Guest essay by Jim Steele,
Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
Carl Sagan’s scientific baloney detector warns that when the messengers are attacked instead of the evidence and logic, it is a sure sign a discussion has veered away from the foundations of critical scientific analyses. The classic example of such behavior is commonly seen on alarmists’ websites. When skeptics point out the myriad of other factors that also explain climate change, they are slanderously attacked as “deniers of climate change” or “deniers of the greenhouse effect”. Then as if refuting all competing evidence, alarmists showcase NASA’s graph, with a steadily rising global average temperature which “remarkably” coincides with rising CO2 concentrations.
They incorrectly suggest that graphic representation is evidence that CO2 is trapping heat. In truth, the global average is a chimera of many dynamics, dynamics that can raise temperatures without ever adding any additional heat to the planet. Unless those dynamics are properly factored out, the global average tells us precious little about the earth’s current sensitivity to rising CO2 and obscures our understanding of the complex mechanisms of climate change.
The dire consequence of a simplistic conclusion based on a “chimeric average” is illustrated by a not‑so‑ancient allegory about an arthritic elderly man who was unbearably suffering from both cold feet and hot facial flashes. In an attempt to heal himself, he hobbled to the kitchen and placed his head in the freezer and his feet in the oven. His relief was temporary, and his discomfort increased after becoming stuck in that position. Moaning in pain he begged his bed-ridden wife, who was unaware of his predicament, to call for help. Anxiously the wife called 3 doctors. After measuring the temperature of the man’s feet, the first doctor reported that overheating from the oven was causing his pain. Likewise after measuring the temperature of the man’s head, the second doctor reported the pain was caused by the freezer. The third doctor (a former climate scientist) did not make house calls, but compiled the other 2 doctors’ temperature data. After averaging the body’s temperatures, he reported the man’s body temperature was normal. Based on the average, he diagnosed the man’s pain as psychological and referred him to Dr. Lewandowsky.
As in the allegory, a “global average” temperature obscures critical dynamics that are best understood by examining local causes of “regional climate” change. Below are 6 factors that must be removed from the global average chimera before we can evaluate how much heat has accumulated and how much heat can be attributed to rising CO2.
1. Warmer Arctic Temperatures Are Largely Due To Escaping Heat!
NASA’s map below illustrates how various regions have warmed and cooled during 2000–2009 relative to 1951-1980. On average the recent decade was 0.6°C warmer, but this difference is disproportionately driven by the Arctic that was about 2°C warmer. That unusual extreme warming is called Arctic Amplification that CO2 driven models suggest is the result of absorbing more heat because lost sea ice allows darker ocean waters to absorb more heat. But that explanation is contradicted by a recent evaluation of Arctic Ocean heat content (Wunsch and Heimbach 2014 discussed here) which reveals the upper 700 meters of the Arctic Ocean have been cooling. That cooling suggests unusually warm Arctic air temperatures are instead caused by increased ventilation of heat that had been stored decades ago.
The consensus agreed a shifting Arctic Oscillation altered the direction of subfreezing winter winds from Siberia, anomalously pushing sea ice away from the coast and generating more open water “polynya” and “leads. “Those same winds also pushed previously trapped thick multiyear ice into the warmer Atlantic. 1 Before the winds shifted, measurements of air temperatures in the 80s and 90s reported a slight cooling trend that contradicted global warming theory.2
Compared to old sea ice that is 3 meters thick, open water ventilates 70 times more heat. During the winter when that open water re-freezes it releases additional latent heat. After a week, new ice thickens to 0.4 meters, but still ventilates 8 times more heat. New ice will thicken to 1 meter in about a month but still ventilates 3 times as much heat as thick multi‑year ice. Researchers concluded “it can be inferred that at least part of the warming that has been observed is due to the heat released during the increased production of new ice, and the increased flux of heat to the atmosphere through the larger area of thin ice.” 1
2. Ocean Oscillations Ventilate Old Heat
To appreciate how ocean oscillations raise the global average by ventilating warmer water, here is an experiment you can do at home with an infrared temperature gun. Heat a large pot of water on the stove. The pot is analogous to the ocean’s deep warm pools. Randomly measure the temperature on 10 spots on the kitchen floor, plus the surface temperature of your pot of water. Then turn off the burner so heat is no longer added to the pot and calculate your kitchen’s average surface temperature. Analogous to an El Nino event, toss half of the water across the floor and recalculate the average. The surface of the water in the pot will not have cooled significantly, but the temperature of the floor will have risen greatly. Without adding any heat, the new average temperature increased simply by spreading subsurface heat.
Unlike our kitchen experiment, the oceans will cool much more slowly than the wetted floor. When the sun heats our tropical oceans, evaporation causes that heated water to become more saline and denser. This dense heated water sinks below fresher surface waters that may insulate it for decades. For example, warm Atlantic water takes about 15 years to circulate through the depths of the Arctic. Intruding water maintains a thick layer of warmer subsurface water several hundred meters thick.
The upper 3 meters of the world’s oceans hold more heat than the entire atmosphere, so continual ventilation of just 10 meters of warmer subsurface water will affect the global average for decades. Warmer “mode waters” are gradually ventilated during the winter and huge amounts of heat stored at 100 meter depths are ventilated during an El Nino. During the warm phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from 1976 to 1999, the frequency of heat ventilating El Ninos increased as did the global average. It is reasonable to assume that some of that heat was initially stored during the PDO’s heat-absorbing phase that began in the 1940s during which solar insolation was greater than anytime in the past few hundred years. Because solar heating has declined and (according to the IPCC) added CO2 has little impact on heating tropical waters as discussed in part 2, subsurface heat should decline and future ventilations will not cause a resumption in a warming trend.
3. Shifting Winds Cause Adiabatic (no added heat) Rises in Temperature
As seen in NASA’s map of regional warming, the Antarctic Peninsula is another unusual “hotspot”, but relative to other climate dynamics, the contribution from CO2 is again not readily apparent. Stronger winds from the positive phase of the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO) increased regional temperatures without adding heat via 2 mechanisms.
First stronger winds from the north reduced sea ice extent by inhibiting the expansion of sea ice along the western Antarctic Peninsula and Amundsen Sea. 3,4 As in the Arctic, more open water allows larger amounts of stored heat to escape, dramatically raising winter temperatures. Accordingly, during the summer when sea ice is normally absent, there is no steep warming trend.
The eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula behaves in a contrary manner. There sea ice was not reduced and surface temperatures average 5 to 10° cooler, and the steep winter warming trend was not observed. However there was a significant summer warming trend. Previously during the negative phase of the AAO, weaker winds are typically forced to go around the mountainous peninsula. However the positive AAO generated a wind regime that moved up and over the mountains, creating anomalous foehn storms on the eastern side of the peninsula.5 As the winds descend, temperatures adiabatically rise 10 to 20 degrees or more due to changes in pressure without any additional heat as depicted in Figure 2 above. Elsewhere the North Atlantic Oscillation increased temperatures adiabatically in the European Alps.6
4. Lost Vegetation and Lost Heat Capacity Increases Temperatures
Climate scientists have acknowledged, “influences on climate are the emission of greenhouse gases and changes in land use, such as urbanization and agriculture. But it has been difficult to separate these two influences because both tend to increase the daily mean surface temperature.” They concluded that about one third of the 20th century warming (0.27°C) was caused by urbanization and other land use changes.7
Without any additional heat, surface temperatures rise when vegetation is lost and/or soil moisture is reduced. Wherever a forest is converted to a grassland, or a grassland to desert, or barren ground is created, maximum skin surface temperatures rise by 10 to 40°F.8 Also to quench the thirst of growing populations, extraction of subsurface waters has lowered the water table.9 As the water table drops below the reach of roots, soil moisture is reduced and plants die. Reduced vegetation eliminates the cooling effect of transpiration, and prevents the recycling of rainwater that sinks deeper into the ground.
Lost vegetation creates hotter surfaces that not only heat the air more severely during the day but also emit much more infrared radiation at night. Even if concentrations of CO2 or water vapor remained unchanged, the infrared radiation from warmer surfaces would add to the greenhouse effect.
Thus a rise in a region’s temperature may be a stronger indication that we have degraded the local environment, rather than an indication of our carbon footprint. For example, studies of temperatures in Arizona and Mexico have shown that lost vegetation from severe overgrazing and other careless practices caused the soil surface to dry. This drying process increased temperatures by as much as 7°F compared to adjacent lands that had not been so mistreated.10 Elsewhere researchers document that landscapes changes can increase extreme weather. Extensive removal buffalo grass is the classic example for the American Dust Bowl, and in Australia deforestation has likewise been shown to intensify and prolong droughts.11
5. Rising Minimum Temperatures Are Highly Sensitive to Landscape Changes.
Because maximum temperatures are measured near midday when strong convection mixes the air column, maximum temperatures are the better measure of any heat accumulating in the atmosphere. However the global average has been skewed disproportionately by minimum temperatures that behave much differently. During the 80s and 90s, average minimum temperatures rose two to three times faster than the average maximum temperatures.12 Scientists reported one consistent pattern. Weather stations near cities and airports where the pavement holds the heat into the night and waste heat abounds, those stations consistently exhibited higher minimum temperatures than nearby rural areas.13
Dr. Thomas Karl, who now serves as the director of the NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, compared temperatures in rural towns consisting of fewer than 2,000 people with more populated cities and towns. He reported that when populations reached 50,000 people, the average temperature was 0.43°F higher. Although the change in maximum temperatures was trivial, the minimum temperature was 0.86°F higher – the sole cause of the rising average. As populations increased, so did minimum temperatures. A town of two million people experienced a whopping increase of 4.5°F in the minimum causing a 2.25°F average increase.14
Inversion layers trap human waste heat. Hot air only rises if it is warmer than its surroundings. Shallow inversion layers are naturally created at night and in the winter, as air near the surface naturally cools faster than the air above. We can see the height at which warm upper air overlays the shallow cooler layer in the picture below indicated by flattening of rising smoke. Trapped in that shallow layer human waste heat more readily raises the minimum temperature. Furthermore the accumulation of waste heat and the effects of heat-holding surfaces can disrupt the inversion layer and bring warmer air above down to the surface. When farmers fear frost damage, they use huge fans to stir the air, disrupting the inversion layer and warming the surface.
Away from growing populated areas where temperatures are measured by tree rings, since the 1950s tree ring temperatures have increasingly diverged from instrumental data tainted by these population/land use effects. Although websites like SkepticalScience claim, “Natural temperature measurements also confirm the general accuracy of the instrumental temperature record,” tree rings undeniably contradict their claims. An international team of tree ring experts reported “No current tree ring based reconstruction of extratropical Northern Hemisphere temperatures that extends into the 1990s captures the full range of late 20th century warming observed in the instrumental record.”15 Using an infrared thermometer, I have observed the dawn temperatures within vegetated areas are 10 to 20°F cooler than surfaces just 20 feet away on paved and gravel country roads, instrumentally confirming that cooler tree ring temperatures are more accurately measuring natural climate change.
6. Models Arbitrarily Raise the Observed Global Average.
In a process called data homogenization climate scientists adjust quality controlled raw temperature data to create a more steeply rising average temperature wherever their model suggests the weather behaved “outside statistically unexpectations”. In a sense climate scientists are denying real observations. As discussed here and here, homogenizaton models mistakenly convert natural change points into a steep warming trends. Several climate scientists who have analyzed the adjustment process warned that “results cast some doubts in the use of homogenization procedures” noting the observed 20th century trend was raised from 0.4°C to 0.7°C.
As seen below, using quality‑controlled data for the USA that was not homogenized, there is indeed warming since 1900. However the temperature trend correlates much better with the heat ventilating cycles of Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. But natural climate change induced by those cycles have been treated as errors. An analysis of worldwide data homogenization acknowledged that a procedure is needed to correct real errors but concluded “Homogenization practices used until today are mainly statistical, not well justified by experiments and are rarely supported by metadata. It can be argued that they often lead to false results: natural features of hydroclimatic time series are regarded as errors and are adjusted.”16
Homogenization models appear to suffer from the same systematic biases that caused the gross failure of global climate models to reproduce the well documented Arctic warming of the 30s and 40s illustrated and discussed in part 1 and part 2. Similarly across the USA, models have homogenized away the land-based warming in the 30s and 40s, fabricating artificial cool periods as discussed here and illustrated below.
Until the global average chimera accurately accounts for the effects from landscape changes, natural cycles, and statistical homogenization procedures, the global average temperature will never be a reliable indicator of the earth’s sensitivity to CO2. As it stands, the only claim the global average chimera can support is “if you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything.”
Literature Cited
1.Rigor, I.G., J.M. Wallace, and R.L. Colony (2002), Response of Sea Ice to the Arctic Oscillation, J. Climate, v. 15, no. 18, pp. 2648 – 2668.
2.Kahl, J., et al., (1993) Absence of evidence for greenhouse warming over the Arctic Ocean in the past 40 years. Nature, vol. 361, p. 335‑337, doi:10.1038/361335a0
3. Stammerjohn, S., et a., (2008) Trends in Antarctic annual sea ice retreat and advance and their relation to El Niño southern oscillation and southern annular mode variability. Journal of Geophysical Research. Vol. 113, C03S90.doi:10.1029/2007JC004269.
4.Stammerjohn, S., et a., (2008) Sea ice in the western Antarctic Peninsula region: spatiotemporal variability from ecological and climate change perspectives. Deep Sea Research II 55. doi:10.1016/j.dsr2.2008.04.026.
5.Orr, A., et al., (2008), Characteristics of summer airflow over the Antarctic Peninsula in response to recent strengthening of westerly circumpolar winds, J. Atmos. Sci., 65, 1396–1413.
6. Prommel, K., et al (2007)Analysis of the (N)AO influence on alpine temperatures using a dense station dataset and a high-resolution simuluation Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 9
7. Kalnay,E. and Cai M., (2003) Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate. Nature, Vol 423
8.Mildrexler,D.J. et al., (2011) Satellite Finds Highest Land Skin Temperatures on Earth. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
9. Foster. S. and Chilton, P. (2003) Groundwater: the processes and global significance of aquifer degradation. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, vol. 358, 1957-1972.
10. Balling, R. C., Jr (1998) Impacts of land degradation on historical temperature records from the Sonoran Desert. Climatic Change, 40, 669–681.
11. Deo, R. (2012) A review and modeling results of the simulated response of deforestation on climate extremes in eastern Australia. Atmospheric Research, vol. 108, p. 19–38.
12. Karl, T.R. et al., (1993) Asymmetric Trends of Daily Maximum and Minimum Temperature. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol. 74
13. Gallo, K., et al. (1996) The Influence of Land Use/Land Cover on Climatological Values of the Diurnal Temperature Range. Journal of Climate, vol. 9, p. 2941-2944.
14. Karl, T., et al., (1988), Urbanization: Its Detection and Effect in the United States Climate Record. Journal of Climate, vol. 1, 1099-1123.
15. Wilson R., et al., (2007) Matter of divergence: tracking recent warming at hemispheric scales using tree-ring data. Journal of Geophysical Research–A, 112, D17103, doi: 10.1029/2006JD008318.
16.Steirou, E., and Koutsoyiannis, D. (2012) Investigation of methods for hydroclimatic data homogenization. Geophysical Research Abstracts, vol. 14, EGU2012-956-1. And presentation https://www.itia.ntua.gr/getfile/1212/1/documents/2012EGU_homogenization_1.pdf
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“Even if concentrations of CO2 or water vapor remained unchanged, the infrared radiation from warmer surfaces would add to the greenhouse effect.”
I have a problem with this thesis. Raising the temperature of the ground with CO2 and water vapour being unchanged increases the rate of cooling at night – i.e, the transport of heat energy into space via radiation. There is no time of day at which the cooling rate (energy loss rate) of a hotter earth is lower than a cooler surface. Increasing the energy loss rate of the planet is the opposite of the greenhouse effect.
I think what was intended meaning is that the air above the ground would be hotter if the ground is hotter. That is different in meaning from saying it ‘adds to the greenhouse effect’. The greenhouse effect is supposed to be an insulating effect that results from the presence of additional GHG’s. That means the ‘effect’ is identical no matter what the surface temperature.
In short, the greenhouse effect is fundamentally a different thing from the rate of heat loss from warmer or cooler surfaces. The greenhouse effect is definitely tied to the idea of there being a ‘hot spot’ of ‘captured and re-radiated’ IR energy at an altitude of 8-16 km. This hot zone has been shown thousands of times not to exist, millions, if you want to count the trips by sensors individually.
I think it would be useful to provide an explanation of what was intended by the sentence. It contradicts the statement that the ice-free Arctic ocean vents much more heat ‘because it is warmer than ice’. The latter makes sense and matches observations. A warmer dry surface doesn’t add to the greenhouse effect, it just projects more energy more effectively through the atmosphere because it has a higher energy emission rate.
@matthew R
“… that does not imply that the global mean temp is meaningless, only that it is incompletely understood.”
The atmosphere of the Earth has an average temperature. We do not know what it is. The best methods we have deployed so far are probably telling us a number that is close to reality but we do not know how close. The best we can do at the moment is to use the satellite readings at 1km altitude which for me, is a pretty good start. Changes in land use and so on have nearly no effect on the temperature at 1 km altitude where things are very smoothed. The same cannot be said for 5 feet above the ground..
@Matthew R Marler But they “are not a sample of the ‘same population'” Some which were measured before were not measured after 1989 (Siberia). It’s also my understanding that the Northwest Territories were not actually measured, but had substituted proxies from other stations used. This is not science. Since surface temps are highly suspect, we can say that we only have about 30 years of reliable data from satellites. That is hardly enough to prove global warming/climate change.
@Matthew R Marler “it can be a meaningful summary of the state of the system”
I disagree. If I tell you the average for today was 50, you would not be able to tell me what the high or low was.
Matthew Marler,
I already told you what you already knew: the Earth is NOT A LIVING BODY.
Your equivocation fallacy designed to conflate the planet with the “body” of a thermo-regulating organism was devious and WRONG.
I explained to you that mammals evolved thermo-regulation, and the planet didn’t.
I reminded you that Earth NEVER REACHES THERMAL EQUILIBRIUM.
Sorry to shout at you in caps lock, but you obviously don’t want to hear the truth / you don’t want to be proven wrong / you don’t want to acknowledge reality if it conflicts with your childish fantasy of Earth as a patient, sick with the wrong “body” temperature.
That’s why you ignored my post.
Nota bene:
=============
“Once attained, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution persists indefinitely. The gas molecules have come to thermal equilibrium with one another, and we can speak of a system as having a temperature only if the condition of thermal equilibrium exists.”
-Principles of Modern Chemistry, 4th ed., p. 119
=============
Earth doesn’t reach thermal equilibrium, so it has no meaningful temperature.
Repeat ad nauseum until it sinks in.
Mathew Marler obfuscates “Nowhere have you written that the temperatures are not a sample of the “same population”
Mathew you lack basic statistical and scientific knowledge but appear well practiced in misdirecting a discussion by misrepresenting the obvious with lingual thermometers. The allegory was an example of averaging to different populations. Averaging heat ventilating from the Arctic with heat caused by a drop in heat capacity due to less moisture is an example of erroneously averaging different populations. Averaging temperature from humid regions with temperatures from arid regions is an example of erroneously averaging different populations. Those averages tell us absolutely nothing about accumulated heat.
@Crispin in Waterloo says. i understand your criticism.
I was simply trying to say a hotter surface releases more infrared.
Khwarizmi: Earth doesn’t reach thermal equilibrium, so it has no meaningful temperature.
By that criterion, no part of the Earth has a meaningful temperature either, since each region is always cooling or heating or otherwise not in equilibrium. For that matter, neither does a human body during the evening when its measured temperature is declining; or during a fever when the measured temperature is rising.
You could say that in a localized region of the ocean or the human body, there was a near enough approximation to an equilibrium, for the duration of the measurement, for the measured value to have meaning. If that be so, then all of the temperature measurements taken at about the same time have meaning, and their average can have meaning. But as quoted, temperature never has meaning. An extreme case would be a dead body some time after death: not in equilibrium, but the measured temperature could be used to estimate the time of death, assuming something about the initial temperature just before death.
4timesayear: I disagree. If I tell you the average for today was 50, you would not be able to tell me what the high or low was.
Nothing new there: summaries always sacrifice some information. That does not imply that they are not meaningful. Say a body temp is 100 at 1pm and 101 at 3pm; you do not know what it was at 2pm, but that does not make the 1pm and 3pm measures meaningless. The spatiotemporally averaged global mean temp was lower 150 years ago than last year: that is not a meaningless statement, but it is incomplete.
Crispin in Waterloo but really in Kitchener: The atmosphere of the Earth has an average temperature. We do not know what it is. The best methods we have deployed so far are probably telling us a number that is close to reality but we do not know how close. The best we can do at the moment is to use the satellite readings at 1km altitude which for me, is a pretty good start. Changes in land use and so on have nearly no effect on the temperature at 1 km altitude where things are very smoothed. The same cannot be said for 5 feet above the ground..
I agree with that, but I do not see what it has to do with Jim Steele’s leading post.
Jim Steele: Averaging temperature from humid regions with temperatures from arid regions is an example of erroneously averaging different populations. Those averages tell us absolutely nothing about accumulated heat.
You err in going from a case for incomplete knowledge to a claim of “tell us absolutely nothing about accumulated heat.” If the 7am mean temp of Marrakesh and Manaus increases by 0.2C it is a fair inference that there has been an accumulation of heat; if the mean increase is 0.01C then you have much less confidence that there has been an accumulation of heat. To claim that, in principle, without qualification, that the change means “nothing” is incorrect. To introduce another medical analogy, it is hard to distinguish between melanomas and carcinomas of the thyroid gland — that is in the medical literature. It does not follow that a diagnosis of carcinoma is meaningless.
Mathew again you misdirect with meaningless examples.I has nothing to do with incomplete knowledge but in appropriate averaging. If your argument has any merit, then without sidetracking, simply explain what averaging higher temperatures from heat ventilating from the Arctic ocean tells about heat accumulating due to rising CO2.
Mathew, Using your fallacious logic and medical examples. What you suggest is that if I measure a person’s temperature caused by the flu using a lingual thermometer and a person’s temperature who has heat stroke using an anal thermometer then I can conclude their high body temperatures were caused by Dengue Fever.
James (@JGrizz0011) says:
August 4, 2014 at 10:46 am
“I am on the side of the scientific consensus in every other field of science. It disturbs me that my opinions are apparently opposite of mainstream science in just this one field of science.”
In response…
Jim Clarke says:
August 4, 2014 at 11:15 am
“That is a dangerous position. Go back in time and look at the consensus science of 100 or 200 years ago. In almost every field, the consensus was wrong in many ways. In some cases, it was almost completely wrong. Do you think that the scientists 200 years from now will look back on the early 21st Century and proclaim that was the time when humans got almost everything right? Hardly!”
—————————
I agree with Jim on the point that pretty much all scientific theory will be revised over time, some revised very significantly, and some completely tossed and rebuilt from scratch. We don’t know as much as we think we do.
What James may have been trying to say, or at least my own experience, is that in many areas of science, there at least appears to be a connection between the prevailing theory and actual observations (even if the prevailing theory is later falsified, it’s presently the best we have at explaining what we see). I try to keep my healthy skepticism, in any case.
As for “climate science”, it seems to be the one area of science where the predominant “settled” theory is CLEARLY disconnected from real-world observations but is still hanging around like the walking dead in Zombieland and just won’t go away.
This tells me that climate science is NOT science. Rather, it’s politics and business and religion.
Bruce
Rabe
Almost all energy conversions will produce waste heat and/or radiation. 2nd law of thermodynamics mandates entropy must increase not decrease. Heat is a disorganized form of energy (high entropy). Thermal efficiency of heat engines is only 25% to over 60%. The rest is waste heat. There is no machine on earth in perpetual motion. Its kinetic energy will also become waste heat thru mechanical friction and drag (air resistance).
Electric current in a conductor produces Joule heating. Waste heat again. When light and infrared hit a thermometer, the effect is heating not cooling. Possible exception is radio waves that escape to space without heating effect on earth.
Jim Steele: Mathew, Using your fallacious logic and medical examples. What you suggest is that if I measure a person’s temperature caused by the flu using a lingual thermometer and a person’s temperature who has heat stroke using an anal thermometer then I can conclude their high body temperatures were caused by Dengue Fever.
that absurdity is all your own. But it is true that I can not control what you can conclude. I only note that, based on evidence, you should not be too certain.
Dr. Strange,
it seems to me you are kidding. Eventually, the not-wasted part of the energy turns to waste heat, too.
If, for example, you get your useful energy from a PV plant located in the desert you will cause a drop of temperature there according to the efficiency of the panels. More efficient panels will cause a bigger temperature drop. The “waste heat” there will cause the temperature being higher as less efficient panels will waste more heat instead of it being transferred to a place where you want to waste it.
So thinking about waste heat is a waste of time except if you want to waste more heat elsewhere without paying more for it.
Jim Steele: If your argument has any merit, then without sidetracking, simply explain what averaging higher temperatures from heat ventilating from the Arctic ocean tells about heat accumulating due to rising CO2.
You are shifting your ground again: statistical analysis of even the most appropriate kind, absent proper experiment design, generally can not elucidate causal mechanisms well, if at all.
One more note about sampling: in every actual data set, there is something unique about each data value that makes it unclear whether it has been “sampled from the population” as all or any of the others. Indeed, it is never exactly true that any of the data have been “sampled from the same population” — there is only a judgment, subject to revision in light of other data, that treating them that way does not introduce too much more inaccuracy. This is elaborated somewhat in the book by Rob Kass, Uri Eden and Emery Brown, “Analysis of Neural Data”, and in the book by Jay Kadane called “Principles of Uncertainty”. It is like the old aphorism that you can’t dip your foot into the “same” river twice.
Your “the idea that the single measured average is not meaningful is absurd” comment August 4, 2014 at 10:07 am concludes what appears to be a justification of AGW alarmism based on global average temperature measurements. Jim Steele et alia have challenged your position with a variety of arguments that you have avoided or side-stepped, the latest being the charging of Jim with “shifting your ground.”
To refine your position, please explain whether you understand that the temperature average of substances with different heat capacities is not the same as averaging their heat content. Also, answer the question posed by davidmhoffer August 4, 2014 at 10:43 am ”If you can identify the one spot on earth (single locus) which exhibits the same utility as a sub-lingual temperature taken as a proxy for the body, but this time for the planet as a whole, please do tell us what it is.”
The whole point of this post is that, unlike the body where sublingual temperature is an important indicator of normal, there is no average normal temperature of the Earth and no single place or finite number of measurements that indicates whether heat is accumulating or not.
“statistical analysis of even the most appropriate kind, absent proper experiment design, generally can not elucidate causal mechanisms well, if at all.”
What do you propose for proper experimental design for determining the average global temperature?
Matthew R Marler says:
August 6, 2014 at 8:42 am
Sorry, my comment was in response to Mr. Marler.
Lots of contradictions in the article, but one point needs to be made more strongly: the air can warm as a result of increased loss of heat by the ocean to space. Sort of a “transit phenomenon”. It is thus not only transit, but transitory, leaving the Earth with less heat energy than it had. Soon, the ice sheets! ;p
Interesting read. One description puzzles me though.
“””””…..During the winter when that open water re-freezes it releases additional latent heat……”””””
So, by how much does the air Temperature above that refreeze ice increase, due to the “release” of all that latent heat.
Nobody ever seems to quote the Temperature rise above re-freezing ice, due to latent heat release.
Why is that ??
“””””…..Chic Bowdrie says:
August 7, 2014 at 8:57 am
Your “the idea that the single measured average is not meaningful is absurd” …..”””””
So just how does one go about “measuring” an average (of any data set) ?? I always thought “average” is something you calculate using statistical mathematics; not something that can be observed, or measured.
george e. smith,
If you ask me, an average is the sum of a number of measurements divided by the number. If I understand the post, the global average temperature is a poor way to characterize how hot the planet is because of many local factors such as what the OP describes. The most obvious is the differing heat capacities of forest and grassland.
Matthew R Marler, averaging intensive properties gives you nothing meaningful in return. It’s that simple.
You can average temperature readings at a single site and come up with a physically meaningful value. But as soon as you include another site, you’ve lost any physical meaning.
Chic;
Here’s a better, simpler and more important one: What’s the average temperature of the ice sheets and the ocean?
Brian,
Yes the heat content of the planet is primarily going to be determined by the oceans. Measurement of surface temperatures is the chimera Mr. Steele is referring to.
“””””…..Chic Bowdrie says:
August 7, 2014 at 10:01 pm
george e. smith,
If you ask me, an average is the sum of a number of measurements divided by the number. If I understand the post, the global average temperature is a poor way to characterize how hot the planet is because of many local factors such as what the OP describes. The most obvious is the differing heat capacities of forest and grassland. ….”””””
Chic, you make; but apparently miss my whole point.
“average” is as you described it; simply a creation of statistical mathematics, calculated as you wrote.
It is NOT something that can be observed.
But you can compute the average for ANY set of already known numbers. They do not even have to represent ANYTHING.
But they do have to be known numbers.
For example, you cannot average x1, x2, x3, x4 and x5; no x2.5 is NOT that average.
Nor can you average x1, y2, z3, w4, h5.
So since all the numbers must be known, the average is an exactly known calculated number. It is a unique property of that set of numbers. Every such set, has an average.
NONE of those average values, have ANY meaning or value outside that particular set.
And since you already know the values of all of the numbers, the “average” adds nothing to your information. The set of numbers themselves, is the repository of ALL of the information (if any) contained in that set.
No they can’t tell you anything about ANY numbers, that might have been pre-existing. Nor can they tell you anything about any other numbers that might come into existence n the future.
George,
I see your point now and agree. However, averaging measurements is important because, aided with the appropriate statistical treatments, comparisons can be made between averages. This post addresses the meaningfulness of an average of surface temperatures taken at different times when key characteristics of the sample populations are changing and the changes aren’t taken into account.