by John McClaughry
Last week was a banner week for climate crisis headlines. Washington Post: “The world is hotter than it’s been in thousands of years.” AP: “For the third time this week, Earth sets unofficial heat record.” Politico: “Scientists are freaking out about surging temperatures.”
As anyone in the media business knows, headlines are apt to be more sensational than the reporters’ actual stories. The two climate scientists quoted in the Politico story, for example, offer accurate descriptions of meteorological events, but neither is close to “freaking out”.
To put this in some perspective, let’s imagine you are asked to produce a simple “global average temperature” at some point in time. Professional engineer Ronald Barmby, a Canadian, addresses that question in his useful book Sunlight on Climate Change (2020).
“Beyond the problem of what calculations are required in a global climate model to make it valid as science is the even bigger problem of where the historical temperature data comes from to run the models. The first big issue is how do we determine the true average temperature of the Earth, now and in recent history? It is very problematic.”
Barmby points to three major problems: “obtaining temperature series from a sphere eight thousand miles in diameter, seventy percent of whose surface is covered with water; adjusting the temperature data from locations that have become ‘heat islands’ (i.e ,pastures turned into shopping centers), and the lower accuracy of temperature recording devices in the decades back into the 19th century.”
Now to my hypothetical assignment: determining global average temperature. Let’s divide the globe into 6,912 rectangular grid boxes (the IPCC model) covering the Earth’s land and water surfaces. In the middle of each grid box, you set up an accurate thermometer well away from any “heat island”. On your chosen day, read them at noon and midnight and transmit the 6,912 x 2=13,824 readings to a collection center. Add up the readings and divide that large number by 13,824, and you have the global average temperature for that day. Problem solved!
If we had a hundred year record of those accurately measured temperatures, we could determine how much the Earth had warmed or cooled over the hundred year period.
Reality check. There are thousands of uninstrumented grid boxes, with no thermometers reporting. So the people who invent this “global average temperature” (Climate Research Unit, East Anglia University, UK) embark on estimates, ensembles, models and statistical manipulations to produce the magical “Global Average Temperature”’. Here’s how the CRU explains it: “The uncertainties in the gridded data are represented by the 200-member HadCRUT5 ensemble, and for the global and hemispheric mean time series these have been used to estimate confidence intervals alongside the best estimates.”
Where the researchers have latitude to fill in empty box uncertainties with their own best estimates, there can be a lot of slippage. Barmby explains “One way to make the [IPCC] computer simulations match history is to carefully select which temperatures you use as history, how you may or may not correct them, and what statistical manipulations you exercise to come up with a blended global average temperature.”
As climate skeptic Steve Milloy puts it, with the limitations on data collecting over the entire globe for a century or more of time, “the notion of ‘average global temperature’ is meaningless. Average global temperature is a concept invented by and for the global warming hypothesis. It is more a political concept than a scientific one.” One might go further and call it a carefully crafted falsehood. And one more reminder: “Climate Change” is not a Thing. Unlike temperature, pressure sea ice coverage, and precipitation, there is no metric, no instrument reading for “climate change.” No one can say that “in 1940 climate change stood at 56.5, and today it has increased to 92.4 “. It is a purposefully deceptive description concocted by the climate crisis industry to replace unreliable “global warming” which was not proceeding according to the industry’s urgent predictions.
It is universally accepted that Earth has warmed since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850, and since 1977. There are many valid observations that support that finding, and there is little doubt but what human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to that warming.
How much those emissions have contributed, compared to natural causes, is still a matter for intense debate. Also debated is whether a warming of another one degree Celsius (as from 1900 to today, added to current temperature readings) would make Earth more or less livable for humans. Those debates are important. Breathless news stories about “global average temperatures” and “hottest month on record” are not.
The author, a Kirby resident, is founder and vice-president of the Ethan Allen Institute. To read all EAI news and commentary, go to www.ethanallen.org.
Categories: Commentary
Read Mr. Mclaughry’s opinion then this: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature and decide which appears to be a more educated scientific opinion.
Read as many studies as you can, Mr. Fixx. John McClaughry is saying the global temperature data sets are not consistently measured, not well understood, and cherry picked and ‘smoothed’ by various media to meet the preferred narratives.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/uah-version-6/
Now consider our legislators, and those who lobby (i.e., consult them). Is it reasonable for two Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) board members, who “spearheaded the effort to pass legislation in 2009 (H446) requiring Vermont utilities to pay high, guaranteed subsidized rates for solar power generation”, then start a non-profit business to provide solar power, and to then take the business private and sell it for $40 Million – a valuation derived from taxpayer funded subsidies? Consider that one of the three regulators charged with approving the deal was Sen. Peter Welch’s wife.
Follow the money, Mr. Fixx! Then, guaranty me that your preferred investment narrative will result in less flooding.
And no. I’m not fool enough to make that guaranty either. But I do trust a ‘free market’ over our corrupt legislators and their cronies.
I like that you think that big money comes from windmills and solar panels and not Exxon or the Saudis, lol
Strange. I don’t recall saying that big money doesn’t come from Exxon or the Saudis, or from anyone else for that matter.
Are you saying then that it’s okay to pass legislation that directs taxpayer dollars to special interest groups because others do it too?
Please explain your false dichotomy?
Mr. Fixx, Climate hysteria long ago became evangelism and the ability to discern “a more educated scientific opinion” from the realities of human nature is a fools errand.
The climate change agenda is a larger picture scheme all about power and control. Downstream mechanisms of government, and institutions in the private and financial sector, collaboratively created by people in power, want to take advantage of the fraudulent dynamic for increased influence and affluence.
The love of money is always at the root of evil enterprise. The Build Back Better / Green New Deal is ultimately about controlling people and assembling more wealth amid a small tier of self-described elites. Inflation that crushes the working class around the world is an outcome of this larger dynamic of manipulating energy.
NOAA, the federal agency that published the report you refer to- may or may not be publishing factual information. The evidence cited is exactly as Mr. Eshelman and Mr. McClaugry have stated, cherry picked and ‘smoothed’ for consumption by a readily believing audience.
I would remind all of us that the man made carbon in our atmosphere is but 3.22 % of the four hundredths ( that’s 0.04%) percent of total CO2 in the atmosphere. A mighty small number, indeed.
You drank the Koolaid Mr. Fixx just as the elitists have desired and planned. They count on the ongoing arrogance and haughtiness of mankind to have to KNOW what they can’t KNOW and CONTROL what they can’t CONTROL.
Won’t you ALL be surprised on the day you learn who is REALLY in CONTROL of the weather!
he Globalists .. 1% Central Bankers, Davos crowd & WEF whose CEO Klaus Schwab predicts for AGENDA 2030; “You will own nothing & you will be happy!”
GLOBAL WARMING is the 1% ‘virtue signalling’ the need to depopulate the planet.
The 1% – stole our Democracy using Electronic Voting Machines (FYI Bernie won DNC Primary 2016 & 2020 ~ if you doubt what I say I can support with references below).
Billionaires that bought our country are using the “Virtue signal” of Global Warming to commit a global genocide with the help of philanthropath Bill Gates, the WEF & the WHO (founded by the Rockefeller Foundation); mRNA experimental C19 injections that violated the Nuremberg Code of Ethics.
Their plan? … if you care to look into it, is to place all of us in “15” sustainable cities” … they call them ~ so we are forced to walk & bike everywhere, while they Globe Trot around the world in their private jets & hoard the remaining Fossil Fuel storage to themselves …
This is WHY they are lying to the 99% of the world, demanding that THEY decrease THEIR CARBON FOOT PRINT … while they meet yearly in Davos, Switzerland flying in on their personal jets, to discuss HOW are they going to get US ~ the 99% to decrease our carbon footprint…~ while they hoard fossil fuels & make us eat bugs.
The 2030 “Sustainable Cities” has NOTHING to do with Global Warming … other than to sustain Luxury Living for the 1%. (aka slavery that JFK warned us about and they ~ our CIA ~ assassinated him soon after. Covid-19 was all pre-planned. The next vaccine injections will be designed to track every move we make & using CBDC currency they ca cut off our $ is we do not comply.
“Global Warming” is propaganda that goes hand-in-hand with mandating C19 vaccination for Health Care workers & Front Line workers … The 1% are decimating our social infrastructure by taking out our most important front line soldiers & places of higher education; Fire Fighters, Police, Nurses, Doctors, University & College staff and students, our Military, etc.
They are using virtue signalling of saving us all from “Global Warming” & man-made SARS-CoV-2 virus to get away with escalating the downfall of our blessed country. There was never a need for LOCK-Downs … this just weakened our infrastructure & ruined people’s lives (no income, people unable to pay mortgage/rent, small businesses closed, etc.).
Before we know it UVMMC will have to close for lack of Healthcare workers from vaccine injuries. Canada already has lost 80 Physicians – deceased from vaccine injuries … if you attempt to “google” search this – I will forewarn you the “Trusted News Initiative” founded by the BBC in the Summer of 2019 has every single media site signed on to promote the “Get VACCINATED” narrative … so they discredit any ‘truth’ narrative warning people these injections were not safe.
They all have made billions to go along with this coup d’ etat; the fear of “Covid-19” pandemic made 500 more billionaires in the world. The need to vaccinate everyone is all part of a plan by Central Bankers to depopulate because the mRNA injections increase our risk of getting cancers, myocarditis & autoimmune diseases.
Anderson Cooper gets most of his 12 million year salary – $10 million paid by Pfizer … so when you’ve seen a hundred times CNN “Brought to you by Pfizer” they mean this literally. The talking heads on MSM work to promote Big Pharma ~ in particular Liberal media – CNN & MSNBC. If I did not know better, I would suspect they want Democrats to be triple covid vaxxed … so there are fewer of us. We now know, people are dying from C19 Vaccine injuries & the MSM has dubbed it Sudden Adult Death Syndrome; SADS. No one finds this suspect?
… Our news is jeopardized because they get bribed to say what Big Pharma tells them to say (or else they’re let go). MSM hid safe therapeutics (Ivermectin & Hydrochloroquine) from all of us to enforce an EUA of an experimental mRNA injection. A EUA can NOT be enforced if there is a known efficacious treatment … (why MSM lied and said Ivermectin was a horse de-wormer — when it cured Covid). We now know the EUA mRNA injection is causing early death of millions around the globe (e.g., blood clots in the form of strokes, heart attacks, thrombotic pulmonary emboli, autoimmune diseases, myocarditis & endocarditis).
~ Is anyone else concerned about all the young people in their 20’s & 30’s being found dead in the most vaccinated state in the USA (i.e., Vermont) – a 31 y.o. found in a Burlington Public Park, young people found dead in dumpsters and others on the side of the road (in their 20’s)? … and in the woods? … likely just going on a hike? … aand going by all the youth dying around the globe … they likely passed from mRNA experimental C19 injections that the FDA knew 10/22/2020 caused these deadly adverse reactions and hid it from the public.
~ If Vermont was NOT so apolitical – living happily in this beautiful state – they may want to know that these C-19 mRNA injections are causing myocarditis in young people … children (grade school & high school aged) across the USA. Children are dying in their sleep. But you wouldn’t know about that because MSM News people are not allowed to cover it, or they will lose their job.
https://vaccineimpact.com/2022/80-canadian-doctors-dead-following-covid-19-vaccine-mandates-as-death-toll-continues-to-rise/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34591186/
https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/
https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/fzmnpu/lee_camp_the_exit_polls_are_not_adding_up/
https://meridian.allenpress.com/aplm/article/146/8/925/477788/Autopsy-Histopathologic-Cardiac-Findings-in-2
https://www.the-sun.com/news/3221929/teen-dies-days-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-michigan/
https://www.wfla.com/community/health/coronavirus/13-year-old-dies-in-sleep-after-getting-covid-19-vaccine-cdc-investigating/
https://local12.com/news/nation-world/teen-dies-in-sleep-after-receiving-pfizer-covid-vaccine-cdc-investigating-michigan-saginaw-jacob-clynick-second-dose-vaers
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8482743/
https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=364941
https://wsau.com/2023/07/11/study-covid-19-vaccine-is-the-culprit-in-majority-found-dead-after-injection/
The worst part about discussing a fairytale in great detail is it gives life to a lie that started as a means to transfer wealth. Same as COVID. Green energy = green in their pocket, none in yours. How much energy does it take to generate and manage their cyrpto currency and how is that energy produced right now? How many solar panels would it take to mine one Bitcoin? The only thing the elite are good at is lying and stealing and people fall for it hook, line and sinker every time.
The Globalists .. 1% Central Bankers, Davos crowd & WEF whose CEO Klaus Schwab predicts for AGENDA 2030; “You will own nothing & you will be happy!”
GLOBAL WARMING is just the 1% ‘virtue signalling’ the need to depopulate the planet. They stole our Democracy using Electronic Voting Machines (FYI Bernie won DNC Primary 2016 & 2020 ~ if you doubt what I say I can support with references).
Billionaires that bought our country are using the “Virtue signal” of Global Warming to commit a global genocide with the help of philanthropath Bill Gates, the WEF & the WHO (founded by the Rockefeller Foundation); mRNA experimental C19 injections that violated the Nuremberg Code of Ethics.
Their plan? … if you care to look into it, is to place all of us in “15” sustainable cities” … they call them ~ so we are forced to walk & bike everywhere, while they Globe Trot around the world in their private jets & hoard the remaining Fossil Fuel storage to themselves …
This is WHY they are lying to the 99% of the world, demanding that THEY decrease THEIR CARBON FOOT PRINT … (they are hoarding Fossil Fuels for 1%) while they meet yearly in Davos, Switzerland flying in on their personal jets, to discuss HOW are they going to get US ~ the 99% to decrease our carbon footprint…~ while they stock up on fossil fuels & make us eat bugs.
The 2030 “Sustainable Cities” has NOTHING to do with Global Warming … other than to sustain “Luxury Living” for the 1%. (aka slavery that JFK warned us about and they ~ our CIA ~ assassinated him soon after.
Covid-19 was all pre-planned. The next vaccine injections will be designed to track every move we make & using CBDC currency they can cut off our $ is we do not comply.
very sad to hear the 31yo woman found in a park was not vaccine related, but a crime of violence: my sincere condolences to her family & loved ones
Let’s see… Last year was slightly below normal on precipitation. The cause? Climate change! This year, we’re way above normal on precipitation. The cause? Climate change! What next? It’s hot in the summer? Climate change. Polar vortex? Climate change. Couldn’t have anything to do with El Nino, could it? Earth’s diminishing magnetic field? Nah, it’s gas stoves and cow farts!
And then, in a time of great tragedy for many Vermonters, I see dear Becca Balint running her pie-hole on some Sunday network show. The cause of the flooding? Climate change! According to dear Becca, who’s clearly no rocket surgeon, we should expect these types of floods at least every five years, if not more often. Has anyone spoken to a statistician? Ask them, if there’s a 1 in 100 chance of something happening in any given year, what are the chances of it happening twice in any 11 year span? Hint: It’s higher than you think, and it’s well withing expected statistical probability.
Oh, and it gets better. Yesterday Vermont received a visit from Pete Buttigieg, our intrepid Transportation Secretary. At a press conference with Gov Scott, after promising he’ll work to get Vermont the “hundreds of millions” it needs to rebuild after this disaster, he had to throw in the mandatory leftard mantra: “This just goes to show you that climate change is real and why we have to do something about it.”.
Why do these people have to turn everything into something it’s not? Don’t they realize we see through this nonsense?
This Youtube video by a woman whose screen name is “Really Graceful” is well worth the time to listen to figure out the truth; that it’s all a rich man’s game – this includes the “Climate Change” hoax; designed to take from us our land, increase home insurance costs, destroy our food supply and steer everyone into their “15 minute” cities, where we will be forced to “eat bugs” ~ this is NOT conspiracy; it is the actual plans for Agenda 2030 (*United Nations).
“Every American Homeowner Needs to Watch This”
https://youtu.be/AwDP35u6GgI
The plans of Klaus Schwab – who is the CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF); authored a book – The Great Rest: Covid-19″ published the Summer 2020. He also heads the WEF school on how to penetrate global governments into going along with their plans for “Resilient Cities” (15″ cities) for Agenda 30.
The WEF works in collusion with the W.H.O. and United Nations – who are following the plans from U.N. Earth Summit 1992 in Rio de Jeneiro where global represenatives from all over the world (United Nation members) signed papers for Agenda 21; oddly enough Nancy Pelosi was in attendance (the other attendee’s from the USA are now deceased) & she has been going along and facilitating this scheme up until her recent retirement from Public life (not service).
Note – I’m a Registered Democrat ~ but can still see the crimes of this Party – e.g., refusing to have the traditional Democratic Primary debates in New Hampshire]
Justin Truedau & other world leaders attended the WEF School; another graduate including Jacinda Ardern -(Prime Minister of New Zealand) also learned how to go along with the plans for the “The Great Reset” coup d’etat;
Jacinda Ardern recently stepped down from office as Prime Minister because she is the most despised person in New Zealand for having agreed to go along with the Covid-19 SCAM-demic because of so many Kiwi’s are now either dead, or suffering from from the “experimental” mandated mRNA injections (they are not “vaccines”) & these injections violated the Nuremberg Code of Ethics; since Nazi Germany, no medical treatment can be mandated; nor are humans allowed to be experimented on.
Please follow the work of Dr.Meryl Nass, Dr Peter McCullough’s & Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, Dr Harvey Risch, Dr. Ryan Cole, Dr. Joseph Varon; all are are being demonized by the 1% Globalist’s (who happen to own all the Media: CNN, MSNBC & FoxNews) as being “conspiracy theorists” ~ when what they really are guilty of is saving many thousands of lives while America were being lied to.
Don’t be fooled by has-been politicians who pretend to understand science. This crank is good with words and deceptive data on many subjects, but he rarely contributes any solutions.
Mr. John McClaughry,
Thank you for common sense, logic and reasoning. You have done a great job on explaining the missing data as “climate experts” pretend they can know an average global temperature.
Why do you then follow up saying,”there is little doubt but what human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to warming?” What facts can you offer to give a foundation to your conclusion?
Since we have not kept weather records for thousands of years, how do we know what weather and temperature pattern ups and downs may have existed over the past centuries?
Here is a fascinating history of the floods in New England recorded after 1620 . The data start in earnest on page 13 of the pdf.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/wsp/1779m/report.pdf
What an interesting report – going back 400 years no less. Hundreds of floods accounted for. Many anecdotal accounts of the highest water levels in memory. Bridges swept away. And not one reference to the gloom and doom of ‘climate change’.
They don’t talk about solar cycles – we are in cycle 25. They don’t talk about solar flares or the planets aligning (gravity pulling and shifting.) They don’t talk about our magnetisphere being stretched thinner now than ever – due to being pummelled by solar flares. They don’t talk about the artic ice sheet actually getting larger during the summer months. They don’t talk about the ice cores showing carbon content from 100’s of years ago. They don’t talk about the wobbling North and South magnetic poles. They don’t talk about all the volcanoes blowing ashe clouds 30,000 feet into the atmosphere over the past three years. No, they want us to believe it’s our fault because we breathe. It is actually their fault because they breathe and talk with splits in their tongues. Nothing but an evil cult of generational witches and warlocks.
Once again John McClaughry gives us a peek under the hood of the climate change machine that generates these headlines. When making a calculation that involves multiple inputs of which some are uncertain, one must estimate the degree of uncertainty of each and add them up to find the reliability of the final result. Given the canyon-sized data holes in the global average temperature calculation, I suspect the result is accurate plus-or-minus about 150%, meaning it is meaningless. Good work John.
Greater anthropogenic CO2 ppmv in the atmosphere will certainly have SOME effect on IR absorption and resulting backscattering into the lower troposphere. I am far from convinced that that effect makes any detectable difference in temperatures, but I am willing to look at the evidence, which I have yet to discover. Perhaps Mr. Fixx will ask NOAA to produce it.