A reader observed
You do know that satellites do not measure the surface temperature? The data is subject to considerable manipulation.
You do know the surface thermometers are reliable and show Earth surface [sic] has warmed around 1.2C — depends on the start date.
You do know Christy and Spencer at UAH made a mess of it and had to be shown what to do?
You do know most of the energy is heating the oceans?
You do know you are wasting your time? It’s not a scientific problem any more, it’s a political problem. Trump has gone.
I respond for the umpteenth time
For 17 years this blog has answered these and related questions, but these new answers are not cut and pasted, they are created afresh. A NASA article last updated on 22 July, 2020, talks about the UAH satellite measurements:
In 1990, Spencer and Christy developed the technique with which scientists were first able to glean accurate estimates of global atmospheric temperatures from satellite measurements. The technique derives temperatures from satellite measurements of microwave radiation emitted by molecular oxygen. The measurements have been made by Microwave Sounding Units (MSUs) flown on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites since 1979. The temperature data sets that Spencer and Christy retrieved from MSU data consist of precise global monthly temperature determinations for the troposphere and lower stratosphere.
Although the global warming puzzle obviously can’t be solved with a single piece, the satellite record is “often used by others in an attempt to prove things we don’t think can be proved [by the record],” said Spencer. “The record is short in the context of global warming, but it is the longest record we have from satellites. With it, we’ve been able to monitor changes in the climate system over very short time scales with high precision over the whole Earth, which thermometers can’t do.”
Readers may wish to explore further technical details at the website for the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Big money is necessary to study Earth from space.
The Aqua satellite was launched on May 4, 2002, at a cost of $US952 million.
(image credit: NASA)
The ‘manipulation’ the reader mentions doesn’t alter the temperature, it identifies the temperature. What he calls manipulation is simply necessary maths to convert the microwave data.
I agree that thermometer data are generally reliable except when they’re unreliable, such as when stations have moved, trees grow or their surroundings change and the data must later be corrected. Then odd things can happen. When he mentions warming of about 1.2 °C, that must be over much more than a century. It’s interesting that, in some contrast to his claim, the IPCC state:
The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.85 … °C, over the period 1880 to 2012 [130 years][…] SPM PAGE 5.
Which is unremarkable warming, equivalent to 0.6 °C per century.
When this reader says “Christy and Spencer at UAH made a mess of it and had to be shown what to do” he exemplifies a strict attitude, but it’s not as though nobody else makes mistakes or guesses wrongly in the beginning. After all, that’s the purpose of the scientific method: check each other’s work, point out if you can where they go wrong. A few years after embarking on this inspired new effort to extract temperature information from satellite microwave data Drs Spencer and Christy discovered errors in their workings. They corrected them promptly and publicly and later, no complaints remained.
The sun heats the oceans and this is well known. What is not so well known is our emissions don’t heat the oceans. If our reader believes they do, he should please show evidence of it.
The 2,934 kg Aqua spacecraft being prepared for launch. Note its size beside the people in attendance. (image credit: NASA)
He suggests I’m wasting my time, and I often agree with him, because few people join in our sceptical conversation here. But then we have conversations like this, with my science-based explanations, which are exposed to more than 40,000 readers each month, and I look on that as a good use of my time. So thank you, kind reader, for your comments!
He says climate change is no longer a scientific problem but a political one. He may not know that climate change was created as a political problem by the WMO and the UNEP, who instructed interested scientists then to find evidence of man-made global warming. That climate cart very much ahead of the horse.
So I regret to inform him that climate change is not now a political problem—it’s still a political problem and the science remains unsolved. I, together with all other sceptics, have numerous unanswered questions the public understands little of (the media shuts us up). However, until the political enablers of this monstrous calumny in every country are voted out of office, the quite dreadful Zero Carbon movement will continue with its savage ruin.
And how could this have any connection with Trump?
Views: 214
When I read the comments of “reader observed” one can’t help but feel a bit depressed. How such a closed mind can be shown climate science along with every other endeavour by humans never stands still and
climate science is moving like everything else, it’s not anyones fault man made climate change is starting fall apart.
I suppose they are right about Trump but gone as President mmmm
Regards
Harry
At the risk of repeating what has gone before. Clearly your “Reader” has not bothered to actually research the origins of climate change. As the rest of us know:
– The original intentions of Maurice Strong, who was almost sociopathic in his dislike of mankind, to reduce the world population to a maximum of 1 billion.
– The Club of Rome.
– Margaret Thatcher’s hatred of the miner’s unions in the UK.
All politically motivated and all based on a simple premise. With no scientific proof what so ever, they declared that carbon dioxide was the control knob for the temperature of the planet, based mainly on the “opinion” of Svante Arrhenius. Having established this politically, all subsequent funding only went to “science” that supported this premise. Climate change IS politics and has never been science.
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” A very succinct summary of the “climate consensus” by Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Written over 100 years ago and never more relevant than today.
As we have seen, there has much manipulation of historical temperature and climate records to support the current narrative. As Orwell wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”
Strong et alia are/were communists. Nuff said – all sociopathic. Brett Keane
On Friday my senses were assaulted by the school climate strike. This initially resulted in an internal sense of outrage. These young people have been indoctrinated by the education system and the main stream media. They truly believe that their very future is in jeopardy due to climate change and the inaction of our government to curb our wicked carbon burning ways. Yet, if I were to hold a group of young people in a room for 6 hours a day, day after day, and indoctrinate them in to a doomsday cult, I would, quite rightly, be held to account. Yet no one will be held to account in this instance. After all, how could St. Jacinda of the Covid be part of such a evil cult? As I alluded to previously, this is pretty much government sanctioned terrorism and blatant child abuse, using the worst possible forms of mental and emotional cruelty. To quote H L Mencken “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
After a while, my outrage turned to sadness and sorrow. This is now a lost generation. They are prepared to hand over their entire future, their prosperity and their sovereignty to a lie. They are being coerced and bullied in to surrendering their very freedom to the creeping march of extreme socialism without realizing it. To quote H L Mencken again, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
In this case, these young people have shown a patent lack of real education, not only in climate change, but in civics, politics and history. This is a vile and cynical manipulation quietly orchestrated by the political mandarins, the unseen puppet masters and those with much deeper and sinister agendas. Revolutions are often lead by the young and ideological. It is about time the older generation mounted a revolution of our own.
First I’ve heard of it. How many children are involved? Surely there are some going along with it to get time off school, some don’t know what’s going on and plenty not participating who just don’t believe it. I sympathise with your opposition to the indoctrination, which I have opposed here for over a decade. Simply registering here your contrary opinion goes some way to countering this evil. I don’t believe they’re a lost generation.
Hi Richard,
https://www.schoolstrike4climate.nz/
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/photos-students-take-streets-around-nz-protest-more-govt-action-climate
Whilst I know Stuff is a climate change train wreck:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/124794918/tempers-flare-at-christchurch-mayor-during-school-strike-4-climate
This story covers the strike in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The Wellington strike got a fair amount of coverage on one news with the organizer praising the 1000’s of students that turned up. It was estimated by one source that 5000 turned up in Wellington.
As part of my job I do a lot of work in schools. I was recently in one Auckland school. I was working in the corridor outside a class room with door open. I could listen to a video the kids were being shown on climate change and the discussion afterwards. The BS was amazing, but the kids drank the kool aid. Every school I go in to has an Enviro school award and there are climate change messages all over the walls. Posters drawn by the pupils and slogans about carbon footprints. When you get a teacher asking each pupil in turn if they eat meat or are vegetarian and telling the meat eaters that they are going to die an early and horrible death as well as destroying the planet, these kids are on a hiding to nothing. I started setting up to work in one class at the end of a lesson where the teacher was telling them that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could not cause ocean acidification. It was more likely to be caused by land run off and other real pollution issues. Due to the role of carbon dioxide in the shell formation of ocean crustaceans, the real problem would be if the oceans warmed, because warmer water holds LESS dissolved gas, not more. Less dissolved CO2, therefore no acidification but also problems with crustacean shell formation. I was amazed when the class, almost as one, told the teacher he was wrong and every body knew CO2 caused ocean acidification. They did not listen to the actual science, but parroted the narrative like good little brainwashed lemmings.
I know of one young lady at a school in Auckland who has a brain and refuses to believe the climate change narrative. She is the only one in her class and is pretty much ostracized for her views. Cancel culture at work. I have been confronted by questions about my carbon footprint and what was I going to do about it or I would not be welcome to come back. I have been asked why I still eat meat and when will I go vegetarian to save myself and the planet. A psychology lecturer from one of our prestigious tertiary education establishments has the view that climate change denial is a mental illness and anyone that would argue the science is deranged and in desperate need of counseling. The same psychologist claimed that there was a massive increase in kids being treated for climate anxiety.
As usual, the activists are the ones with the drive and the loudest voices. They are the ones that will make the news headlines, backed by a complicit main stream media. The ones that don’t go along with the view do not have a voice either way because they either don’t understand what is happening or are drowned out by the cancel culture. They are bombarded from all sides by TV, news media and social media. Listening to the strike leaders on TV news interviews they cite Prime Minister Ardern’s declaration of a climate crisis and this generations nuclear free moment. They state there are undeniable signs of the climate crisis (Where? I have never seen or heard of one event that can actually be scientifically linked to a so called climate crisis.) and that this government is moving too slowly. The activists will be backed by the government of the day, encouraged to shout louder and the herd will follow. I concede that this may not quite be a lost generation yet, but they certainly don’t know how to read maps and their GPS has stopped working.
Hi TD,
A rich account, thanks, nicely highlighting the propaganda being spread in our schools. Curiously, the Stuff summary included among the students’ “national demands” that climate education be “introduced” into schools. Yet it’s blindingly obvious that climate indoctrination must be occurring already, or no “School Strike 4 Climate” campaign could even begin. Let’s hope that there’s a grown-up somewhere in the education system who might notice the obvious.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the reply and your comments. When the demands include climate education to be introduced in schools, I think this is possibly a demand to increase indoctrination as part of a move to help stamp out any remaining dissent. I did read your post on NZ warming ‘transformation’ wrong. It came after the paper published by Kramm et al in March 2020. This indicated that there has been no global warming for over a century based on temperature measurements provided in the 1850’s by Dove and Forbes and temperatures published between 1877 and 1913 by the likes of Ferrel, Spitaler, Batchelder, Arrhenius, von Bezold, Hopfner, von Hann, Bornstein, Defant, Obst and Koppen to name but a few. As the increasing balance of scientific evidence continues to dismantle the man made climate change narrative, the fact that this story still has any legs at all definitely points to a wider reaching political agenda.
Hi Richard,
As a parent, grandparent, great-grand parent etc, and a former teacher, I get bloody angry over people and organisations that are filling kid’s minds with gloom and hopelessness all in pursuit of a lie. Even my own adult kids, all bright and well educated in various universities, are united in telling me I have no idea about that which I rail against.
One, also a very successful business person, told me, in very derogatory terms, that ” you don’t have a science degree, so what would you know on the topic of climate?” Ordinarily, we have a brilliant relationship, but that statement showed me how far the rot has permeated. He also used the BBC’s favourite alarmist as an example by saying “look at all the degrees he has got”. When I pointed out these were honarary and awarded for being a slick presenter, not for passing exams or coursework, I was accused of being bitter.
I will not give up pointing out the nonsense that is spouted, but the battle does get depressing.
Alexander – you raise a very good point, which I can relate to! My brother & his daughters (my nieces) live in Europe and over the last couple of years we have discussed the topic of CC etc. All are very well educated but get very angry (with me) when I ask for evidence / proof of manmade climate change.
Needless to say non is forthcoming other than angry comments around “follow the money” & that the University of East Anglia was a calculated hack, 97% of scientists say manmade CC is real and so it goes on! when it is pointed out that there is ample evidence of corruption, that the 97% is not correct etc I get a mouth full!
it reminds me of the infamous Springkbok of NZ some 40 years ago which divided families – I am concerned that as the indoctrination of our grandchildren in school continues it will only perpetuate the corruption of our childrens’ minds & will only get worse!
this article from a Geologist arrived in my in box this week & I think – there is hope!
https://www.nzcpr.com/climate-change-natural-phenomenon-or-man-made-threat/
cheers Andrew
Thanks again, TD, for a very lucid epistle. Sadly they care not for the truth. So we must needs resort to Churchill’s strategy in Greece that led to Stalingrad…… Can’t claim to be Winnie, sadly, but one must try….. Brett Keane