253 replies to this topic

[Brafarality]

After reading this thread, I can clearly see that people have extreme difficulty understanding the difference between weather and climate. I can also clearly see that some people do not understand that thier local or regional temperatures are not representative of the planet as a whole. I can also clearly see that my general conceptions about this community being far more intelligent, observant, and knowledgable than the general populace are in question after reading this.

It was freezing cold last winter locally, the coldest I remember ....but it was followed by one of the hottest summers I can ever remember as well. It also seemed to rain way way more than usual. This means exactly jack shit on a global scale.

LOL! Several here, including myself, may have had this coming, but I still am holding doggedly.
It would be the case if I was the only person saying that it was locally getting colder, but when you add up all the "locally"s, it becomes most of the inhabited planet, which forces the believers to suggest that the warming is "everywhere else", essentially, and I find this hard to believe.

Are you basing this on a bunch of guys you know, and some dudes on the internet? How many of them live in the arctic? How many in the southern hemisphere? I think you are drawing from a very biased sample.

Yes, I remember summer 2010, and it was warm, but it was a fluke: summers have been generally cooler in the NE USA over the past 10 years or so, and anyone can verify that with simple remembrance. This hot one seemed like an exception, not a trend.
It is the complete opposite with winters. They have been relentlessly cooling, no doubt about it.
Global warming MAY produce pockets of coolness, but what are the chances I just happen to be living under one? And everyone else for that matter noting that the frenzy flies in the face of personal sensory experience?

I live in the NE US, and the summers seem like they've been pretty warm to me, but our subjective experience and faulty memory are just bullshit when it comes to determining the state of the climate. We have satellites and zillions of sensors to collect data like that.

And, remember, Im the ultra-insecure dude who sometimes cites his near perfect GRE score and ultra high IQ as a personal credential before embarking on a (usually) non-scientific polemic, so maybe its not the actual intelligence level, but something else plucking the strings of the heart and senses enough to lead to supposedly false beliefs and viewpoints, even ones that contradict hard science and evidence!

OK, now you're talking. What do you think it is that makes the fossil fuel industry's (and the Tea Party's) line so attractive? What makes it so attractive that you are willing to toss out science and go with your gut?

Mantra: Global warming is not occuring (X10). Do not be hoodwinked by the biased believers. They will bend every stat since the evidence is not there.

Perfect GRE score, and then you say this. Something isn't adding up. I wouldn't bother replying if you were one of those ideologues who drank the Kool Aid, but I know you're a smart guy. Something weird is going on here. Do you accept science in other areas, or do you frequently find yourself taking an anti-science path? Any idea why?

Yes! I didnt make it clear, but am just asking you to trust me on this: I was a dogged supporter of environmental causes, especially thwarting global warming, up until, literally, 3 days ago. An endless unconscious registering of sensory experience along with the endlessly busted predictions of thaws and warmups (could do a search of CNN or TWC articles and find a bunch, but dont got attention span now to do that) caused my mind to slant one way from the other THIS WEEK. Really. And, its not all causes, just this one. My vegan bleeding heart is still innately compassionate for the downtrodden, the endangered and is congenitally opposed to the right wing and the ignorance it so strongly supports. That the right ties ignorance with patriotism is one of the worst atrocities in human thought, considering the enlightenment and open mindedness of Jefferson, Adams, etc. Havent turned from every other cause I have some heart invested in, just this one, but I am done. It is a scam and I will believe that until an ill warm wind blows across the on a January morning bringing a plague of locusts or something like that. So, if I came off as a mouthpiece for the Tea Party, I feel really bad cause they are truly do not represent anything that is good about us and represent ignorance and stagnation at its worst. We will thrive despite valueless peeps like Sarah Palin and her nasty ilk.
As recently as last week, I think I was accused of being the mouthpiece for the left or the Democratic Party!
Wow, it wasnt meant to be so much self-analysis, so back to the subject:

If there was no awareness whatsoever about global warming, as a scientific phenom and something that is happening, and we were just living, focusing our science everywhere else, I dont think anyone would notice anything. It would be as if the climate was the same as it ever was. But, with the theory of global warming in play, every anomaly is attributed to it. What is the name for that in psychology or statistics or whatever when someone looks for evidence to support a belief or theory? Forget at the moment, but I think it explains most of this.

[Brafarality]

Has anyone recently performed what Ill call The Loughner Test on posts before posting?
Meaning, has anyone re-read their own post b4 posting to make sure it doesnt sound TOO fanatical in that Loughner sort of way, and maybe even edited elements because of it?
In pure opposition to such a possibility, more than ever, I just blurt it out as fast as I can type, make the occasional spelling or grammatical correction and post away!

Edited by Brafarality, 20 January 2011 - 01:34 AM.

[niner]

Yes! I didnt make it clear, but am just asking you to trust me on this: I was a dogged supporter of environmental causes, especially thwarting global warming, up until, literally, 3 days ago. An endless unconscious registering of sensory experience along with the endlessly busted predictions of thaws and warmups (could do a search of CNN or TWC articles and find a bunch, but dont got attention span now to do that) caused my mind to slant one way from the other THIS WEEK. Really. And, its not all causes, just this one. My vegan bleeding heart is still innately compassionate for the downtrodden, the endangered and is congenitally opposed to the right wing and the ignorance it so strongly supports. That the right ties ignorance with patriotism is one of the worst atrocities in human thought, considering the enlightenment and open mindedness of Jefferson, Adams, etc. Havent turned from every other cause I have some heart invested in, just this one, but I am done. It is a scam and I will believe that until an ill warm wind blows across the on a January morning bringing a plague of locusts or something like that. So, if I came off as a mouthpiece for the Tea Party, I feel really bad cause they are truly do not represent anything that is good about us and represent ignorance and stagnation at its worst. We will thrive despite valueless peeps like Sarah Palin and her nasty ilk.

If there was no awareness whatsoever about global warming, as a scientific phenom and something that is happening, and we were just living, focusing our science everywhere else, I dont think anyone would notice anything. It would be as if the climate was the same as it ever was. But, with the theory of global warming in play, every anomaly is attributed to it. What is the name for that in psychology or statistics or whatever when someone looks for evidence to support a belief or theory? Forget at the moment, but I think it explains most of this.

Wait, you believe in science, but just this week, because of your own sensory experiences, a hazily-remembered series from a single point on the ground; and also from a sense (which doesn't ring true to me) that there have been "endlessly busted predictions of thaws and warmups" in the media, you are absolutely, positively sure that climate change is a fraud. NASA and NOAA and all those academics and other agencies and institutions around the world are just all part of a giant conspiracy, I guess. Well all I can say is you ought to move to the arctic for a couple years. Maybe you would reconsider. If you were living in one of those towns that was melting, or if you were aware of the glaciers that weren't there anymore, you'd have a different set of data points. But I really don't want you to do that. I'd like you to consider ALL the data, not just the microscopic amount of it that you have personally experienced. For my own part, I'll continue to give more weight to NOAA and NASA than to the thermometer on my porch or my faulty memory.

I just blurt it out as fast as I can type, make the occasional spelling or grammatical correction and post away!

Does that mean you don't really believe what you're saying? Or is what you're saying something that you believe at the moment but might change your mind about an a couple days? I usually read my posts before I hit reply. I catch a lot of stuff that way. Sometimes I just say "you know, I really don't have anything useful to add here" and quit out of the editor without posting. I wonder if this should have been one of those times...

[valkyrie_ice]

I've generally come to the conclusion that this is a pointless debate. Your both convinced the other side is an "Evil villain that must be stopped at all costs lest they destroy humanity."

[niner]

I've generally come to the conclusion that this is a pointless debate. Your both convinced the other side is an "Evil villain that must be stopped at all costs lest they destroy humanity."

Not evil, just mislead. And no, humanity doesn't hang in the balance, but humanity's quality of life might. It might be pointless though, sadly.

[mikeinnaples]

And, remember, Im the ultra-insecure dude who sometimes cites his near perfect GRE score and ultra high IQ as a personal credential before embarking on a (usually) non-scientific polemic, so maybe its not the actual intelligence level, but something else plucking the strings of the heart and senses enough to lead to supposedly false beliefs and viewpoints, even ones that contradict hard science and evidence!

Fair enough, but just remember who I am.

I am the extremely high (not ultra though!) IQ, slightly egotistical guy who is tempered with equal amounts confidence and common sense who if I wasn't pathologically lazy, would be doing something far more important than working as a software engineer for NASA. A guy who only works at this effort level by design so that I have the time off it allows me as a federal employee to travel and surf. My true brilliance only shines when it comes to developing new methodology to get myself out of having to do anything and everything I don't want to do at a specific point in time.

Consider us properly introduced.

[maxwatt]

And, remember, Im the ultra-insecure dude who sometimes cites his near perfect GRE score and ultra high IQ as a personal credential before embarking on a (usually) non-scientific polemic, so maybe its not the actual intelligence level, but something else plucking the strings of the heart and senses enough to lead to supposedly false beliefs and viewpoints, even ones that contradict hard science and evidence!

Fair enough, but just remember who I am.

I am the extremely high (not ultra though!) IQ, slightly egotistical guy who is tempered with equal amounts confidence and common sense who if I wasn't pathologically lazy, would be doing something far more important than working as a software engineer for NASA. A guy who only works at this effort level by design so that I have the time off it allows me as a federal employee to travel and surf. My true brilliance only shines when it comes to developing new methodology to get myself out of having to do anything and everything I don't want to do at a specific point in time.

Consider us properly introduced.

Ben Franklin said "If you want to find an easier or faster way to do something, give the job to a lazy man."

RE: global warming - it has almost passed through phase I, too soon to be sure it's a problem, and is entering phase II, too late to do anythiong about it.

[Brafarality]

I will retreat from the extremity of earlier remarks as I await the next snow storm in an endless wave of them that bring relentless unmelting snow and brutally cold air.
I will moderate and tell myself that this is just part of global warming, and that all things, warm and cold, dry and wet, rainy and arid, indicate global warming, which is what seems to be the message:

Cold snap? Global warming since there will be more extremes.
Heat wave? Definitely global warming
Drought? Global warming; lands will become dustbowls
Flooding rains? Global warming; more heat equals more precipitation.

Does the NYC phrase "GTFoutta here" mean anything?

I am willing to bet that 75% or more of the measurements that suggest global warming have been gathered either from remote uninhabited places or from the most concrete covered portions of cities.
One batch of measurements is shaped by the unintended bias of the oceanographers and climatologists who gather and interpret it, and the other by the heat island effect.
Once these 2 factors, among too many others to list now, are corrected for, I am willing to bet that either the world climate has either remained the same or cooled very slightly.

Interesting report:
http://www.epw.senat...f1-fc38ed4f85e3

Edited by Brafarality, 21 January 2011 - 05:58 AM.

[maxwatt]

Braf posted a link to Inhofe's Newsletter in pust #68 Inhofe is among the most vocal global warming skeptics in the US Congress. He supports a constitutional amendment to make English the national language of the United States. Before entering politics he was the president of the Quaker Life Insurance Company. During the time he worked for Quaker Life, the company went into receivership; it was liquidated in 1986. Johann Hari, a British journalist, wrote that Inhofe's statements have been "repudiated" by "even the handful of contrarian scientists Inhofe constantly cites". Inhofe was accused of politicizing and muising the science of climate change by Chris Mooney in his book The Republican War on Science.

[JLL]

The bands of latitudinal atmospheric circulation around the earth are mixing, there are fewer distinct bands. The result is that arctic air comes south more frequently, and you see snowier and intermittently colder winters. If climate change had not become a political issue for the right wing, there would be no "controversy". Exon and other oil and coal companies have for the last 30 years engaged in a disinformation campaign to cast doubt on global warming. When that doesn't work, claim it isn't caused by human activity. IF you claim increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 30%, (due to double by next century) isn't warming the earth, you are a useful tool for Exon.

There is no evidence showing a causal relationship between increasing CO2 content and rising temperatures.

There is also no evidence showing that the amount of CO2 put into the air by man has any effect on a larger scale.

And, there is absolutely no evidence that a) the temperatures we are seeing now are the highest in history, and b) that the temperature curve is rising faster than ever before.

But don't let this stop you in your quest to stop "global warming".

[maxwatt]

The bands of latitudinal atmospheric circulation around the earth are mixing, there are fewer distinct bands. The result is that arctic air comes south more frequently, and you see snowier and intermittently colder winters. If climate change had not become a political issue for the right wing, there would be no "controversy". Exon and other oil and coal companies have for the last 30 years engaged in a disinformation campaign to cast doubt on global warming. When that doesn't work, claim it isn't caused by human activity. IF you claim increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 30%, (due to double by next century) isn't warming the earth, you are a useful tool for Exon.

There is no evidence showing a causal relationship between increasing CO2 content and rising temperatures.

/There is actually quite a bit; it's a basic principle of physics, easily demonstrated in a grade-school science lab.

There is also no evidence showing that the amount of CO2 put into the air by man has any effect on a larger scale.

The amount of CO2 released from buried carbon (coal and oil) is a significant fraction of the amount in the atmosphere and oceans, exceeding 30% of the pre-industrial baseline in the year 1730.

And, there is absolutely no evidence that a) the temperatures we are seeing now are the highest in history, and b) that the temperature curve is rising faster than ever before.

There is quite a bit, actually. You might start here: Nature Climate Change.

But don't let this stop you in your quest to stop "global warming".

That battle is already lost. The hard-right's war on science has largely succeeded in paralyzing public policy to the extent that more than half the articles in the aforementioned journal deal with attempts at mitigation of the effects that the remainder of the articles document.

It is an open secret that the oil companies have been funding this, not usually directly but through such right-wing institutions as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Society. The motivation: continued huge profits. Their response to such exposure has consistently been a Tu quoque accusation that poorly paid academics are engaged in a conspiracy to advance their careers, or that nascent windmill and solar companies are somehow outspending them. Ha. Or that it is all a plot of the now eviscerated radical left to impoverish humanity. Even more laughable.

JLL, I doubt you are a paid instrument of the public relations firms that are implementing denialism on behalf of the established energy order, though such have been employed for similar campaigns in the past. More likely you are a useful tool on their behalf, reflexively citing Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beckisms.

[Rational Madman]

The bands of latitudinal atmospheric circulation around the earth are mixing, there are fewer distinct bands. The result is that arctic air comes south more frequently, and you see snowier and intermittently colder winters. If climate change had not become a political issue for the right wing, there would be no "controversy". Exon and other oil and coal companies have for the last 30 years engaged in a disinformation campaign to cast doubt on global warming. When that doesn't work, claim it isn't caused by human activity. IF you claim increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 30%, (due to double by next century) isn't warming the earth, you are a useful tool for Exon.

There is no evidence showing a causal relationship between increasing CO2 content and rising temperatures.

There is also no evidence showing that the amount of CO2 put into the air by man has any effect on a larger scale.

And, there is absolutely no evidence that a) the temperatures we are seeing now are the highest in history, and b) that the temperature curve is rising faster than ever before.

But don't let this stop you in your quest to stop "global warming".

When you don't offer citations to support claims that are greatly at odds with the research consensus, do you expect to be taken seriously?

[maxwatt]

Just an example of recent warming in the US, we can compare plant hardiness zones in these USDA maps:



You can see an animated flash version of the map at HERE.
The zones have moved north by over 200 km on average.

[Connor MacLeod]

never mind

Edited by Connor MacLeod, 22 January 2011 - 06:36 PM.

[Brafarality]

My intention:
It's limited because it is sometimes important to demonstrate whether impression and measurement match up, but I am going to gather the January temperature data for 10 random places around the world for the past 100 years or so and see the trend. New York City is the one I am most interested in.
Just curious if the impression that January's of the past 15 years are markedly cooler than those of earlier will hold up to the measurements.
It's also limited in order to limit sample size and see if minute effects in narrower slices of time result in something different from supposed larger statistical averages.
It's also limited because ADD will never allow for the completion of anything grander in scope, much less this!

This January has been brutally cold, as was last year's and the year before. I think for the past 10 years, January in New York City has averaged 2-5 degrees below average. In fact I am sure of it. This year and last, alone, tilt the stats. And I distinctly remember several others in the past 10 years that were cooler than average. Just gonna dredge up a few stats to match the impression and do the same for a few other cities and see if you randomly select months and years, if stats can be found that counter the supposed prevailing warming. And, if you do this enough times, and enough times the trend is countered, what does that say?

This past week was brutally below average: New York City's average high temp in January is 37 degrees. We haven't seen that in weeks, except for 1-2 days, which doesnt come close to balancing out the cold imbalance, and we will not see 37 degrees for at least another week. And, by then, the average high temp will have crept up to 39 degrees, or something like that. Last year was the same and the year before. This is not an isolated moment. For one month, I can say with near certainty:

Keeping it simple hypothesis: New York City January Temperatures have been colder in the past 10 years than they were in the past 40 years. I won't go any further than that for now.

Edited by Brafarality, 22 January 2011 - 11:07 PM.

[maxwatt]

...

Keeping it simple hypothesis: New York City January Temperatures have been colder in the past 10 years than they were in the past 40 years. I won't go any further than that for now.

Here is a graph of average New York City January Temperature from 1949 to present, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Without running a least mean square analysis on it, despite the year-to-year stochastic fluctuations inherent in such data, there does seem to be an upward trend belying your hypothesis.

 AvgJAnTempNY1940-2011.png   63.24KB   17 downloads

[Brafarality]

...

Keeping it simple hypothesis: New York City January Temperatures have been colder in the past 10 years than they were in the past 40 years. I won't go any further than that for now.

Here is a graph of average New York City January Temperature from 1949 to present, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Without running a least mean square analysis on it, despite the year-to-year stochastic fluctuations inherent in such data, there does seem to be an upward trend belying your hypothesis.

 AvgJAnTempNY1940-2011.png   63.24KB   17 downloads

Awesome. Where did you get this?
I tooled around for 15-20 min before getting distracted and couldnt find observed temperature records for the month of January for NYC.
Very cool, and note the past few years and how theyve been. Could account in part for my impression.

But, there is a definite error in this chart:
January 1994 was one of the coldest on record for NYC and was 5 degrees below average, when average was considered 32 degrees and not 31, so January 1994 averaged probably closer to 28 degrees than 30, I am sure of it. See Wikipedia article Cold Wave.

Excerpt from Wikipedia Cold Wave article:
"1994 Northern US/Southern Canada cold outbreak - January 1994 was the coldest month recorded over many parts of the northeast and north-central United States, as well as Southern Canada, or coldest since the late 1970s in some locations. Many overnight record lows were set. Cold outbreaks continued into February but the severity eased somewhat. The cold also extended further south than usual into Texas bringing snowfall and temperatures lower than -20 °F to parts of the state, Florida also experienced cold and snowfall, even once flurries were reported north of Miami and damage to the citrus crop in central Florida was extensive. Detroit, Michigan saw their coldest temperature since 1985."

New York City was beyond cold that year and certainly not around average at 30 degrees, as the chart shows. The chart doesn't come close to showing it as one of the coldest NYC January avg temp on record. Please explain.

Rather than assume that the information is doctored, the only way to really solve this is to access the Daily News or New York Times for the month of Jan 94 (maybe via NYPL microfilm?), since they gave the daily highs and lows for each day, with no bias at the time, and add them up and average them out. That way, it is all from immediate source and not filtered through interested parties and the fog of time.
If this gathering of info from 1994 newspaper primary source shows an average Jan 94 temp several degrees below what is shown on this chart, it will not be good news for the global warming enthusiasts, since it will suggest large errors or worse in the stats they rely so heavily on.

OK, just found another year that may be off. Since there is no way I am going to go to the library and look at newspaper microfilm for each day of January (January 2nd to February 1st for previous day temp high, low and avg), it irks that there are these discrepancies, but they will remain unresolved.

Edited by Brafarality, 23 January 2011 - 03:14 AM.

[maxwatt]

I found it on the New York Public Library website, which provided a link to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's data. The discrepancy you perceive may be that the average was calculated in such a way as to mask the most extreme temperature swings. My recollection of that year is that the extreme cold came in bursts. But memory can deceive us. The information you want is on microfiche at the New York Public Library. Speak to a librarian, they'll lend you the film and point you to a reader that will let you view it and print it out for a quarter. Why they've not digitized it all yet is probably due to finding problems.

1991-Present:
READEX Microfiche: C55.214/29

Here's a graph from NOAA for JAnuary averages 19780 to 2010.

Attached Files

•  19701-20101divstaticgraph.png   30.58KB   3 downloads

[niner]

Brafarality, why dig around for a few data points when climate scientists have already made extensive compilations of data? Do you really think their data is wrong? Do you think it's fraudulent? Do you think that it has been widely misinterpreted? Even AGW denialists don't deny the upward trend in temperatures, (nor does anyone deny that CO2 levels have been rising for a long time), they only deny that humans have anything to do with the former.

[Brafarality]

Brafarality, why dig around for a few data points when climate scientists have already made extensive compilations of data? Do you really think their data is wrong? Do you think it's fraudulent? Do you think that it has been widely misinterpreted? Even AGW denialists don't deny the upward trend in temperatures, (nor does anyone deny that CO2 levels have been rising for a long time), they only deny that humans have anything to do with the former.

I dont think its a few data points. Its a serious discrepancy: from nearly coldest on record to just below average is pretty significant.
No other choice but to get the actual daily high and low temps. The raw measurements, I guess.

[Brafarality]

I found it on the New York Public Library website, which provided a link to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's data. The discrepancy you perceive may be that the average was calculated in such a way as to mask the most extreme temperature swings. My recollection of that year is that the extreme cold came in bursts. But memory can deceive us. The information you want is on microfiche at the New York Public Library.

Not sure about the entire winter of 93-94, but January was two 'once-in-a-century' (as a weather man, I think Bill Evans, described them) arctic outbreaks in the month of January. I think there was a small thaw toward the end, but it was only like 5 days, whereas the rest of the month was brute force cold.

For January, for New York City, 4 of 31 daily record lows were set in 1994:
NYC Record Highs/Lows January

Wow. Now that Im looking, 9 were set in 1981. That is wicked. I dont remember that year too well, but if you add up 1981 and 1994, its almost half of the record lows.
"Ah, January 1981, bitter chill it was. The pigeons for all their feathers were a cold,
The squirrel limped trembling through the frozen mud,
And silent was the bus stop crowd in wooly fold"

Last edit: it seems like the bottom dropped out of winter in the late 70s to early 80s, judging by the records, with the mid 90s suffering similarly, but to a lesser extent.

Edited by Brafarality, 23 January 2011 - 07:26 AM.

[Brafarality]

the average was calculated in such a way as to mask the most extreme temperature swings.

Translation: The raw measurements were manipulated to produce the desired result.
BTW: all in good spirit. Feeling all argumentative as of late. Never personal.

[maxwatt]

the average was calculated in such a way as to mask the most extreme temperature swings.

Translation: The raw measurements were manipulated to produce the desired result.
BTW: all in good spirit. Feeling all argumentative as of late. Never personal.

BS. Surely with your vaunted GRE scores you understand the difference between mean, median and mode.

Stochastic phenomena such as weather are fractal in nature, on a small scale any segment of the graph looks to have similar irregularities. Like niner said, why do you want to reinvent the wheel? But if you do, this sitecontains historical global hourly data for weather data throughout the world.

Knock yourself out.

[mikeinnaples]

I am having difficult understanding how such a small data point like the temperatures in the month of Jan. in a single city can be used to disprove warming on a global scale. This is a complete and total failure in logic and reason... and a total waste of time.

[maxwatt]

I am having difficult understanding how such a small data point like the temperatures in the month of Jan. in a single city can be used to disprove warming on a global scale. This is a complete and total failure in logic and reason... and a total waste of time.

Even within that narrow data set, there is a clear upward trend visible in the mean monthly temperature January.

The general tactics used by AGW denialists:

1. Conspiracy
2. Selectivity (cherry-picking)
3. Fake experts
4. Impossible expectations (also known as moving goalposts)
5. General fallacies of logic.
6. Continuing to repeat arguments long after they have been debunked.
7. Distraction (arguing a single narrow subset, ad nauseum)

What we have here is mostly #7.

Edited by maxwatt, 23 January 2011 - 01:44 PM.
addendum

[Brafarality]

the average was calculated in such a way as to mask the most extreme temperature swings.

Translation: The raw measurements were manipulated to produce the desired result.
BTW: all in good spirit. Feeling all argumentative as of late. Never personal.

BS. Surely with your vaunted GRE scores you understand the difference between mean, median and mode.

Ha!

Stochastic phenomena such as weather are fractal in nature, on a small scale any segment of the graph looks to have similar irregularities. Like niner said, why do you want to reinvent the wheel? But if you do, this sitecontains historical global hourly data for weather data throughout the world
Knock yourself out.

Will anyone else do this? I have attentive deference disorder.

[Brafarality]

I am having difficult understanding how such a small data point like the temperatures in the month of Jan. in a single city can be used to disprove warming on a global scale. This is a complete and total failure in logic and reason... and a total waste of time.

Even within that narrow data set, there is a clear upward trend visible in the mean monthly temperature January.

If that data is accurate.

The general tactics used by AGW denialists:
7. Distraction (arguing a single narrow subset, ad nauseum)
What we have here is mostly #7.

Only skeptics do this. I am not a skeptic. I am a VERY recently converted nonbeliever, but hate supposed 'skeptic' tactics, particularly the intellectually challenged non-creative Michael Schermer, who is the worst thing for scientific progress since the inquisition, and he is totally oblivious to the resemblance.
His nasty verbal tactics can be employed on any discovery that has been widely accepted. For example:
"Did you ever travel at the speed of light and have your spaceship actually contract in size? Me neither"

Of course, carping on small data discrepancies is temporarily losing sight of the big picture, but it has to be done for 10 randomly selected cities in order to validate the hypothesis that most of global warming's statistical support comes from uninhabited regions where bias can affect data recording, whereas, I expect 10 random cities will show no change or slight cooling, which brings the remotely recorded data into question, since it becomes the hard to believe: "yeah, global warming is happening everywhere else but where you happen to be standing and near the 10 random cities you selected"

If 10 random cities show no change or cooling, it is a significant sample which leads to: "then where is the warming taking place?"
the typical answer: "Everywhere else" or "over the oceans" or somewhere inaccessible or difficult to follow but for buoys and intrepid climatologists.

Edited by Brafarality, 23 January 2011 - 02:19 PM.

[Brafarality]

Good Lord, people, the ignorance being evidenced here is breathtaking.

It is a fallacy to declare something or someone ignorant if he or it does not agree with your viewpoint. It actually arrests development and actually winds up cloaking the accuser in his own ignorance, since he does not listen but becomes like the 'skeptic' who believes only what was proven last century or last decade or sometime earlier: in the case of global warming, I guess, the 1990s, more recent, since it is a recent thing with a narrow time curve.
By thinking in such a way, you relegate yourself to perpetual ignorance.
It may sound zen, but expand your mind and try to see what others see in order to gain true wisdom and a broader perspective. See what others see, though their eyes.
Learned that in cultural anthropology.
People who study other cultures objectively never 'get' them, but those who do subjectively have a better chance of true understanding.

Edited by Brafarality, 23 January 2011 - 02:29 PM.

[maxwatt]

... [I have attentive deference disorder]...

I think you would argue with a rock. (see technique #6 above, as well as #5)

Look at the maps I linked to earlier, especially the graphic presentation. Except for a few isolated pockets, planting zones in the US have moved north everywhere but in a few small isolated pockets in the mountain west. Completely negates your last post.

We're done here. As my grandmother used to say, "Geh kachen ayn mer."

[Rational Madman]

... [I have attentive deference disorder]...

I think you would argue with a rock. (see technique #6 above, as well as #5)

Look at the maps I linked to earlier, especially the graphic presentation. Except for a few isolated pockets, planting zones in the US have moved north everywhere but in a few small isolated pockets in the mountain west. Completely negates your last post.

We're done here. As my grandmother used to say, "Geh kachen ayn mer."

This is one of those highly intractable subjects where it's quite difficult to reconcile differences, so I rarely bother to expend much energy arguing. Separately, what German states are your predecessors from? At one point, members of the French branch of my family lived in North-Rhine Westphalia, but I don't think they left much of a genetic mark. And then there's the Stoner (formerly Steiner) surname of my father's mother's side, but her family was predominantly from Habsburg and Austro-Hungarian domains.

Edited by Rol82, 23 January 2011 - 10:06 PM.