Statisticians reject global cooling

The problem is that both sides are trying to force their own interpretation of the data.

Weather changes from year to year. That much is a fact, as it has been happening since human memory. There will be years where the weather is cold, and there will be years when the weather is warm. There will be dry spells and wet spells. There will be windy days and calm days.

This statistical 'noise' means it is very hard to determine any deviation form the normal fluctuations.

For instance: I can take the temperature reading at 6:00AM and compare it to the temperature reading at noon. If I project a linear extrapolation to midnight, it will tell me (on most days) that it will be extremely warm at midnight. Yet, when midnight comes, it will be cooler than it was at noon. The problem wasn't with the data, but with the application of it.

Conversely, if I take the temperature at noon as a base point, and linearly project past midnight, it is probable that I will 'discover' that tomorrow is going to be extremely cold. Strangely enough, this projection as well will prove inaccurate the vast majority of the time. Again, the data is sound, but the application of it is not.

The problem with Global Warming alarmists is that they took the base point as one of the coolest periods in our recent history, and began projecting through current readings. That, just like in my first example above, has led to wild speculation on how much of a massive temperature increase there may be over the next century. This has then been taken farther to try and determine what effects this massive temperature rise would do to the planet. The initial projection, however, is highly suspect due to the projection method used. Therefore all the other projections such as sea level rise are completely garbage, based on an improper assessment of the data.

Now, since the proponents of Global Warming have cherry-picked their starting point and used linear projection, is it any wonder that the opponents have done the same? Yes, 1998 was the warmest year on record during the last few decades. That indicates it is a bad starting point for projections, just as picking one of the coldest years was a bad starting point for the proponents. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, and all that.

Back to my first examples, we know that temperatures normally rise during the daytime and fall during the nighttime. the graph of temperature vs. time resembles a rough sine wave graph. We also know that few things in nature ever follow a linear projection; instead they, like day-to-day temperatures, follow periodic curves. now, if we apply the concept of periodic sine wave curves to the temperature readings we have, we can see that starting with the base points used, there is a slow but accelerating rise in temperature, which then begins to decelerate and finally appears to level off to a relatively flat line over the last 8-10 years. This is indicative of a sine wave graph that has peaked and will now begin to slowly decrease. As some examples, this first image is from en.wikipedia.org...:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.svg

external image

As you can see, this graph indicates the last 150 or so years of temperature changes. You can also see that this graph is showing a fairly steady upward trend since ca. 1950. Or is it? The increase actually began ca. 1910, peaked ca. 1940, dropped to ca. 1950, and then rose to ca. 2000. From 2000 to present it has been in a slow descent.

This does not mean that the earth will rise by many degrees over the next century, nor does it mean that we are heading for an ice age. It means that we were in a period of warming, which has now tapered off and may, based on non-linear projection, result in a slow correction downward again. In other words, this could just as easily be a part of a regular semi-sinusoidal waveform.

Now, let's look at this image from newsbusters.org...

external image

Here we see a longer time period, long enough for us to clearly see a semi-regular series of temperature rises and drops. The latest period seems to be more jagged and irregular than the others, but consider that we have had much more accurate and complete data during that time. That would indicate that the irregularity shown is due to what is commonly called 'noise' in statistics. So the major trend is what we are interested in, not the irregularities.

You will notice that we are around the time that historical temperatures have peaked and again begun a fall. This agrees with the assessment of the first graph.

Now, from www.daviesand.com...

external image

We can see here an even longer time period, which shows that the waveform is not very sinusoidal, but is a repeating function nonetheless. It contains short crests of higher temperature, followed by a quick fall, then a period of mild temperatures followed by another fall, then a period of more or less steady rise back to a crest. We appear to be at a regular crest.

This also shows the infamous 'hockey stick' showing CO2 levels spiking in modern times. This CO2 spike is not and has not been under serious dispute. However, it also does not seem to indicate a serious warming trend beyond what occurs naturally over time. If there were a close link between CO2 and warming, our temperatures would show some sort of spike to coincide with the spike in CO2 levels. This is simply not the case.

One more point to this graph: If one closely examines the link between CO2 and temperatures, one will see that the CO2 increases, while they do seem to follow temperature rises, actually lag ahead of the temperatures. That is, the temperature rises happen prior to the CO2 level increases. this dismisses the idea that CO2 levels cause temperature increases. A cause must precede effect. It would be more believable to state that temperature increases cause rising CO2 levels, although we still have no definitive proof of this either; both could be the result of the mechanism that creates the fluctuations, and otherwise unrelated.

Only time will tell if this analysis is accurate, as only time will tell if the claims by the IPCC are accurate. But in the absence of reliable predictions to date (so far Florida is not an island chain), I see no reason for the panic and hysteria and fear-mongering put forward by the IPCC, Albert Gore Jr., and the environmentalist movements.

Unless, that is, they want something from us...

TheRedneck