There was something vaguely familiar about the BBC’s Matt McGrath reporting that our “overheating” world was set to break the 1.5°C threshold within the next five years, meaning average global temperatures would be 1.5°C warmer than they were in the second half of the 19th Century. At the same time last year, McGrath told us there was a 50-50 chance the world would hit 1.5°C “over the next five years”. And the year before that, BBC Science Editor David Shukman reported it was likely that the key 1.5°C “global temperature limit” would be broken – yes you guessed it – “in one of the next five years”.
But it might not surprise you to learn that this particular alarmist song has been around for even longer than its recent reappearance in the charts. In early 2019, the Guardian reported that “within five years”, global temperatures could temporarily climb to 1.5°C above 19th Century levels. The Guardian noted the view of the Met Office that previous results had “demonstrated the accuracy of such decadal reports”, which were said to cover the ground between short-term weather forecasts and long-range climate models. For its part, the Met Office stated as far back as 2017 there was a 39% chance of one month at 1.5°C within – you guessed it – five years.
Missing from all these stories is the admission that the 1.5°C threshold has no basis in science and is just a political invention designed to hasten the implementation of Net Zero. Suggestions that the planet will encounter ‘tipping points’ are pseudoscientific fear-mongering produced by climate models fed with improbable climate data. As we have noted, the recently published Clintel report –The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC – showed that about half the work produced by the IPCC and the wider scientific community is corrupted by incorporating predictions of up to 5°C warming within 80 years. It is a fair comment to say that almost nobody now believes these predictions are remotely plausible.
The other major problem in promoting Thermogeddon is that global warming ran out of steam 25 years ago. The high point of the small jump in temperatures from 1980 occurred in 1998, and current readings are similar to this day. Two inconvenient long pauses during the current century were separated by a small uptick in warmth caused by a very powerful El Nino natural oscillation around 2016.
There may well be some warming caused by humans burning fossil fuel during this period but it seems you need a vivid imagination and a well-prompted climate model to spot it. It can be argued that surface temperatures measurers have done their best to get them through the heat drought with large retrospective additions of warming, poor siting of measuring devices – airport runways an obvious cause of concern – and big boosts from growing urban heat distortions. But there is a feeling that the gig is up on global warming unless some proper heat makes a long overdue appearance.
In fact, the current linear temperature pause – which is about nine years old – could be broken since an El Nino is likely to become apparent in the Pacific ocean in the next few months. The alarmists and their trusted messengers are in two minds about how to play this. McGrath reports that the chances of temperature movement are rising “due to emissions from human activities and a change in weather patterns expected this summer”. Of course, El Nino, which transfers huge amounts of heat around the planet, is a natural recurring event. Getting rid of the pesky pause, as in 2016, will be welcome, but drawing too much attention to El Nino will suggest temperature movement is largely a product of natural influences.
This of course opens the Pandora’s Box that has been firmly sealed by the ‘settled’ science community as far as the important role played by natural influences is concerned. On page 59 of its latest Sixth Assessment Report, the IPCC’s “best estimate” for warming since 1850-1900 is 1.06°C. It attributes between –0.1°C to +0.1°C to natural causes – give or take zero, in other words. The suggestion that all the warming over the last 120 years is down to the activities of humans is relentlessly promoted as a settled gospel truth. It is an interesting position to hold that all the changes in the climate before the 20th century were caused by natural influences, and yet they somehow ceased playing a part from that date onwards.
There are many scientists who dispute that it is only humans controlling the climate thermostat. Heat exchanges from the tropics to the poles, ocean currents of countless durations and size, changing amounts of heat from the sun, all operate in a chaotic non-linear manner to make climate modelling a largely fruitless, if politically necessary, activity.
Recent findings from six top international scientists revealed that the Northern hemisphere may be entering a temperature cooling phase until the 2050s, with a decline of up to 0.3°C. Led by Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, the scientists say that the North Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), an important current that has been pumping warmer water into the Arctic, is weakening, and that’s leading to a cooler North Atlantic area and lower temperatures, as was observed in the period 1950-1970.
Observational evidence seems to lend some credence to the Omrani findings that puts the AMO at the centre of changes in the Arctic’s short-term weather and longer term climate. Over the last few years, the extent of summer sea ice has made a small recovery, while the vast Greenland ice sheet last year could, within a reasonable margin of measurement error, have increased in size.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Stop Press: Net Zero could push British energy bills up by £120 a year to fund the development of hydrogen gas, reports the Telegraph.
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Thanks, Chris, another great article on the fraudulent, catastrophic, man-made climate change “industry”.
“…..all operate in a chaotic non-linear manner to make climate modelling a largely fruitless, if politically necessary, activity”.
If people just sat back and thought of all the factors that influence climate, such as the ones you mention – Heat exchanges from the tropics to the Poles, ocean currents of countless durations and size, changing amounts of heat from the sun – and other factors such as volcanic activity, Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles etc, then you would think that most would easily realise the impossibility of accurately monitoring and forecasting changes in climate; but apparently not.
Sadly, the covid hysteria has shown us that most people uncritically accept what the TV, broadsheet papers and politicians tell them – and it’s exactly the same with “climate change”.
If you thought of all the complexities of the human body – vastly more complicated than even the earth’s climate – you might think it was impossible accurately monitor and predict changes – but we do both, to the extent we even intervene to make this complex system do what we want.
Sometimes the interventions work as intended, sometimes not. Many diseases and conditions are still incurable and mysterious. We have been intervening for millennia, and there have been billions of humans to experiment on, but there is only one Planet Earth. Changes in humans occur quite rapidly. A lot of things about human physiology are quite predictable. We can’t accurately predict the weather.
I am only establishing the principle that just because something is complicated and unpredictable in detail it doesn’t follow that you cannot predict broad trends in response to external forces. If you feed a human body with high calorie food consistently and limit exercise then you can predict with some confidence (but not certainty) that it will get fatter and there will be unpleasant consequences – but you won’t be able to predict the detail.
The point that I think you are missing is that the human body system has been properly studied and documented for several hundred years. The Scientific method has be rigourously followed, theories have been thrown away as new data has shown them to be wrong. We have not attempted low grade computer modelling to predict stuff, we have used actual experimental data. Note that this is exactly the opposite of the “climate brigade”, who even modify the data to suit their pet theories, and certainly don’t even understand the scientific method!
I was only using the human body analogy to make the point that that just because something is complicated it is not subject to broad changes based on relatively simple external forces. It doesn’t require hundreds of years of science to know that if you eat too much you tend to get fat.
You my argue that in fact the climate is not subject to the external forcing of GHGs (I disagree) but it is fallacy to argue that this cannot be true because climate is so complicated.
In climate the only “external force” that governments are concerned about is our human CO2 emissions. It is alleged that this CO2 will cause warming and all manner of extreme weather events, which so far is not actually seen in the data. But CO2 is also something else. It is the one gas that can be directly tied to industrial capitalism. The wealthiest emit the most and the poorest emit the least, all for obvious reasons. The wealthy use more energy and emit more CO2 than poorer people. It is therefore easy to see what Edenhoffer of the IPCC was alluding to when he said “One has to free oneself from the illusion that climate policy is environmental policy anymore. We redistribute the worlds wealth by climate policy”. He is speaking about what we might call Eco Socialism. I think you need to also free yourself from that illusion.
We have been doing medicine for some time now (hundreds of years). We have the benefit of previous knowledge. We have tested medicines and improved them etc. We have worked to create vaccines. We have developed techniques to replace organs, to amputate limbs etc etc etc. Life expectancy has doubled, and we no longer die from many preventable diseases. –Your analogy that the human body is similar to the climate is very simplistic and a bad one. ————— In medicine there is a clear goal. To improve human health and wellbeing. But that is not the case at all with climate science. In climate science today, the focus is almost entirely on one particular aspect of climate. The idea that we may be causing dangerous warming by our emissions of CO2. Vast government resources go towards that, but hardly any towards natural variability of the climate. —— In climate issues there are clear political motivations around eg the worlds wealth and resources, population growth etc . There are moral concerns too about denying over one billion people in poorer countries the use of fossil fuels (and therefore electricity) that would end their miserable existence and bring them prosperity similar to that of us in the wealthy west. ———–Most people would accept that medical advances have improved their life. I do not think that most people think that the politicised science of climate change does anything other than make their life worse. The climate policies are not intended to heal the planet like medicine heals human beings. Medical science improves humans. Climate science only improves political agendas. We all need to not get mixed up between “science” and “official science”.
I am only using the human body as analogy to make a single point – see my reply to real engineer. Of course it is extremely different from the climate in many other respects.
MTF——Correct. Climate and the human body are TOTALLY different, and your analogy was a poor one.
As Chris says the 1.5C target is completely made up. Pulled right out of the rectum. This is the ‘$cience’ the idiots scream about. Rectum pulling.
In many parts of the world, real temp stations suggest a cooling since 1880, not a warmtarding. The warmistas are using urban readings and do not account for the urban heat effect. Anyone with a carmometer who has been in the country near a lake, travelling into say, the wilds of non-English London will have perceptively noticed a 2-3C shift in temps. In NA with its great ranges, the temp swings are more pronounced. I remember 5-7C when we lived there near a lake and commuted into the multi-cult shit hole called Toronto. These are huge differences never accounted for by $cience. Was the shithole warming and we were ‘cooling’? How do micro-or-intra-regional climates work $cience me wonders?
In 1975 at school I was told the Ice Age was coming due to plant food and NYC would be under water by 1995, okay then extended to 2015. Like the 5000 unstabbed dead per day (Dec 2021 announcement), I am still waiting. F* $cience.
Not only is the 1.5C change made up, so is the average that it relates to. A calculated average temperature is not a physical quantity, it is just a statistic. If you want a simple explanation that try an experiment to find a total temperature. It does not exist. Alternatively, think of a volume of water – remove some and the original volume reduces. But, measure the temperature of the original and it does not reduce when some water is removed. This is because temperature is an intensive variable. The only way to determine whether the earth is heating or cooling is to calculate the thermal energy of the earth. Good luck with that.
“Could temporarily climb to 1.5 degrees above…”
Whatever the rise in world temperatures means, if anything, it is an average of an average of averages recorded around the world. So to attach significance to a single year’s average of averages is, in itself, a con trick.
Imagine you are trying to establish the average height of men, and one man you measure is 7 feet high. The significance of that one record to what you’re trying to establish is zero, zilch, nada.
It’s just a slightly more subtle version of the fallacy that a single spot temperature record proves a trend overall.
Imagine heights were increasing and some scientist predicted we will see someone over 9 foot tall in the next 20 years. That single figure is not meaningless and that is how the 1.5C is being used in this context.
Some things lose their meaning when you average them. ————Temperature is one of those things. Temperature is NOT an amount of anything. —–It is a CONDITION.
So it means nothing that the average July max temperature in Delhi is 35C? What a lot of people have been wasting their time!
MTF————You can record a temperature wherever you have a thermometer. You can then compile some kind of average over a period of time. But let’s say you have a thermometer in Delhi and one in Iceland. You record temperatures from both places over a period of time. You can then create some kind of average to come up with a number. But that number is NOT a temperature of anything. It tells you nothing about the temperature of either place. —-Did the temperature in Iceland go down or did the temperature of Delhi go up (and vice versa). —–You cannot tell by looking at the number you have decided to call an “average”. It is simply a statistic. —————————– Then when it comes to global temperature, they do not use individual temperatures, they use “anomalies”, and compare temperatures, normally to a 30 year period, and see how they deviate from that. But ofcourse if you choose a different 30 year period to compare against, your results will be very different.— So when you hear that the “average global temperature” has gone up by 1.5 C, what it means is it has gone up relative to the average of a particular 30 year period. ——-It may however have gone down when compared to some other arbitrary 30 year period. ——–Climate scientists do not have a thermometer they can stick under the earths tongue and take a reading.
So Christie and Spencer have been wasting their time all these years tracking the average temperature of the mid-troposphere using satellites? And we can ignore all Chris Morrison’s stuff about a global warming pause (which is based on average temperatures)?
Christie and Spencer have been all that time measuring the microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. ———When you say Chris Morrison talks of a global warming “pause” which is based on “global temperatures” you are using the plural “temperatures”——-But your argument seems to me to be that there is a “global temperature” (singular). ——–But there is no single number that represents the temperature of the earth. Temperature is a field. There are an infinite number of temperatures on earth. ———You are forgetting that when climate scientists or the media talk of “global temperature” or “average temperature” they are not talking about a temperature as such of the earth at a particular moment in time, that can be described as the temperature of the whole globe. They are referring to “Temperature Anomalies”, which compare temperatures to a baseline period normally of 30 years. They are not referring to absolute temperature which is a single temperature in one place and time. Ofcourse, if the baseline period were to be moved back or forward in time the result would be different.
The business of anomalies versus absolute temperature is utterly irrelevant. It is just a change of scale. Provided you are consistent it has no more significance than giving temperatures in Kelvin rather than Centigrade.
Christie and Spencer have been all that time measuring the microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere.
That is what they use to work out the temperature but what they report is the global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly (among other things).
When you say Chris Morrison talks of a global warming “pause” which is based on “global temperatures” you are using the plural “temperatures”——-But your argument seems to me to be that there is a “global temperature” (singular).
His discussion is based on Christie and Spencer’s chart. It has multiple global average temperatures because they change over time but at any given date there is just one global average temperature.
But there is no single number that represents the temperature of the earth. Temperature is a field. There are an infinite number of temperatures on earth. —
It is perfectly reasonable and commonplace to average a field e.g. average height above sea level in the UK (162 metres).
If you want to have one number for the temperature of the earth as you seem determined to do, why don’t you just stick a thermometer under the earths tongue? ————-Temperature anomaly, which is the statistically magnified version of global temperature gets used in the climate change argument because it enables a graph to be shown that ticks upwards, whereas absolute temperature does not show that. —–I think what you don’t seem to be realising when you harp on about global average temperature is that this number that we see being bandied about of 1.5 degrees by the IPCC and their compliant media is not an absolute temperature of anything. It does not mean that the temperature of the earth (because there is no such thing) has risen or will rise by 1.5 degrees based on the output from some climate model or other full of assumptions. Although it is clear that those wishing to present global warming as something dangerous that must be addressed by government would like the general public to think that. ——————That number of 1.5 degrees represents how temperatures compare to a baseline period (of 30 years). It used to be 1961-1990, but is now 1991-2020.———— If there is a positive anomaly then it is declared temperature has risen relative to whichever period you are comparing to, and the opposite is alleged to be true if there is a negative anomaly.———But global warming (warming caused by humans) is supposed to be have been going on for the last couple of hundred years or so or from about 1860 (depending on who you listen to) So we may see a positive anomaly if we compare to the baseline of 1961- 1990, but a negative one if we happen to choose another period. eg 2011-2040. ———–So in that second case there would be no global warming at all since the anomaly would be a negative one. —————————Oh and one other thing. You said at the end of your comment that “it is perfectly reasonable to average a field” and you gave the example of “heights above sea level”————-Height is an amount of something eg the amount of inches above the ground. Temperature is not an amount of anything. Temperature is a “condition”. ———–I think we have covered this now and I won’t be keeping it going any further or I will just be repeating myself. ——–Thanks for your comments, but it is worth remembering that there are no experts or modellers or scientists who know what the climate is going to do in 50 or 100 years from now and those who claim they do know are not dealing in science, they are dealing in politics.
I am glad that you wish to bring this to a halt.
Let me at leave you with some things to think about. It is extremely basic stuff and I apologise if you know some or all of it already – but that seems to be what is needed.
There is only one absolute temperature scale – that is the temperature above absolute zero – usually measured in degrees Kelvin. However, that is inconvenient for everyday purposes (it means adding 273 to the temperatures we use) so we usually describe temperatures relative to the freezing point of water – degrees Centigrade. However, a one degree rise in temperature is a one degree rise whichever scale you use. Presenting temperatures as anomalies from some base period is no different in principle. Rather than take the freezing point of water as a base we take the average (!) temperature of some period as the base. However, a one degree rise (or fall) is still a one degree rise (or fall). It is true that if the base period was actually warmer than the present then the temperatures would have negative values but that doesn’t matter because we are interested in change in temperature. We would still see a warming trend but it would a trend of getting less negative. As it happens all periods since records began have been cooler than the present, so whatever base you use, the temperatures will be positive.
What frustrates me is that none of the leading sceptics would disagree with me. It is your own private misunderstanding.
There is no average temperature as I have explained in the comment above yours.
It is perfectly reasonable to take the average of an intensive variable. You can do it for pressure, density any other intensive variable. It can be continuous or discrete. All it is doing is summarising a whole set of values in one number. Even hardline sceptics do it for global average temperatures.
You’ll have to do better than that puny 1.5’C Chris.. in France we’re going BIG TIME 4’C..
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/france-braces-4degc-warming-turning-point-strategy
Oh.. and then there’s this.. look at it and weep..
A list of opportunities, but no mention of money.
Exactly..
Yes, number 4 is sinister.
Indeed.
Indeed it is Chris.. but so’s 3
If you think of climate change as a new form of religion and catastrophic high temperatures as the devil, then everything makes “sense”.
The powerful in society need something to mind control the population. They always have. Always will.
It’s the Climate Change Cult (CCC).
The BBC have gone all Vicky Pollard on this. Yeah but, it’s a disaaaster darling, temperatures will rise above the sacred 1.5C threshold. No but, it’s not that bad because we need to see temperatures so high for a decade before we notice a difference.
It’s like a Doomsday Cult. They’re getting worried the whole alarmist edifice will collapse when the threshold is breached and nobody notices.
To Chris Morrison,
We need another “Great Global Warming Swindle” type of program on TV?————– It should feature all the players not on the global warming gravy train. It should be interviewing the likes of Will Happer, John Christie, Judith Curry, Patrick Moore, Roy Spencer, Anthony Watts, Ross McKittrick, etc etc etc. It should cover all of the points you regularly make in your articles on what is pseudo science in support of the political agenda of Sustainable Development. It should open the eyes of a general public drunk on propaganda that has them in a global warming stupor, and other silly activists clamouring for and demanding their own impoverishment. ——-I remember when the Martin Durkin “Swindle” first appeared on Channel 4 in 2007 and the spitting fury of the climate establishment who could not bear that anyone had dared to question their bought and paid for junk science. They thought they owned the science. Then 2 years later the Climategate emails exposed their blatant disregard for the scientific method and any idea of accountability. I remember the Hockey Stick Graph plastered all over IPCC reports and TV news that allegedly showed the sudden surge upwards of temperature all over the globe and all caused by human activity. ————-IT WAS FALSE, and was exposed by dogged determination by Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. This despite the authors of the graph blatantly refusing to provide data, methodology and computer code. But eventually they exposed it as FALSE. It swiftly vanished from IPCC reports, but to this day the corruption of science for political purposes continues so that western governments, and none more grovelling in their pandering to UN agenda’s than the UK governments of both main parties continue to bludgeon their own citizens with astronomically expensive energy policies that force millions into energy poverty and having to be bailed out with yet more billions from government determined to save the planet harder and faster than all others. —————It is long overdue then that the public are awoken from this slumber and shown how they are being fleeced with climate policies that are not and have never been about the climate. People need to be shown that climate model projections of the future are assumptions and speculation with little predictive value and are NOT science. ——–It is Eco Socialism that will impoverish us all with no noticeable effect on climate because as Judith Curry pointed out “Sure, all things being equal, CO2 may cause a little bit of warming, but all things in earth’s climate are NOT equal”. —–A little bit of warming is not a CLIMATE EMERGENCY. ——A new “Swindle” program on TV is vital if NET ZERO is to come to be seen for what it is. An attack on freedom and prosperity by the UN/WEF Eco Socialists.
Martin Durkin is making one. See Tom Nelson episode 99 last month.
Ask a climateer what the % of our atmosphere is CO2.
The answer is 0.0421.
That’s 421 parts per million.
Of which, the man-made element is 0.0004%.
Then remind them of 196 countries only 9 are signed up to destroy their economies with the carbon zero madness, inc China, India, Japan and the whole of Africa.
I have lost count of the number of times I have written this response.
The concentration of CO2 is irrelevant. (after all it is quite enough to sustain plant life). Concentration is amount of CO2/amount of other gasses. If it is very low all that means is the amount of other gasses is very high. What matters is just the numerator – the amount of CO2.
The man-made element is not 0.0004%. It is about 30% as almost all the increase over the last 100 years is man-made and concentrations have gone from less than 300 ppm to 420 ppm. It is about 3% of the CO2 emissions but the natural emissions are balanced by absorption processes – so the man-made element accounts for all of the increase.
So tell me.. which comes first CO2 or temperature ?
Also, what about data that shows ten times the CO2 than there is today, but alongside cooler temperatures. How do you explain that ?
Tell me why Michael Mann, would not provide the data to show how he’d come up with his hockey stick graph. Surely, if the data bore out his workings he should have been more than willing to prove Tim Ball wrong ?
Have you ever read the First Global Revolution, written via the Club of Rome, where they openly admit to the swindle of what was then called Global Warming ?
So tell me.. which comes first CO2 or temperature ?
In the past the process has been typically kicked off by a change in temperature – this leads to a change in CO2 which in turn affects the temperature. We are skipping the first stage and going directly to changing CO2 levels.
what about data that shows ten times the CO2 than there is today, but alongside cooler temperatures. How do you explain that ?
We are talking about completely different timescales – many millions of years ago – when much bigger, much longer term, influences are involved e.g. the sun was less strong – but that is utterly irrelevant to any timescale that we are interested in.
Tell me why Michael Mann, would not provide the data to show how he’d come up with his hockey stick graph. Surely, if the data bore out his workings he should have been more than willing to prove Tim Ball wrong ?
I have no idea but it is irrelevant because the basic hockey stick shape has been reproduced independently many times since then.
Have you ever read the First Global Revolution, written via the Club of Rome, where they openly admit to the swindle of what was then called Global Warming ?
No. There are too many books and not enough time or money.
Well done MTF or should that be MDF.. you’ve passed the evasiveness test with flying colours..
Your default assumption appears to be that “scientists”, government and other bodies are generally honest and mean well, and are not motivated by greed or lust for power, and are unlikely to lie to further their aims, or do anything knowing harmful. How anyone can think like that having lived through covid baffles me.
I can’t see how you conclude that from what I have written.
Of course I am speculating to an extent.
But speculating honestly, based on ALL the actual measured data and the laws of physics and without even the most remote hope of a fat brown envelope from Government, Academia, the MSM, or the Ruinable Energy racketeers.
My congratulations, Sir.
Also worth noting that the UK could decarbonise entirely tomorrow and yet our reduced co2 output would be swallowed up by the growth of emissions in China and India within a few months. Our contribution is negligible.
The BBC stories are consistent – the probability of exceeding 1.5C in the next 5 years has steadily risen – 40% in 2021, 50% in 2022, 66% in 2023. What’s wrong with that?
Missing from all these stories is the admission that the 1.5°C threshold has no basis in science and is just a political invention designed to hasten the implementation of Net Zero.
What does it even mean to say it has “no basis in science”? It is a target not a prediction. There is quite a lot of scientific discussion around the consequences. But also don’t confuse this target – a sustained increase of 1.5C – with the prediction that at least one year will exceed 1.5C in the next five years.
As we have noted, the recently published Clintel report –The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC – showed that about half the work produced by the IPCC and the wider scientific community is corrupted by incorporating predictions of up to 5°C warming within 80 years. It is a fair comment to say that almost nobody now believes these predictions are remotely plausible.
This is confusing temperature predictions with significance of those temperatures. It may be that a lot of IPCC work on the consequences of climate change are based on RPC 8.5 and therefore implausibly high temperatures. It is hard to tell without reading WG III reports in detail. However, that doesn’t have any relevance to the probability of exceeding 1.5C in the next five years which is WG I stuff.
The other major problem in promoting Thermogeddon is that global warming ran out of steam 25 years ago. The high point of the small jump in temperatures from 1980 occurred in 1998, and current readings are similar to this day. Two inconvenient long pauses during the current century were separated by a small uptick in warmth caused by a very powerful El Nino natural oscillation around 2016
Even if you use the UAH Satellite data and ignore all other temperature records (including alternative analyses of the satellite data) it shows a clear warming trend. Chris’s case seems to turn on the single exceptional year of 1998.
1.5c warmer than what.? Singapore is average 27c in May, a little cooler in our Autumn, but Moscow is average about 7c, but they both fluctuate up or down about 12c, at different times of the year, and is weather dependent too. The notion that you can produce one average temperature for the whole earth is utterly meaningless folly. Imagining that you can deduce the longevity of the human race from it, is a mental illness..
The notion that you can produce one average temperature for the whole earth is utterly meaningless folly
So this list of mean surface temperatures of the planets is meaningless folly?
Not only that, also irrelevant.
ALL the trivial warming suggested by all the measurements so far has been entirely beneficial.
As has been all the trivial increase in a trace gas essential for all life on Earth.
I’m trying to put together a list of all the bogus climate disaster claims – (Chris’ above being another excellent example) – about the future for a presentation at our town meeting in June. For example, Greta Thunberg saying we’ve only got 12 years left in 2018, and similar ones. I would greatly appreciate any input. The reason is that for a while now I have been going to my local council and asking them upon what grounds they declared a climate emergency in 2019. I think you’ll find that pretty much all the councils around the country did exactly the same and I bet none of them knew anything about the science nor about the additional climate data other than what they were told by the lying and fraudulent IPCC or what they heard on the telly/radio from our corrupt media. I find the drive to Net Zero and then Absolute Zero to be among the most alarming of all the policies that are coming down the tube in that they will restrict our movements, punish farming and attempt to change our diets. So, I, along with others, are pushing back. So far I have not received any adequate explanation from the council.
This is a good start for your research.
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/
Cheers, Sticky! Much appreciated.
Good one..
Ah, the declaration of a climate emergency. I really don’t understand who decided this was a thing and why it carried so much weight. Where did this concept come from and why did the government give it credence and slavishly act on it?
Probably the same Genii who proudly announced that, from now on, our hamlet will be a Nuclear Free Zone.
There’s really no reason to discuss this at all. Averaging measurement devices readings of different quantities (like temperature measurement stations in different locations or even different readings from a single station) is and remains bullshit. Averaging is a mathematical algorithm to remove random errors from a set of measurements of the same quantity to arrive at a better approximation of its actual value. And there’s is no such quantity as a global temperature which could be approximated in this way. That’s just a statistical fiction created by misapplying averaging.
Averaging is a mathematical algorithm to remove random errors from a set of measurements of the same quantity to arrive at a better approximation of its actual value
That’s one use of one type of average. But there are many uses and many types of average – although in this case we are concerned with the mean. We use mean life span to determine life expectancy, mean traffic speed on a road to estimate time to the next exit, petrol consumption to determine how much petrol to carry – none of these are attempts to more accurately measure a quantity.
Well lifespan is reasonably easy to measure – there are a finite quantity of humans on this planet, each of whom only dies once. As long as you have fairly accurate means of recording births and deaths, your figure will be quite accurate. Traffic speed and petrol consumption are trickier. Traffic speed when and where? Global mean traffic speed? At what point in time? Petrol consumption when and where?
That’s what happens when calculating a mean (if you like that term better): Assuming N0, N1, … NX are measurements of the same quantity, each will be composed of an error part En and a value part V. This means the following equation is true:
Nn = En + V
V is the quantity we really want to know but because En is unknown, it can’t be determined directly. Assuming the En are randomly distributed, ie, that’s it’s equally likely that they’re positive or negative, one can calculate a sum M as
M = N0 + N1 + … + NN
as per the equation above, that’s
M = E0 + V + E1 + V + … + EN + V
If every possible negative of positive value for En is equally likely, the En parts of this sum will tendencially cancel each other out, hence, M will contain more of V and less of the En. If one now divides M by N, the result is thus an improved approximation of V.
That people apply this algorithm to all kinds of series of numbers where it makes little or no sense (so-called life expectancy, for instance) is of no concern here.
I think most people on this forum will be very familiar with this calculation. I would hope it is GCSE science. It applies when you are measuring a fixed quantity and the error is normally distributed about the real value. You may think all the other contexts for measuring the mean make little or no sense but meanwhile the rest of the world will go on basing decisions on average life span, average summer temperature in their holiday destination, average weight of passengers, etc.
“average summer temperature in their holiday destination”
Indeed – a specific time and place.
Nope – I didn’t specify the year.
Indeed you did not. I suppose it would be over a number of years, as far back as records go.
This is absolutely not a matter of what I may think but about a mathematical algorithm with a certain behaviour which can thus be used to a certain effect. Specifically, this is a so-called digital noise filter which can be used to eliminate noise (random fluctuations) from some signal. How’s that applicable to weights of different people?
The calculation in a digital noise filter is a lot more complicated! But anyway I think we are all familiar with the calculation of a mean. This might be used to estimate a true value given a set of measurements, as in your example (given some assumptions about the measurement process). It might also be used to calculate the expected weight on a plane given the number of passengers (a key statistic for airlines) or the expected lifespan of a 65 year old non-smoking male – vital for the life insurance business – the list is endless.
The calculation in a digital noise filter is a lot more complicated!
Irrelevant babbling. I was writing about averaging and what it’s good for (digital noise filter) using an intentionally very simple example, not about audio processing in commercial hearing aids (which aren’t supposed to reduce the amount of white noise in a signal).
I’ve specifically asked you to explain how what I described would be applicable to weights of different people and … Private Eye classic … answer came there none, just a repetition of the assertion that it would certainly be useful. The same is true for the expected lifespan of a 65 year old non-smoking man: It’s unknown and the assumption that there’s a correct value for lifespan of a 65 year old female donkey fed on a diet of minced potatoes which can thus be approximated by the sequence of addition followed by a division algorithm as the assumed errors in the individual lifespans will cancel each other out is just wrong. That won’t stop ignoramuses with spreadsheet programs from calculating it the neverhteless. But this nevertheless doesn’t magically lend meaning to the result of the calculation.
Hic Rhodos hic salta, second attempt: Please explain in detail how add a sequences of values and divide the sum by the number of values is mathematically supposed to result in valid estimate of expected lifespan of anyone, ie, what are the underlying assumptions and why are they appropriate.
OK
Imagine you are a life insurance company that has one extraordinarily simple policy. You will pay out £100,000 on the death of a policy holder. The policy is open to 50 year old males who don’t smoke and have no known medical conditions. The question is what premium to charge? To calculate a premium that would make a profit you have to know the average lifespan of policy holders. If you overestimate it, you will lose money. If you underestimate it you will be charging too much and open to competition.
So how do I estimate the average lifespan of a policy holder?
A simple method is to get a large random sample of people who have died and extract from that sample those who were male and the good health and didn’t smoke when they were 50. Now you have a large number of lifespans. You add the add them all up and divide by the number of people to get the mean. That is your estimate of the lifespan of a policy holder.
The larger the sample, the more likely to be representative though you may also need to control for other confounding variables. Producing an average temperature for Earth seems to me somewhat more challenging as there are almost an infinite number of places where you could measure the temperature and to be confident of being accurate you’d need to choose those places carefully. I don’t know how you’d go about doing it, nor how you’d measure accuracy. The insurance company can check if their predictions are correct as they will either lose money or make a profit.
And yet even sceptics such as Christie and Spencer go about it with some confidence. Yes it is hard – but it is not impossible or meaningless as RW seems to be suggesting.
Climate Predictions Never come true
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Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
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Great article. Keep plugging away Chris, you’re doing a marvellous job.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT
THERE HAVE BEEN 41 CLIMATE
DISASTER PREDICTIONS SINCE
1967.
THEIR RECORD SO FAR?
0-41
It is impossible for tipping points to exist in thermodynamics because all heat transfers tend to an equilibrium.
Climate change many degrees of lies
************************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE