Taking the Eath's Temperature the Child's Way

Timothy Birdnow

While we are on the subject of mercury http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/mercury_theatre Joanne Nova, in an older piece from 2010, makes an interesting connection between thermometers and the rising temperatures. http://joannenova.com.au/2010/05/the-great-dying-of-thermometers/

Please note that there is correlation between the supposed 20th century temperature spike and the number of thermometers available to check temperatures worldwide; temperatures rose as the number of thermometers increased. Also, please note the enormous decline of thermometers used to measure temperatures in recent years. Is this to "hide the decline"? Using fewer actual measurements means we are projecting temperature trends more and more. How can we claim to know planetary temperatures if we are making best guesses? Also notice that Europe - which is in the tank for Global Warming heart and soul, and thinks this is a dandy tool to bring the U.S. down a peg or two, has the lion's share of thermometers actually measuring temps.

While this is an older piece, I thought it worth posting because she uses graphics to make the case quite convincingly - and because it bears repeating.

It's interesting; we noticed it was warming as we measured temperatures in more and more places, then as we phased out temperature stations (and Jo calles it the Great Dying of Thermometers) we see a big spike. The last twenty years are touted as the warmist on record, yet we have but a fraction of the land-based stations we had twenty years ago. It's shocking that public policy - especially on the massive scale that we are told is necessary - is being made on such paltry data.

I wonder if we have had any warming at all; yes, it has warmed from the end of the Dalton Minimum, but perhaps we simply didn't know what was happening in the rest of the world? China, Russia, the Congo, Bolivia, these types of places only came online in the last fifty years as decent record keepers. As has been pointed out about Russia, the Soviet system encouraged fudging temperature data; "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" meant that greater need led to more heating fuel, more clothes, etc. so the local governments would try to make it appear they were in greater need. Is the "Russian hot spot" surprising, given that the data no longer needs to be fudged? Ditto China. And I don't think tracking temperature was a high priority to bushmen in the Congo, or Fore' in New Guinnea. Were we really getting a good idea of what was happening in the Andes, or on Kerguelen Island?

Global Warming in it's modern catastrophic form started as speculation by environmental groups, and given the people at the Endangered Atmospheres Conference (which was chaired by Margaret Mead and features such leftist alarmists as John Holdren, James Lovelock, Paul Ehrlich, William Kellogg, Global Cooling alarmist Stephan Schneider, George Woodwell, and a host of other radicals. The agreement was to promote Global Cooling to bring the unwashed masses on board the environmentalist train, but the failure of that theory led them to slide over to their backup, global warming.

http://tbirdnow.mee.nu/genesis_of_the_global_warming_hoax

Given that AGW was born of activist "concerned scientists" one has to doubt the entire theory. And given the theory fails in almost every way, from it's predictions to it's own tests, one has to doubt every aspect of the science of AGW. Bear in mind, many good scientists work in climatology, but of course they can only assume the data the gatekeepers are giving them is valid. Fudge that data and many who wouldn't be on board now see AGW as true. They can only work with what they are given.

And we furthermore know from the Climategate e-mails that one of the biggest collector/collator of data - the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia - was actively working to fudge the data going to the scientists.

So, is the Earth warming? I have absolutely no idea, and frankly neither do any real scientists.
One thing I do know is that what is being demanded by the environmentalists, by statists, by foundations and think tanks and politicians, cannot be justified in any credible way. We are being told that we have to fundamentally restructure our whole civilization to prevent a catastrophe' that is based on science that is very shaky at best.