My biggest problem with global warming is the absolute certitude of some of its’ proponents (Example: Al Gore stating that “The science has been settled!”).

Let’s try for some perspective, time-wise.

For those comfortable with the metric (S.I.) system, imagine a line about 4.6 kilometers long (a bit under 3 miles). That would represent the 4.6 billion year age of the Earth at 1,000,000 years/meter; 1 mm (about the thickness of a paper clip) would represent a THOUSAND years.

That line would span the downtown area of quite a few large cities, with some to spare. Here in Houston, the downtown streets are 16 to the mile, making their spacing about 100 meters. Thus, that line would be about 46 blocks.

The reign of the dinosaurs ended around 65 million years ago (65 meters, about 2/3 of a city block down that line from today).

The first of our ancestors verging on intelligence may have emerged from 2 to 4 million years ago (2 to 4 meters, say 6.5 to 13 feet; your living room could be around 4 meters in one of its’ dimensions).

What we call “modern” man may go back 40,000 years or so (40 mm, TWO finger-widths on that line).

Written history goes back 6000 years (six millimeters, 1/4 inch on that line).

Fahrenheit’s thermometer is around 300 years old ( 0.3 mm, you’re approaching the thickness of a business card now, or the diameter of a grain of salt).

The portion of that time-line during which precise temperature measurements were recorded would be literally microscopic.

And from that portion, we dare to make really long range climate predictions, and mandate actions based on them?
Absolutely destroy our economy because of them?

I live about three miles west of some of Houston’s major downtown buildings, so I can easily visualize that line.

Looking at that time-line of Earth’s history (the universe’s may be four times that), and the flyspeck of our own existence upon it, the notion of asserting that ANY science has been “settled” strikes me as arrogance beyond comprehension (as in “only a politician could possibly believe that”).

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And you are right about raising up the surrounding cooler data (I call it smearing the bad data over good, but same difference). If you were doing the math right the number of surrounding lower values would bring the outlier down – like a good Kalhman filter does.

In fact I am coming to the sad conclusion the math here is juvenile at best. We should be using a Kalhman filter like approach, where there is recent historical memory in the data which dissipates over months or years, and outliers get swamped out, not the larger number of similar values.

Basically this is either a convoluted lie are idiots who don’t have a clue what they are doing.

Now compare that with GISS or NCDC and you see a WHOPPING difference. The data that comes from NOAA is diverging steadily from the satellite data. GISS gets its data from NOAA (among other places).

The “surface” record is, as you point out, a joke. The “adjustments” are not custom to each measuring station and a “one size fits all” approach is used. All ground sensors are not off by the same amount.

Two things that are particularly annoying to me are the UAH adjustment and the polar temperatures used. If you have a station in a city that consistently reads 1-degree higher than the average of the surrounding rural stations, the data from the rural stations is adjusted UPWARDS to match the urban station rather than the urban station adjusted downwards. This skews everything upward.

GISS uses no direct observations of polar temperatures even though many are available on various US government buoys. Instead, GISS takes the output of what Hansen’s climate model says polar temperatures SHOULD be and plugs them in to GISSTEMP as if they were actual values.

So here you have positive feedback. The model says temps should be higher. The higher temps are plugged into GISSTEMP, GISSTEMP produces a higher global temperature which the model then takes even higher, which gets plugged back into GISSTEMP, etc. You are calibrating the model to its own output so any error get exaggerated. It is no wonder these models are walking temperatures up to oblivion.

It is just plain moronic, AJ. Sorry but I can find no better word for it.

The fact is most LEO Polar Orbiters can cover the earth (their orbits precessing each day so that they circle back around to the start) in I think 7 days (depends on inclination and altitude). So if the satellite flies over head today it will be back over head in 7 days (but not at the exact same time of course).

Are these scientists or poseurs?

Now imagine that the satellite is making its daylight pass at “11 am” solar time … one hour before the sun is highest in the sky. Now imagine that orbit is drifting ever so slightly to the west on the daylight side. As it drifts, the temperatures it records are slightly warmer because they are being taken during a warmer part of the day (and on the night side, at a slightly cooler part of the night). At the end of the month this orbital drift (which is known with precision) is used to “adjust” the readings so that an apples to apples comparison can be made.

In Anthony’s recent article, he notes that the temperatures for this month have risen unexpectedly but buried in the comments you will see that this is probably due to orbital drift of the satellite taking measurements during a “warmer” period of the day and those measurements will not be compensated for that drift until the end of the month.