ source, much less, mankind, has not been proven. In fact, what evidence exists disproves it. For me to believe that the cause of GW is an increase in greenhouse effect, I would need to see evidence in the mid-altitude temperature profile signatures from the two independent sources of such profiles over time that exist(weather ballon/radiosonde data and satellite sounder data). Both sources of data show no such trends at mid-altitudes, only at the surface(consistent with variability in solar loading as the source.) This mid-altitude signature is a prediction of the very models that the greenhouse gas folks depend on, and there is no such signature observed. We have plenty of data from the decades over which an increase in greenhouse effect is claimed to see this signature, and it just isn't there.

5] For me to believe that the cause of GW is even primarily atmospheric, I would need to see similar trends in both poles. Because, if the cause is primarily solar loading effect, there is well understood science to cause us to expect an observed difference in the two poles: inclined orbit + perihelion/eccentric earth orbit around Sun + asymetric driving by summer melting and winter freezing would lead us to expect a different response in both poles. However, because of the hemispheric atmospheric mixing arguments used to explain the ozone hole over Antarctica, as well as even 15 seconds spent looking at soemthing like this, which quickly dispels any myth of hemispheric segregation of species), if the cause was primarily atmospheric, we should expect similar trends in both poles.

6] Lacking a calibratable climate model, I'd at least need to see evidence in the historic climate record of CO2 ever driving global temperatures, as opposed to the other way arround(global temperatures drving CO2 concentrations.)

I've answered what would be necessary to convince me. My question for you is, how could you or anyone be convinced that the driving source of GW was mankinds emission of CO2 without the above? How could you be convinced that the cause was even 'increased greenhouse effect' from _any_ source? On what basis?

Certainly, sufficiently convinced to deliberately cripple global economies by attempting to limit mankinds emissions of CO2?

The 'deniers' are often accused of ignoring 'science.' I wish someone would show up to explicitly point out in the above where it was me who has ignored science.

regards,
Fred

Post 5

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 9:53am

Is it clear to those reading the article that, when the IPCC is talking authoritatively about something called "Climate Sensitivity to CO2", they are talking about results from inherently uncalibratable _climate_ models?

Computer code that has never been calibrated, not even once-- that in fact, is not possible to calibrate even once, much less, effectively calibrate?

They ran the model, jacked in varying levels of CO2, and reported their uncalibrated climate model's sensitivity to CO2! But hey, a computer spit out the number, so let's go scare the kids with it...

This is the worst kind of technical barbarism, abuse of science for political ends.

And, it was started by Margaret Thatcher.

Post 6

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 11:48am

Fred,

For me to believe that the cause of GW is an increase in greenhouse effect, I would need to see evidence in the mid-altitude temperature profile signatures from the two independent sources of such profiles over time that exist (weather ballon/radiosonde data and satellite sounder data).

What you are asking for here is for the direct scientific evidence of a greenhouse effect where there is a "ceiling" -- whether made of gas (atmospheric model) or of glass (actual greenhouses) -- and, at that ceiling, the temperature spikes in relation to the temperatures far away from that ceiling (such as the temperatures on the ground). You are asking for direct evidence when such direct evidence is available. In other words, we've done the appropriate measurements, and you are just asking for them. Actually, you are asking MMGW enthusiasts of all stripes to explain why the direct evidence isn't there. It is time for a parody:

Barbie:
I want to know if I'm getting richer over time.

Ken:
Well, why don't you directly check your bank account?

Barbie:
I know, I will apply for loans and if I start to get more loans, then that means that I'm getting better credit, which could mean that I'm getting richer over time!

Ken:
Barbie, why don't you directly check your bank account?

Barbie:
Or, I could see if my taxes go up, because taxes are higher for richer people and, if my taxes go up, that could mean that I'm getting richer over time.

Ken:
Barbie, calm down and listen to me for a second, why don't you directly check your bank account?

Barbie:
I've got it! I will check to see if Occupy Wallstreet protestors hate me more and more over time, because those hippies hate rich people and the more rich you are, the more they hate you.

Ken:
Dammit, Barbie! You dumb, blonde bitch! You could settle this issue once and for all by simply getting direct evidence by checking the balance of your bank account!

Barbie:
Ken, you are a "denier."

Ken:
Oh ... my ... god. I can't believe that I am even in this relationship. I'm going to go have an affair with one of the Bratz dolls.

:-)

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 11/23, 11:51am)

Post 7

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 12:33pm

Ed:

Sadly, I'd probably forgive Barbie, but mainly because of her bodacious boobies.

But, the expected evidence is not something that is even dependent on the internals of their own greenhouse/CO2 models; it is a consequence of any knowledge of the greenhouse effect, as presently understood.

1] Shortwave radiation is absorbed by the earth and reflected back as long wave radiation into the atmosphere, and would be radiated into space, if it wasn't absorbed by greenhouse gases in the center of mass breadbasket of the atmosphere, which heats up. 80% of the mass of the atmosphere is in the first 10km, the troposphere. It's not like all the greenhouse gases are piled up at the surface of the earth, they are distributed throughout the atmosphere, and so, the greenhouse effect -- the absorption of the longwave radiation by greenhouse gases, should be evidenced throughout the troposhpere, not just at the very surface.

Their CO2 models reflect this understanding of the greenhouse effect. The troposphere signature that shows up in their own climate models is not found in those two data sets.

This is not evidence that increased greenhouse effect is occurring; this is evidence that it is not occurring at a significantly measurable level.

To me, that is not to say that GW is not occurring-- that is undeniable in the long term. That is to say that 'increase in greenhouse effect--from any source--' is not currently shown to be primarily the source of GW.

At some level, there may be some increased greenhouse effect, and there may even be some manmade contribution to that effect, but it can't be shown to be significantly measurable. It is down in the noise, dominated by whatever is causing long term GW, which is likely long term solar variability, the number one driver of climate.

Interestingly, and a total coincidence(I just saw this article), a second round of leaked Climategate emails were about the embarrassing fact of this very topic. Example:

"To their credit, some of the climate scientists realised the dangers of the selective approach politicians demanded, which meant cherry-picking evidence to make it suitably dramatic, and quietly hiding caveats. �We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest,� pleads Thorne, in another email from 2005. Thorne noted that a telltale "signature" of greenhouse gas warming was absent. �Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous.�

Hey, there's that word 'uncertainty.' Evidence of actual science trying to stem the runaway PolitSci...

There are a slew of 'ClimateGate 2.0' articles popping up, most of them not quoting the actual emails and instead whining about how unfair this is and otherwise conducting crude damage control. So, you have to dig a bit, to find any actual discussion of the content of the actual emails.

But pointless; stick a fork in this PoltSci not Sci based religion, it is going to be pretty much dead after ClimateGate 2.0

Post 8

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 - 12:42pm

Note:

The 'approach' he is talking about above is, when the warmists realized that the profile data from two sets of experimental measurements -- weather balloon/radiosonde and satellite sounder data sets-- were not detecting this greenhouse warming signature, -one- researcher cooked up a -theory- based on 'wind shear mixing' that said that the additional energy was not showing up as temperature but as increased turbulence/wind shear in the atmosphere, or something like that, and then applied a totally cooked up 'correction factor' to adjust the experimentally observed temperatures upward by this factor.

The longwave radiation was being absorbed by fringe CO2 in the atmosphere, and instead of showing up as an increase in temperature/thermal energy, was showing up directly as distributed kinetic energy without any intermediate thermal signature.

My brother-in-law is a chiropractor, if you have need after reading that.

Can you smell the desperation to make this turkey fly at any costs?

Post 9

Thursday, November 24, 2011 - 8:48am

Fred, thanks for your posts. You certainly proved one thing: you are an engineer. It was the clearest writing you have offered. When you post about politics, you write like James Joyce.

Post 4: I understand how daily -weather- models are calibrated (with great difficulty), and it is that understanding which also allows me to understand that -climate- models are inherently uncalibratable.
3] GW is undeniable; I don't need any convincing. There used to be glaciers covering the island of Manhattan, case closed.

Most of your post, I have to accept prima facie without a background of my own near your level. However, I did learn some meteorology when learning to fly. I'm pretty good at knowing what's coming because I figure that it is most likely that the weather today will be mostly like it was yesterday, unless it changes. I read the daily maps, look at the satellite enhancements, and watch the sky. So, I can agree with that much.

On the other hand, if you look at the extremely long cycles, it maybe easier to predict the next million years than the next day. "Other than the Milankovich cycles (and perhaps the Hale cycle), no climate cycle is found to be perfectly periodic and a Fourier analysis of the data does not give a sharp spectrum." - "Climate Cycle", Wikipedia. I have known about the sunspot cycle, ozone at Kew, lynx pelt harvests, and more since I was a teenager. Life is cyclic. What's the surprise?

Climate changes. We know that. When I worked at Loompanics, they sold Llowell Ponte's The Cooling. I actually enjoyed the disaster movie The Day After which was about an ice age caused by global warming. (Don't ask.) (What I like about great disasters is ordinary people rising to become extraordorinary in meeting and overcoming tremendous adversity. When I got my adult library card, I asked a librarian for help finding something to read and she gave me When Worlds Collide. Getting off planet was trouble enough; but they did not leave trouble behind because after making it to Bronson Beta, they still have to deal with communists and fascists.)

Post 7:
1] Shortwave radiation is absorbed by the earth and reflected back as long wave radiation into the atmosphere, and would be radiated into space, if it wasn't absorbed by greenhouse gases in the center of mass breadbasket of the atmosphere, which heats up. 80% of the mass of the atmosphere is in the first 10km, the troposphere. It's not like all the greenhouse gases are piled up at the surface of the earth, they are distributed throughout the atmosphere, and so, the greenhouse effect -- the absorption of the longwave radiation by greenhouse gases, should be evidenced throughout the troposhpere, not just at the very surface.
Their CO2 models reflect this understanding of the greenhouse effect. The troposphere signature that shows up in their own climate models is not found in those two data sets.
This is not evidence that increased greenhouse effect is occurring; this is evidence that it is not occurring at a significantly measurable level.

When I was a child reading science books, c. 1960, I was told that Venus is hot because of a run-away Greenhouse Effect. This was suggested as the cause of global warming as in the age of dinosaurs, but it was also admitted unable to explain global cooling as in the ice ages.

Post 8:
At some level, there may be some increased greenhouse effect, and there may even be some manmade contribution to that effect, but it can't be shown to be significantly measurable. It is down in the noise, dominated by whatever is causing long term GW, which is likely long term solar variability, the number one driver of climate.

The longwave radiation was being absorbed by fringe CO2 in the atmosphere, and instead of showing up as an increase in temperature/thermal energy, was showing up directly as distributed kinetic energy without any intermediate thermal signature.

I agree that solar variables - sun activities and also Earth's changing orbit - are likely the drivers.

One way to check the kinetic theory would be to look for windstorm damage of titanic scales - I mean the classic Greek Titans, so big, I explained to my daughter, that we have mountains because they bunched up the Earth to make pillows when they went to sleep. You know like whole forests knocked down, mountains eroded ... like dinosaur hot and mastodon cold but with wind... Do they have any of that kind of sheer motion? And wouldn't sheer cause huge cyclones?

Post 5:
This is the worst kind of technical barbarism, abuse of science for political ends.
And, it was started by Margaret Thatcher.

Gee, we all love the Iron Lady... I am sure that you must have citations to back that up.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 11/24, 8:53am)

Post 10

Thursday, November 24, 2011 - 12:25pm

What about the global warming of Mars, which now affords for transient peaks above 250 Kelvin?

Does the increasing temperature of Mars (right along with Earth's increasing temperature) adequately support the hypothesis that the sun is the primary driver of our global temperature change?

Ed

Reference:
Dynamic temperature fields under Mars landing sites and implications for supporting microbial life.

Post 11

Thursday, November 24, 2011 - 11:05pm

Ed, the link you provided to the NIH NCBI report did not say that Mars is warming. However, I found these, and some controversy over the claim.

http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-on-mars.htm
The global warming argument was strongly influenced by a paper written by a team led by NASA scientist Lori Fenton, who observed that changes in albedo � the property of light surfaces to reflect sunlight e.g. ice and snow � were shown when comparing 1977pictures of the Martian surface taken by the Viking spacecraft, to a 1999 image compiled by the Mars Global Surveyor. The pictures revealed that in 1977 the surface was brighter than in 1999, and from this Fenton used a general circulation model to suggest that between 1977 and 1999 the planet had experienced a warming trend of 0.65 degrees C. Fenton attributed the warming to surface dust causing a change in the planet's albedo.
Unfortunately, Fenton�s conclusions were undermined by the failure to distinguish between climate (trends) and weather (single events). Taking two end points � pictures from 1977 and 1999 � did not reveal any kind of trend, merely the weather on two specific Martian days. Without the intervening data � which was not available � it is impossible to say whether there was a trend in albedo reduction, or what part the prodigious dust storms played in the intervening period between the first and second photographs. Indeed, when you look at all the available data � sparse though it is � there is no discernable long term trend in albedo

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

Post 12

Friday, November 25, 2011 - 7:44am

Michael:

Thatcher took on the coal miner unions. She wanted to push nuclear in the UK. She instructed the UK scientific community(beholding to government funding)to go out and push the global warming theory, to increase the appeal of nuclear energy in the UK. She gave them their conclusion first, and then funded them to go conclude it.

And when she did that(abused science for politics), a convergence of interests followed, a perfect storm. The God That Failed was in the middle of it's very public final death throes, and there was a leap of new faith to the environmental movement, displacing some well meaning folks(like one of the original founders of Greenpeace.) A new front on the global attack on capitalism was formed, because the old theater had totally collapsed.

When the God that Failed finally really failed, there were all kinds of rats jumping from a sinking ship, trying not to drown among the flotsam left behind from Hegel's wreckage..

A great anecdote on the launch of this new front was Time's article on the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, jarringly titled "Rich vs. Poor" in a none-too-subtle tell about what all the PoliSci was really about.

Another artifact in the US at that time was Carville's intellectual bumper sticker, "It's the economy, stupid!" -- offered up in the context of choosing US state plumbers. Really? In the wake of the global failure of centrally planned command and control 'the economy' running, "It's the economy, stupid?" Proof mainly of one thing; when you are going down, you might as well go big.

And it totally worked! The GOP folded up under that 4 word intellectual assault with nothing in the tank to combat it, like it was a Hydrogen bomb. And when Clinton gave his rope-a-dope 'The Erah of Big Guvmint is Ovah", we all nodded along, not realizing that what he really meant was "and the Erah of Really Frickin' HUGE Guvmint is dawning."

But, the GOP not only folded up in front of all that, they gleefully embraced it, and met the concept with dinner, candy, and flowers. As in Mitt Romney, even today.

regards,
Fred

Post 13

Friday, November 25, 2011 - 8:09am

Micheal:

When I was a child reading science books, c. 1960, I was told that Venus is hot because of a run-away Greenhouse Effect.

And yet, all that was really required was:

1] Venus to be where it was in relation to the Sun. (it is.)
2] The Triple Point of Water to be where it is(the same place it is on earth and elsewhere in the universe.) (it is)
3] There to be such a thing as an adiabatic lapse rate driven primarily by gravity. (there is)

If you ponder the formation of an atmosphere on Venus, at what point in its development could water ever have existed in a liquid state? Never.

Said another way, if the 99.9% of earth atmospheric mass that is water were to ever boil off as steam, creating a thick atmosphere on earth, and earth reached a radiative skin balance with the Sun, then what would the surface temperature on earth be, due to adiabatic lapse rate, if the atmosphere was suddenly over a thousand times more massive than it is today?

Finally, how would one ever boil off the oceans on earth? By moving earth closer to the Sun;

...as in, Venus.

Millions of years of weather and eons of escape velocity physics have transformed the thick blanketing atmosphere on Venus from water vapor to CO2. During that entire process, the surface temperature on Venus was always hot. (It's present condition atmospheric radiative balance skin temperature is actually -colder- than Earth's, an artifact of its high albedo. The reason that the surface of Venus is -hotter- than earth is due to its thick atmosphere and adiabatic lapse rate-- ie, gravity.) That would be true if Venus thick atmosphere was CO2, N2, O2, or H20... the present high CO2 is the -consequence- of millions of years of direct weathering of the exposed surface of Venus.

Venus is yet another example of CO2 as an effect, not a cause.

Post 14

Friday, November 25, 2011 - 8:52am

Michael:

The discussion of known cycles begs the question; are there unknown cycles? No doubt.

There is a mathematical limitation on cycle analysis of a time series of anything; it is reflected in concepts like the Nyquist sampling theorum, which shows up directly in things like Fourier analysis. In most applications other than climate, we are generally worried about the high frequency limitations, but there is also a low frequency limitation. The analysis jumps from the lowest frequency component we can detect(limited by the length of data we analyze)to DC; what of cycles lower than that frequency? Can we detect them?

And, what of periodic step inputs at low frequency? Can we detect them, simply by analyzing an always time limited range of data? No.

Do we even know what our coverage is-- of what % of cyclic drivers that might exist that we currently know exist?

No.

What are potential sources of low frequency step inputs? Well, the biggest driver of climate is that big ball of fusion/gravity gas we are circling, the Sun, and it is spiraling in an arm of our galaxy, even as our galaxy has its own path among neighbor galaxies. What happens when that nominally balanced ball of fusion/gravity is hammered on by changes in the local fields, plural? By randomly aligned tugs from local orbiting planets? Has our detailed analyses of the last century or so fully sampled all known drivers of bumps and jolts to that nominally balanced bag of fusion and gravity?

I seriously doubt that. Science is as much about assessment of what we don't know as it is about what we know.

The Sun is amazingly stable, but it jiggles, and the hows and why's in detail are not all known. As unsatisfying as that might be, it is a fact.

Post 15

Monday, November 28, 2011 - 11:08am

I haven't seem this discussed much anywhere on this topic.

Imagine the following chart:

Effect: SouthernHemisphere NorthernHemisphere

Winter:Freezing ? ?

Summer:Thawing ? ?

It is what it is, not the point.

Whatever their relative importance is, they net out to determine the long term polar ice cap coverage.

If the earth's orbit around the Sun was a perfect circle, we would expect similar trends in the Northern and Southern poles over a long period of time(unless there was mysterious random coupling between the sun's output and the location of the earth in its orbit around the Sun.)

The tilt of the earth's axis gives us opposite seasons in both hemispheres, winter/summer and summer/winter.

But, the fact that the earth's orbit is not a perfect circle around the Sun adds the following: the earth is closer to the Sun during Southern Summer/Northern Winter than it is during Southern Winter/Northern Summer.

This means that relative to the neutral (circular orbit) case:

Northern Winter Freezing is warmer than neutral
Southern Winter freezing is colder than neutral

Northern Summer Melting is colder than neutral
Southern Summer Melting is warmer than neutral

If the impact/leverage of summer melting is not precisely identical to the impact/leverage of winter freezing (why would it be?) than we should -expect- a different response in the two poles if there is a long term change in solar output.

Now, consider two other likelihoods:

The relative import of Winter Freezing and Summer Cooling is not exactly balanced; one is more important than the other, and let's say we don't know which. Assume the sun, over a long period of time, is either getting hotter or getting cooler. What would we expect in all four of these possibilities?

Assume Winter Freezing Dominates:
If sun is warming, we'd expect S < N losses.
If sun is cooling, we'd expect S > N gains.

Assume Summer melting dominates:
If sun is warming, we'd expect N < S losses.
If sun is cooling, we'd expect N > S gains.

IOW...no matter what the Sun is doing, from the observation that the net of (S < N losses and S > N gains), we should suspect that Winter Freezing dominates Summer melting in determining the net polar ice cap coverage.

Post 16

Monday, November 28, 2011 - 8:30pm

Fred,

I'm interested to see where you ill are going with this.

Please continue ...

:-)

Ed

Post 17

Monday, November 28, 2011 - 9:03pm

I read that many of the stations used to collect data for the last 200 years were originally built out in the country, however many of them are situated within city limits.
Tempuratures within cities are always warmer on any given day than tempuratures even 30 miles outside of city limits so data collected today would be flawed in comparison to data collected when the sensors were outside of a city in the past.

Post 18

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 10:56am

Ed:

I've already stated it above; that is, if the cause of long term GW is primarily solar driven, then because of the above, we should _expect_ a difference in the observed effects at the Northern and Southern poles.

It isn't clear at all, if the cause of long term GW was primarily atmospheric(e.g., increased greenhouse effect and an overall warmer atmosphere)why the experience would be different in the Southern and Northern poles. For example, if the argument were made that industrialization was predominantly in the Northern hemisphere, requiring effective segregation of CO2 by hemisphere, then this would contradict by 180 degrees the studies made previously claiming effective hemispherical mixing to explain the Antarctic ozone hole. We can't lurch from one behavior to the other as a convenience. As well, any time at all spent pondering a full disk water vapor image of the earth dispels any notion of anything other than vigorous mixing between both hemispheres.

In fact, we do see a marked difference in polar trends of ice coverage.

Northern Pole

Northern anomaly

Southern Pole

Southern anomaly

If the primary cause was greenhouse effect from any source(not in evidence), then what would be the explanation for the observed differences in the two poles?

regards,
Fred

Post 19

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 - 12:20pm