New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism: , page 3

reply to post by buster2010

NASA says more heat is escaping into space. Every summer the heat waves get longer in duration and at higher temps. If global warming is just a myth then where is all this excess heat coming from?

Where were all of the record lows coming from this winter?

Global average temperatures are what we are really trying to measure, here. The task is a hell of a lot more troublesome than you would first think. For starters - you have a complete lack of controls on the temperature stations used to report temperatures. There are plenty of pictures out there showing just where some of these things are located (right next to power transformers, above heat exchangers for the HVAC system, exposed to direct sunlight, in some hole near the garbage bin, etc). Further - an increasing number of these are located in cities - where local temperatures are often made quite warmer in the daylight hours due to concrete and steel being an excellent converter of sunlight into heat.

Compensating for these factors is impossible without an accurate reference - which has never really been done to an extent that can satisfy the usage of this data. Even more important is the fact that this is even more difficult to compare to previous decades - weather stations go in an out of service and increase/decrease in number depending upon any number of factors. Considering urbanization has been on the increase with human population - it can only be deduced that the number of weather stations would increase - which complicates comparisons to previous decades with fewer stations over a geographic region.

To this effect - the temperature records we have are good for what we generally use them for - weather predictions for a few days in advance and hazard awareness (heat/cold/spinning whirl of death). However, to use them to try and prove that the global average temperature has changed by fractions of a degree over the past decade or five is simply well outside the margin of error for the data. Attempting to draw that kind of conclusion from the data is simply irresponsible.

Further - there is the raw concept of statistics that states you will see variances from the statistical average within a small sample group. Taking the global average temperature for each day and graphing that over 10 years would give you a pretty chaotic looking graph. Taking that same graph and using the global average temperature for the quarter would tame things out a bit. Reducing that further to a years' resolution, or even a decade's resolution (plotted over 100 years) would make any trends appear to be nice and gentle. However, at any time, were you to compare the low-res graph to a high-res graph showing daily/quarterly averages, the graph would become a flurry of up-and-down zigzags that float around your low-res graph's trends.

As for the most obvious answer - all of the heat we have comes from the sun and tidal forces acting upon the planet. All of the energy - chemical or otherwise - comes from (or has come from and been stored) the sun and our planet's relationship with it. Barring events like asteroid impacts and other uncommon/irrelevant factors (such as starlight).