Hi Blacknad,
I didn't ask you to question the science. Damm! How was the article? Does it read OK? Or is it crap badly written? I have only written one previous newspaper article and that was when I knew everything because I was young, super confident (and yes, I'm contradicting myself but I actually forgot about it - it was on global cooling and why perhaps it was a bit early to go out and buy fur parkas just yet). Now I'm neither.
Oh, and yes Blacknad (by the way, how about a nick name or first name - Blacknad is a bit ... well, strange) it is all way too true.
Go to the NASA site, any of the NASA sites, go to the GHCN site and you will find discussions on just this topic. Actually NASA has a whole article on why there is no such thing as an average world temperature then immediately turns around and says the average says it is warming. Sheesh, don't they read what they just wrote?
Actually the maths errors simply because of this one thing really screw up an awful lot and there is NO WAY to correct. The raw data is often not available or is not in a form that can be used without an enormous effort. I for one think they should do that effort but, hey, what do I know, I don't fully support global warming so I'm a stooge for the oil industry.
Actually this is just one small part of what's wrong with the GHCN data or anyone's data. Almost none of the records are consistent. They have gaps. They moved locations. Even if there was no such thing as "local urbanisation" effects the data would be next to useless. No sane scientist would rely on such data for anything except climate scientists. Why? Because that's all there is! Is bad data better than nothing? I don't believe so but how could everyone discuss the world getting warmer (or in the 70's cooler) if it was simply agreed the data is faulty and to only rely on that very small subset that is not faulty. What does that give you? Antartica where the Australians have been. Parts of Canada. Much of the US data. Australia probably has the best data in the world for the longest time, so does New Zealand. Anywhere else? Nup. Oh you might find a village in Italy where they have faithfully carried out weather recording daily in a consistent manner and certainly in parts of England and Ireland but not enough to give you an accurate regional picture. There are some military stations that have good records as well.
Who cares? The data says there is global warming that will destroy civilisation. We must act now! You'd think you could find one set of data that supports global warming. Water temperatures. Not a change of getting a data set out of that except from the British Navy and it says that the world's oceans have been cooling for the last century and a bit. Damm! Something. Glaciers. If they are melting it must be warming, right? Well actually if you take all the glaciers - about 1,600 - 70% are expanding and the main European glaciers that we have records of have been much shorter in the past than now even though they are shrinking.
Does anything agree with the bad temperature data? Actually no. Not raw data. But the raw data is generally so flawed that I cannot tell you it is not 3 degrees warmer than it was a century ago or for that matter cooler. The ice is melting. No its not, its getting thicker. Nothing is clear and it sucks, big time.
Richard
