A recent post, entitled “Climate Change Concerns: Canadian economy on the rise,” touched on a few thoughts concerning our rising economy and related matters, i.e., global warming.
I included a global temperature chart from NASA and two suggestions related to a sustainable lifestyle.
One. Perhaps the best purchase one can make to support the best future is no purchase at all.
Two. Reduce spending. Pay down debt. Save money for tough times ahead.
An ‘Anonymous’ reader left a comment that prompted a thought and some action on my part.
He/she writes:
"According the global temperature charts from NASA, 2010 posted the warmest average temperature of any year since 1880." Surely you jest. You don't really take that graph seriously. What were they using for thermometers back in 1880? Back in 1900? Back in 1930? A tube of mercury and a bent nail, surely you don’t believe that those temperature readings were even remotely accurate from those things.”
“And surely you don’t believe that they were global in scope. Back in 1880, there were only a few colleges in the world recording temperature, hardly global. Global temperature readings truly began with satellites in 1979. So in reality the global graph only goes back 35 years, not 130. That graph is neither accurate not global, and you know it. I think you are trying to fool your readers. Cheers.” By Anonymous
I thought, why do the most interesting comments always come from people with the same first name?
I replied as follows:
“I'm sure I'm not fooling anyone. Excellent, scientific information is available for all to read. For example, please click on link to NASA provided in the post; then on the first graph on right side of new page; the following is listed.”
Heading: Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change
Line plot of global mean land-ocean temperature index, 1880 to present, with the base period 1951-1980. The dotted black line is the annual mean and the solid red line is the five-year mean. The green bars show uncertainty estimates.
Our traditional analysis using only meteorological station data is a line plot of global annual-mean surface air temperature change, with the base period 1951-1980, derived from the meteorological station network.
There's more, of course, for the willing reader.
As one might expect, the writers (from NASA) don’t provide information re whether a bent nail was used to hang their thermometers, but they likely had their choice between the Fahrenheit scale (introduced in 1724) and the Celsius scale (invented by Swedish Astronomer Anders Celsius, 1701-1744). The Kelvin scale came later, 1848 along with the "Second Law of Thermodynamics", the dynamical theory of heat and boxes of very straight nails.
["Read it, then calculate yearly averages. Simple"]
Concerning the global meteorological station network:
The International Meteorological Organization was the first organization formed (1873) with the purpose of exchanging weather information among the countries of the world. It was born from the realization that weather systems move across country boundaries and knowledge of pressure, temperature, precipitations, etc... upstream and downstream is needed in order to correctly do weather forecasting. (Wikipedia)
How many of your colleges took part by the 1800s, I’m not sure.
There's so much well-informed information from around the world re climate change that I'm sure I'm not fooling anyone.
Cheers.
Gord Harrison
***
Stink. I forgot to say ‘thanks’ for the comment. Another time maybe.
Please click here for more Climate Change Concerns
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