Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Disproving global warming as easy as disproving seasons

Those so-called scientists are proven wrong again. Turns out the theory of seasons and going from summer to winter is false. Look at the temperatures from this region for the first 11 days of this October versus for the preceding month of September. Supposedly we should be getting colder. What do the data say?

Grand Forks, ND
Average September high temperature = 63.7F
Average October 1-11 high temperature = 71.1F

Bismarck, ND
Average September high temperature = 67.9F
Average October 1-11 high temperature = 74.8

Pierre, SD
Average September high temperature = 73.2F
Average October 1-11 high temperature = 76.5F

Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
Average September high temperature = 68.9F
Average October 1-11 high temperature = 72.7F

Clearly October has been warmer than September, so "winter" must be over.

Just in case someone has not caught on, the above in this post is completely ironic. Well, the data are correct, but the conclusions are ridiculous. Unfortunately, the same reasoning (if you want to call it that) producing those foolish conclusions leads some people to try to claim that global warming stopped sometime recently.

There is a well-understood and verified physical mechanism by which the seasons occur on timescales from weeks to months. Yet there are also well-understood mechanisms (basically weather) by which there are variations on timescales from days to weeks so there is not a consistent rise in temperatures in the midwestern US from January to July and fall in temperature from July to January.

Likewise there is a well-understood and verified physical mechanism by which there is currently an upward trend in global temperatures on timescales of decades. Yet there are also well-understood mechanisms (including El Nino & La Nina) by which there are variations on timescales of years so there is not a consistent rise in global temperatures with every year warmer than the previous.

Anyone trying to sell that warming has stopped is either statistically and scientifically naive-to-ignorant or is willfully misleading you. Or maybe both.

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