Cool Science Web Site

Admin | January 11, 2012 | Comments Off

Cool Science Web Site

Cool Science Web Site

A lot has happened in the wake of the discovery that the scientists at East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit – and, by implication, other places as well – have been less than honest in making their case for human-caused global warming. CRU's Philip Jones eventually admitted in a BBC interview (Feb. 13, 2010) that the data (his data anyway) show no warming since 1995, in spite of weekly, if not daily warnings from him and his colleagues about the dire consequences to the future if draconian measures to reduce carbon emissions are not immediately implemented.

All that has been unraveling, though. The now-familiar “hockey stick” graph showing significant recent warming has been thoroughly debunked by John L. Daly, among others, ("The 'Hockey Stick': A New Low in Climate Science"), but where does that leave the discussion? Is the earth cooling off, as Jeff Jacoby asks ("Where's global warming?" The Boston Globe, March 8, 2009), is it heating up or is it holding steady? The reality is that no one can say for sure.

What Do the Data Actually Tell Us about Climate Change?

The datasets used by climatologists are compiled from thousands of sites all over the globe. A small number of them have been measured for over 100 years (occasionally replacing the instruments, of course), but most are less than fifty years old. The figures they give are the raw data of climate research, emphasis on “raw.” Climate researchers “homogenize” this data to account for a wide variety of factors, and this homogenization is hotly debated, with some claiming that the “corrections” invariably move the data upward to support the theory that the earth is warming up. Others, of course, dispute this claim.

Missing in all of this is any information describing the methodology behind the homogenization, justification for the corrections or, even more important, why any figure can be considered the average temperature for the site it represents.

Consider any random measuring station. Where is it located, exactly – in a field, next to a highway, under a spreading chestnut tree? How have its surroundings changed over the years? These are all important factors and feature in the homogenization process, but that's not all.

How often are the data sampled? What times of day and night? How often is the instrument calibrated? Are past readings corrected if calibration errors are found? Even if all these questions are answered, what is the rigorous scientific justification to declare that a given number is the real figure of merit for that station? How does each of these figures contribute to the one, all-important figure: the earth's average annual temperature?

Moreover, consider also the “accuracy” with which the temperature figures are presented. Philip Jones is confident that the earth has warmed an average of over 0.15 degrees Celsius every decade since at least 1880 (BBC). That's 1.5 degrees per century. A reality check is in order here. How many stations were monitored in the last part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century? How accurate were they? Does it make sense to rely on their data, or on the homogenized version of it, to arrive at a figure that is supposedly accurate to within one tenth of a degree over the course of a century?

Some Evidence Supports the Climate Skeptics

There are many other factors that bear on this matter, including – but probably not limited to – the uneven distribution of measuring sites (most are on continental land in the northern hemisphere), the paucity of ocean temperature data and, as Roy Spencer and John Christy demonstrated in "Measuring the Temperature of the Earth from Space" (Space Science News, Aug. 14, 1998), a lack of correlation to mid- and upper-atmosphere temperatures (there are accurate satellite records starting in 1979).

Until these questions – and many more – can be answered there is no reason to be alarmed or to commit massive resources to fix a problem that may not exist in the first place.