This Would be Embarrasing

Mikey Gribble

Mikey Gribble

EF5
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http://www.thestar.com/News/article/246027
Whoops! NASA apparently made a few errors in their calculations and now they are saying 1998 wasn't the hottest on record in the U.S. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as the hottest on record.
"More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius"
I don't understand how somebody could have messed that up. I do know that if I were responsible I would feel like a pretty big ass given the reputation that NASA has.
 
Data Source Switch

There is a discussion on the Real Climate site about what happened. In brief, NASA switched between two sets of US ground station temperature sources. They assumed the two were compatible, but it turned out the new set read a bit warmer than the old. They recalibrated, looking at the difference between the two data sets during an overlap period when both sets were available, and are subtracting out the difference.

The global warming skeptics are extending this to claim global warming is an instrumentation error, which is not at all the case. The US shift is 0.15 C, which vanishes to negligible in the global averages.
 
I bet a lot of people (TWC for instance) are breathing a sigh of relief knowing this doesn't affect the "global warming disaster" scenario so many have been selling for years now. I hope to catch the global warming program I heard about last year, where they let the OTHER scientists talk on camera, the ones who dismiss it as mere propaganda.

I wouldn't call people who don't buy into all the GW hype "skeptics" so much as realists.
 
Shane Adams said:
I bet a lot of people (TWC for instance) are breathing a sigh of relief knowing this doesn't affect the "global warming disaster" scenario so many have been selling for years now. I hope to catch the global warming program I heard about last year, where they let the OTHER scientists talk on camera, the ones who dismiss it as mere propaganda.

I wouldn't call people who don't buy into all the GW hype "skeptics" so much as realists.
Click to expand...

Hmm.... I follow a cyclical theory of culture change. People don't easily change their values. Unfortunately, given developing technology, the environment in which humans must build their societies does change, presenting new problems, and thus values do have to shift. For the most part, people don't like to change. Still, every four score and seven years in America, big time changes in culture have come. Those wishing to address major problems eventually overcome those who wish to ignore them, to continue to live as they always have.

Global Warming may be such an issue. A lot of people don't want it to be so, and are not truly examining the data. Lots of folks involved have deep emotional commitments to maintaining existing life styles.

I've done a bit of digging, and have found that the skeptics (denialists is actually more descriptive) consistently come up short. The above data source shift is fairly representative. If you go to the media and blogs, the denialists spin the above 0.15C data collection error into global warming being a mistake. In fact, the error is so small on the global scale as to not be significant at all. One blogger covering the above story invented a Y2K computer error as well. That fiction got picked up and repeated as further evidence that meteorologists can't record temperature accurately, and thus one can't trust anything coming out of the scientific community.

Which is, unfortunately, fairly typical. A lot of the denialists persistently and regularly spin in the public press to the point of lying, while those warning of warming are dominant in the peer reviewed journals. As humans have a strong bias to resist cultural change, and values will have to be significantly shifted if the problem is real, the denialists have been able to block action and essentially maintain the status quo to this point.

Anyway, I can only recommend Real Climate if you are interested enough in the issue to truly do your homework.

Mind you, the press's tendency to blame every unusual bit of weather on human interaction is wrong too. On a grand scale, storms are a way of dispersing energy. The more energy in the system, the more storms. Global warming ought to cause statistical shifts in storm location, numbers and intensity. Still, one might as well blame the butterfly who flapped his wings in China, rather than global climate change, for the location and intensity of any given storm.

One tornado in Brooklyn is nothing. If folk are tracking location and size of tornadoes, and note persistent pattern shifts over a period of many years, that might be evidence of something real. Still, that would hardly be the best evidence of net warming. Melting glaciers, thawing tundra and the reduced Arctic ice cap are better for that.
 
I'm not saying global warming isn't a phenomenon, I'm saying I truly don't expect to see bowling ball sized hail in Japan, a tornado outbreak in LA, or fatal winter storms. I'm not "in denial", I'm just not buying into the popular "this is gonna change the earth" tripe, because it isn't. Everyone keeps on talking about pattern changes and whatnot. If you take any long-term average (30-50 years) and dissect it throughout, into random 5-7 year segments, you're going to find averages that vary quite strongly in one direction or the other from the overall mean. Pattern changes are natural, they create what we call an "average". If everything stayed the same over long periods of time, it would just be called "normal".

Tornado Alley gets a season every year. It's not always super-active, but it's always there. The southwest Monsoon, some years it may be less active than others but it's still there. And for some whacky reason, regardless of how active or not, there always seems to be an Atlantic hurricane season. Ask people in Minnesota if Winter has stopped happening. Have southern Californians been reporting the lack of extended periods of warm and sunny? Do Washington State residents complain of no rain?

Pattern changes have always been there. It's just that now we have the technology to see them more distinctly. I remember when the NEXRAD network became operational in 1993, and all of a sudden we suddenly saw that almost every storm that went up rotated to some degree. But this didn't mean tornado warnings for every single storm. Having a more detailed look into something doesn't change what's always been there, or the effect it will have on us.

Global warming has always been there. I think the earth's core has risen like what, one degree over the past kazillion years? If we suddenly no longer had the ability to study as closely as we can today, in a few years the hype would disappear, and Life would remain as it always has. I'm not saying GW doesn't exist. I'm saying human nature and psyche make it out to be much more of an issue than what it is in reality.

How many times a day now do you hear or see a story about AIDS? How about West Nile? Sars? All these had their run as the new "doomsday" news topic, and all were thrown in our faces to scare and frighten us into whatever. It was hot-selling material because disaster and doom are the new sex. Do any of these diseases harm us any more or less now than they did 20, 10, 5 years ago? Of course not. But they're old news, replaced by new stories like GW, or asteroids, and hence our constant awareness of them has been diminished. But their effect is not changed.

All I'm saying is, the global warming thing will continue to be the hot topic until someone comes up with something new to sell fear of. But this doesn't change the fact that our climate isn't going to be drastically altered by it in any of our lifetimes or our children's lifetimes. I don't believe aliens will land or that any type of religious icon will return to earth. And I'll never buy into the theory gas prices are the way they are due to supply and demand (unless you consider the supply is being controlled, then I'll accept that excuse). Call me naive, call me close-minded, call me whatever. It's just what I believe.
 
I think you are seeing things rationally Shane.

At the Conference this year William Gray ( Father of Hurricane Studies ) spoke about global warming. He did so as he claimed himself as retired, Because otherwise he was afraid of repercusions. His exact quote " I feel I can speak freely about global warming as I have retired now and last I knew they were unable to take my pension". He didnt go into great detail abut whom he was afraid of. But the fear and threat to tow the line was evident.

For some reason people take this mans word with a grain of salt it seems.
 
I've never understood how literally every media outlet in the country carries Gray's long range forecast every year, but when he speaks out against global warming he is dismissed by the mainstream media. Gore even portrayed him as a nonexpert in his movie. It is ridiculous. The man can hold his own with anybody on the planet when it comes to tropical cyclones, but when his opinion is unpopular he is largely ignored.
 
It may seem odd, but this is how science really works. People come up with ideas, and try and construct arguments, and then others come along and try and pick apart the arugments put together by the first. This gives the illusion of disagreement in the community, but is just part of the scientific process of making sure that our ideas can withstand all possible concerns. Also, while a sceintist may be well repsected, that doesn't mean that all of their ideas are mainstream, and as such can lead to criticism. Really, you need a balance of criticisms from multiple sides of an issue, and hopefully the consensus provides a fairly robust assessment of the issue once all possible factors have been properly evaluated. In the world of climate scientists, this consensus representation is made via the IPCC assessment. Unavoidably, there are going to be scientists on either side of the spectrum who's views will not agree with the mainstream - and are often vocal in their opposition. I'm not a climate guy, but I would not assume that the IPCC report is garbage just because a few scientist don't agree with some small aspects of the report. If there were hundreds of climate scientists up in arms, I'd be far more alarmed.
 
I totally agree with everything you said Glen. I just feel like those opposed to anthropogenic global warming are not getting the same kind of media attention that the advocates are. The mainstream media has adopted anthropogenic global warming as fact, when it is not. There is still much to be learned and discussed. I may be wrong in feeling this way because a while back I remember hearing about a pole where people were asked if they thought global warming was as big of a deal as the media was making it out to be and 70 some % said no.
It almost seems as if the advocates of global warming are totally intolerant of contradicting opinions and feel no need to defend their theories. It reminds me of the chick on the Weather Channel that said she would have the opposition on her show so long as they understood that we already know man is responsible and we were moving ahead. That's absurd. If she is so sure man is responsible then she should have absolutely no problem standing up to criticism and questioning.
 
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Here is perhaps a better source: http://www.dailytech.com/Blogger+finds+Y2K+bug+in+NASA+Climate+Data/article8383.htm

I heard this was a Y2K bug, and that the guy wasn't allowed access to their algorithms but that he reverse engineered the algorithm's and determined a Y2K bug. He then notified NASA and they said basically, 'yes, that is true' and that they would rework the data and republish.

Since that .15 degree difference indicates an amount reduction of anomaly - I say that again 'anomaly', then I believe it has more significance than if it was just an individual temperature difference. So, whereas 2000 to 2005 may have been very anomalous - for instance 1 or 2 degrees making it really stand out as a possible example of global warming, the recalculation now shows that it really isn't very different a group of years at all - indeed only .15 degree off. So, don't look at this backwards.

In related temperature reporting information related to global warming I heard that there were numerous individuals that had been travelling to temp recording stations throughout the country and taking pictures of where they were located and whether or not they were properly set up according to required specifications. Apparently (as reported) there were many, many violations - some being located on a runway where jet wash passed over them regularly, some having light bulbs inside them making them too hot, some positioned near air conditioner exhaust ports. All of this was skewing the data as "hotter". Supposedly this was later reported to NOAA and the data was removed citing a personal privacy risk.

Anyone heard about this? I don't know how true it is, but certainly sounds very interesting.
 
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Guys, we need to stop worrying about global warming, and start worrying about the REAL threat lurking all around us. I'm talking about terminators.....that's right, terminators. Computer technology is incredible today, and we depend on computers to do everything anymore. One day, Skynet WILL take over. ;) Yeah right, anyways, on a serious note, I pretty much agree with everything Shane and Michael have said on this issue. Unfortunately this is a topic that is being used to push a political agenda, particularly by the liberal left. I'm not trying to bring politics into the discussion, but I think this is something we all realize. For once, I'd like to hear a discussion from both sides, not just from the supporters of manmade global warming, and not just from the paid off scientists (which there are). It's sad that when someone respectable tries to argue against global warming, they are criticized and their opinion completely ignored. It's ridiculous really.
 
Brandon Goforth said:
Guys, we need to stop worrying about global warming, and start worrying about the REAL threat lurking all around us. I'm talking about terminators.....that's right, terminators. Computer technology is incredible today, and we depend on computers to do everything anymore. One day, Skynet WILL take over. ;) Yeah right, anyways, on a serious note, I pretty much agree with everything Shane and Michael have said on this issue. Unfortunately this is a topic that is being used to push a political agenda, particularly by the liberal left. I'm not trying to bring politics into the discussion, but I think this is something we all realize. For once, I'd like to hear a discussion from both sides, not just from the supporters of manmade global warming, and not just from the paid off scientists (which there are). It's sad that when someone respectable tries to argue against global warming, they are criticized and their opinion completely ignored. It's ridiculous really.
Click to expand...

Give me a break! If you look at the way Limbaugh and his crowd rant about this, making fun of anyone who believes there might be human-induced global warming, you'll see where the real political agenda is!

And, I am sure there are at least as many scientists paid off by polluting corporations as there are by whoever it is that is supposedly paying people off to say there is global warming.

I think there are people on this list for whom no amount of evidence would be enough to make them admit that humans might be contributing to global warming, regardless of what 90% plus of climate scientists who have spent their careers studying this believe to be true.
 
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