Baby--It's Warm Outside

Yesterday I discussed a major delegation of power from elected representatives to faceless bureaucrats at the EPA. Those same bureaucrats, environmental zealots all, are poised to destroy a major portion of the economy and turn the clock back to the nineteenth century, all in the name of reducing greenhouse gases. And why? To combat another problem which probably doesn't exist in the first place--anthropomorphic global warming.

In order to determine how to fight the melting of the polar icecaps and the tides rising to engulf New York City, we would first expect to have scientific proof that the earth is indeed warming over a significant period of time. And we have that proof, largely provided to us by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As the NOAA itself says, "for detecting climate change, the concern is not the absolute temperature--whether a station is reading warmer or cooler that a nearby station placed on grass--but how that temperature changes over time."

Sounds right, doesn't it? Don't you believe it. Those are just weasel-words to make you think the administration actually took scientific controlled measurements from multiple sources over a lengthy period of time. What they are really doing is trying to distract your attention from the fact that their measurement of temperature has been unscientific, haphazard, jury-rigged, and in violation of their very own standard of keeping thermometers away from heat sources (thus, the pooh-poohing of "placed on grass").

The earth may or may not be getting warmer, but the NOAA measurements don't prove a bloody thing, except possibly how zealots will rely on the most amateurish of "facts" to advance their own agendas. The infamous "hockey stick" graph is based largely on measurements taken by NOAA and related agencies. So what did the statement from NOAA actually say to you? I read it in its simplest and most likely form: "We took really lousy measurements, real scientists have vilified our methods, so for detecting climate change, temperature readings don't matter." That reminds me of the old gag about touch-feely psychotherapists saying "don't tell me what you think--tell me what you feel.

The temperature measurements and methodology of the NOAA are simply so grossly wrong that there is absolutely no way any thinking person could possibly rely on them or find a way to reinterpret the results to fit into any meaningful conclusion. The measurements are so wildly off-kilter, that the NOAA is asking people to simply ignore science and the scientific method and replace it with some sort of zen philosophy about protecting mother earth. Says NOAA: "Accuracy doesn't matter, what is important is the trend." But if you don't know the broad scope of temperatures accurately, how can you determine a trend?

Here are a few samples of how and why the NOAA is simply unreliable, even within its own guidelines. There is a hierarchy of climate measuring sites. The most important are categories 1 and 2 (for obvious reasons). These sites must be placed over grass or low local vegetation. The area should be somewhat flat so the the view of the sky is unobstructed except at the lowest angles of the sun above the horizon. For categories 1 and 2, there can be no artificial heating source within 100 meters, and for the three remaining categories, no closer than 10 meters.

An independent study conducted in 2007 by three highly-respected meteorologists led by Anthony Watts found that 90% (yes, you read that right--90%) of the sites do not meet NOAA's own criteria. This was no small study. A group of over 650 science students conducted the survey and documented the fact that almost all the sites were well within 33 feet (10 meters) of an artificial heat source. The study showed the sites to be close to asphalt or concrete roadways, large buildings, in confined areas, on rooftops, at waste treatment plants which produce unnatural heat, and on or near air-conditioning vents.

The administration has an excuse, but not a scientific explanation for this "warm" bias. After abiding somewhat by their own rules, a big "breakthrough" required that they toss the standards to the winds. In order to get more accurate thermometer readings on the newly-invented MMTS/Nimbus thermometers to replace the old mercury thermometers, it was necessary to move the highly-accurate thermometers to areas where the accuracy related to the new (and warmer) locations.

You see, unlike an old-fashioned thermometer which works pretty accurately wherever you put it, these new scientific wonders are hard-wired to the weather station or building where the readings are being recorded. The old thermometer locations which complied with the guidelines wouldn't work anymore because the cables which go from the new thermometers to the recording devices prohibit the thermometers from being located that far away. So the dummies simply moved the new thermometers closer to those heat sources they aren't supposed to be around. Hence--the reading for any given location was actually not from the same location it had been previously, and because of the heat sources, always read warmer than the prior readings.

Based on their own idiotic violations of their own guidelines, the NOAA has managed to conclude that "there is no question that the surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years." Yet when outside sources which continued to abide by the NOAA standards over the fifty-year long studies put their data together, they came up with an entirely different conclusion. In the 60s and 70s, the earth's overall temperature was cooling. In the 80s through the late 90s, there was a warming trend which brought the earth's temperature (at least in the United States) back to the temperature at the beginning of the study. Most of the independent sources using the NOAA standards have concluded that since the late 90s, there has been no discernible rise or drop in overall temperatures.

So now we know where we got those scientific measurements that produced the hockey stick graph. They came from a government agency run by hockey pucks. Their repositioning of the thermometers is that old nostrum: "if it doesn't fit, make it fit." And based on their horribly inaccurate measurements, and current "ignore the measurements" propaganda, our economy and well-being are being determined by a companion agency, the EPA, which completely buys into the NOAA's voodoo global warming determination.