Ian Bradford: Climate Skeptics and Global Temperatures

Weak scepticism about the climate is the world’s greatest unrecognised crisis. 

If you think up a list of the world’s biggest problems what is the one which gets the least attention?  It may well be weak scepticism.  It’s a planet wide plague that slows human progress.  Weak scepticism goes unnoticed because it is so pervasive and has been a normal part of the landscape for so long. One example that frustrates science literates, is that almost half of American adults believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. Every day unknown numbers of people suffer because they trust medical quackery over evidence based medicine. Democracies often produce incompetent leaders because too many people are in the habit of accepting and believing before they think and vote. Every moment, somewhere, children are taught speculative nonsense packaged as confirmed facts. But the root problem for all of this –scarcity of skeptical thinking – is rarely acknowledged, much less addressed in any meaningful way. Few parents encourage their children to be skeptical thinkers.  Most teachers don’t teach it and politicians never talk about it. This is the world’s great unrecognised crisis.

Many know of the skepticism of one our early scientists-  Galileo Galilei. Galileo lived in the 16th and 17th centuries.  It was a time when the Catholic Church was all powerful. The church’s view was that the earth was the centre of our solar system and everything revolved around it. However, Galileo-a thinker and observer said no, the sun is the centre of our solar system- not the Earth.  He appeared to be a lone voice in the wilderness.  The Catholic church threatened him with death if he didn’t retract.  He did retract but still had to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.   Of course Galileo was 100% correct. His skepticism  changed the course of astronomy.  

Skepticism is the solution . Thinking like a scientist in everyday life is a choice.  One only has to decide to think before believing. Ask questions, expect the evidence to balance the size of the claim, and be willing to change your mind when new evidence demands it. Doing these things will protect you in this fantasy prone and scam infested world of ours. Being a good skeptic is not dependent on extraordinary intelligence or formal educational accompl-ishments.  Encouraging skepticism  is a moral issue This is about the quality of life for billions. Science versus nonsense is no game. It is time to get serious about the need to put thinking before believing. Falling for fantasies is part of the human condition. 

We need to create a global culture where skeptical  thinking is valued, one where thinking like a scientist is expected of all.   Individuals and societies must recognise skepticism as a necessary component for long term survival. Don’t forget that scepticism is positive and constructive. Skepticism is helpful because it is the way people untangle themselves from lies and delusions.  So the message is: Think before believing.  

Is there really such a thing as a global temperature?

The short answer may well be there are only local temperatures and local climates.  Suppose the temperature at a particular point on the equator was 30 Deg C.  at 11am.  At the same time, on the same day, the temperature at a particular place in Siberia was -10 Deg C.   The average is 10 Deg C.  Where does this average occur?  Is it half way between? Half way between might be a mountain range, (very cold) or a desert, (very hot). So how many temperature measuring devices would you need to get a reasonable average? Would it be 100, or a 1000 or more? 

Now suppose you wanted to find the average temperature of your section excluding your house.  You have sunny places, shady places, partially shady places, sheltered places, windy places and so on.  Do you want to measure at ground level, or say eye level? Just how many thermometers would you need to get a reasonable average. How would you compare a reading in the shade to one in the sun.  It would make more sense to just take several readings say daily, at ground level in a shady spot- the same place every time, and at the same time every day, then after a period of time average the readings. 

Suppose we take the maximum temperature every day at a particular place. Perhaps  that maximum temperature may only occur for a very short period of time.  There might be 11 ½ hours at a lower temperature.  Eleven and a half hours at a lower temperature is more significant than half an hour at a higher temperature.  Should then a maximum temperature need to be sustained for a certain period of time before it can be announced as a maximum? 

 

We hear nothing from the media about very low temperatures. Only high temperatures are reported. In recent year there have been record low temperatures in many places and many human and animal deaths due to the cold.  

But there are other problems too. NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), announced that July 2015 was the hottest month since instrumental records began in 1880. NOAA said that the record was set by 8/100 of a degree C over that set previously in 1998. It also beat the previous warmest month July 2011 by 2/100 degree C.  But NOAA claims an uncertainty of 14/100 deg C in its temperature averages.  In other words the uncertainty was more than twice the amount by which they say the record was set!!  NASA say that their data is typically accurate to 10/100 of a deg C which is five times the amount by which their new record was set.  So the new temperature records are meaningless. Such misrepresentations are now commonplace in NOAA and NASA announcements.  They are regularly proclaiming monthly and yearly records set by less than the uncertainties in the measurements. 

 NOAA and NASA also know that calculating so-called global temperatures to hundredths of a degree is irrational.  There is very little data for mountainous and desert regions not to mention the Antarctic.  Much of the data is so sparse that NASA is forced to make the ridiculous claim that regions are adequately covered if there is a temperature sensing station within nearly 750 miles or 1200  km. 

It’s the same in the UK. The Met Office cannot scientifically claim to know the current average temperature of the UK to 1/100 of a deg C, given that it is using data that has a margin of error of up to 2.5 deg C. Nearly 80% of the Mets 380 measuring stations come with official uncertainties of between 2 and 5 deg C.  In addition, given the poor siting of the stations now and possibly in the past, the Met Office has no means of knowing  whether it is comparing like with like when it publishes trends going back to 1884. 

An audit has been done of the HadCRUT4 dataset, the main dataset used in climate assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-the IPCC. Governments and the UN Framework Convention on Climate change (UNFCCC) rely heavily on the IPCC reports so ultimately the temperature data needs to be accurate and reliable. The audit shows that it is neither of these things.

It finds for example, an observation station reporting average monthly temperatures above 80 deg C, two instances of a station in the Caribbean reporting December average temperatures of 0 deg C, and a Romanian station reporting a September average temperature  of -45 deg C when the typical average in that month is 10 deg C. On top of that, some ships that had measured sea temperatures reported their locations as more than 80km inland.  It appears that the suppliers of land and sea temperature data failed to check for basic errors and the people who create the HadCRUT dataset didn’t find them or raise questions either.  

Data sparsity is a real problem. The dataset starts in 1850, but for just over two years at the start of the record the only land based data for the whole southern hemisphere came from a single observation station in Indonesia. At the end of five years just three stations reported data from that hemisphere. Global averages are calculated from the averages of for each of the two hemispheres. So these few stations had a large influence on what was supposedly “global”.  Coverage of 50% of the Southern hemisphere wasn’t reached till 1950.

In May 1861 global coverage was a mere 12%. In The 1860’s and 1870’s most of the supposedly global coverage was from Europe and its trade routes and ports, covering only 13% of the Earth’s surface. To calculate averages from this data and refer to them as “global averages”,  is stretching credibility. 

Another important finding from the audit is that many temperatures have been incorrectly adjusted. Adjustments are typically made when a station is relocated or its instruments in a housing replaced.  The typical method of adjusting data is to alter all previous values by the same amount. Applying this to situations that changed gradually is wrong as it leaves the earlier data adjusted by more than it should have been. If stations are moved multiple times then there is an adjustment every time, and the early data might be far below its correct value. This shows an exaggerated warming trend. 

The proposal that the Paris Climate Agreement adopt 1850-1899 averages as indicative  of pre-industrial temperatures is fatally flawed. During this period, global coverage is very low-it averages 30% across that time, and many land based temperatures are very likely to be excessively adjusted and therefore incorrect.  

The primary conclusion of the audit is that the dataset shows exaggerated warming and that global averages are far less certain than have been claimed. 

It seems HadCRUT4 data and any reports or claims based on it do not from a credible basis for government policy on climate or international agreements about supposed causes of climate change.  

Ian Bradford, a science graduate, is a former teacher, lawyer, farmer and keen sportsman, who is writing a book about the fraud of anthropogenic climate change.