Sunday, January 11, 2009

Cleaning Up That Good Old Fashioned Global Warming

This afternoon, I had to spend the better part of two hours clearing my property of several inches of snow and ice that fell yesterday and last night. I wasn't alone in this, as much of the Midwest and Northeast is digging out of snow that fell over the past 24 hours.

It's winter. I expect it.

That's what happens during winter. There's snow, and I shovel it and clear it off my cars. Some years there is more snow and it's colder. Other years there's less snow and its warmer. Then there are years where there's lots of snow, but warm streaks or there are years where there's cold but not as much snow.

Yet, there are still people who make out singular weather events as a sign of global warming or that a warm weather streak is a sign that the Earth is heating up. It's all so much nonsense.

There are trends in the weather and climate to be sure, but not ones that tend to support manmade global warming.

We've now gone from Al Gore-inspired global warming hysteria to the other direction - scientists are now warning of an impending Ice Age (and Russian politicians may be counting on that to get Europe over the natural gas barrel). You can go back 30 years and find scientists warning of an ice age then too, right before the same scientists started warning of global warming. Nothing gets the study money flowing like making outrageous claims.

In the span of perhaps two years, we've gone from Al Gore warning that there's an absolute certainty that global warming is happening and that there is consensus to this undeniable fact that manmade global warming is the reason, to scientists now warning of an Ice Age. So much for the consensus.

Al Gore may have won an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for his junk science tripe, but that doesn't make it any more legitimate. His work is based on junk science and no matter how much he tries to put lipstick on that pig, it's still a pig.

They don't know what is going to happen. Computer models are only as good as the data being used, and much of the data is garbage. In fact, you could actually make the argument that global warming is the result of data manipulation, and not actually observed objective science. Scientists are routinely massaging the data to adjust it for various factors, including new equipment. Satellites provide better data than previously, but they provide only a limited timeframe from which to conclude that global climate changes predict warming or cooling - after all, satellites have only been providing the kind of global data for the past several decades, hardly sufficient to conclude on processes that take thousands of years.

Watts Up With That has been on the case of data stations around the world being placed in locations that can only result in inaccurate data being produced - siting temperature sensors too close to roads and HVAC units causing faulty readings, to say nothing of scientists like Hansen massaging the data to suit his political needs.

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