When pondering this question, it’s important to realize how the Earth’s temperature is measured and has been measured for the last several hundred years. Staring with the period before 1750, there was no standardization of temperature measurement. (The thermometer was first invented in 1714 by Gabriel Fahrenheit.) As time went on, between 1750 and 1850 many standards were proposed with a plus or minus (+/-) accuracy of more than 1ºF. Between 1900 and 1950, this was pared down to less than 1ºF +/-. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, science advanced to 0.1ºF +/- accuracy and from the 1980’s to present, we can now measure surface temperatures to less than 0.01ºF using satellites that can measure temperature changes by the variation of vibrations of molecules in the atmosphere. This is fine, but we don’t typically use this data when people are talking about “global warming.”
The Environmental Alarmists want to use ground based temperature measurements, which are notoriously flawed when looking for evidence of global warming. Weather stations around the United States are forever moving from one location to another. This happened several years ago in Austin, Texas. Previously, all of the weather observations were taken at Mueller Airport. When it was built in the late 50’s, it was way out on the edge of town. Gradually, the city grew up around the airport skewing the weather data with the urban heat island effect. When the airport was first built, Highway IH 35 didn’t exist. By the time the airport was moved, the highway was several hundred feet wide running around the west end of the airport. What once was countryside had become suburbia. The first large scale shopping centers in Austin were built less than a mile from the airport. What had once been in the country was now being surrounded by a hundred thousand commuters and their cars every day. What had once been green pastures was now asphalt parking lots and interstate highways.
Today, the airport has moved to site of the old Bergstrom Air Force Base. Further out into the country once again and this time at a much lower elevation near the Colorado River basin. The result? Suddenly we have record cold temperatures from Bergstrom as weather observers measure the cold air that sinks into the lower elevations. Does that mean we have “climate change” in Austin or that we are simply measuring temperatures in a different locale?
In Bend Oregon, the weather station has moved 3 times in the last 30 years. At one point it was in a canyon that was warmer than most of the town. Each time it moved, there were noticeable differences in the temperatures measured when compared from year to year.
In a town in Arizona, the daily temperatures were measured on the courthouse lawn that was watered frequently. When the weather station was moved across the road to a dry location, the temperatures became as much as 10º warmer. Is that “climate change?”
In California, measurements were being taken next to the tarmac of the airport, when moved to a grassy area, the daily temps dropped by as much as 8ºF. One weather reporting station was found to be recording temperatures next to the air conditioner compressor outside its building.
So what this all boils down to is that the data to support global warming is horribly flawed.
“It’s the sun, stupid!” – If the Earth warms, it’s the sun with its active solar flares. When the solar flares go away – called a solar minimum – the Earth cools a little. This is an observable and provable phenomenon. The Sun irradiates energy on the planet’s surface at a rate of 1,365.3 watts per square meter – every day – all day long. That’s 349 trillion kilowatts spread over the surface of the earth by the Sun each day. (3 quintillion kilowatt-hours per year – 3,059,334,000,000,000,000 kilowatts)
As puny humans, we can today generate only about 17 trillion kilowatts per year. By comparison, the Sun’s output is 176,000 times as great as our own.
All of this doesn’t even begin to take into account the ability of the oceans to absorb heat, the insulation effect of clouds (the main green house gas) or even geothermal energy that has been here since the formation of the planet – Earth’s ultimate heat reservoir.
For someone to suggest that humans can change the climate is like saying an ant can change the course of a supertanker.
The facts are ignored by the Environmental Alarmists because they don’t serve their cause. The media isn’t going to print an Article that says something so mundane as “Earth’s Temperature related to the Sun.” It just isn’t enticing enough to report what we already know and can prove.
2008 and may go down as the coldest year on record for the last 100 years. The winter of 2008 to 2009 is one of the largest “natural disasters to hit China in decades. Nearly a million building were damaged and airports had to close because of blizzards. Hong Kong experienced the second longest cold spell since 1885.
In Vietnam, 40% of the rice crop was swiped out by the record cold along with 33,000 head of livestock. In Mumbai, India, they recorded the lowest temperature in 40 years.
In International Falls, Minnesota where the lakes freeze 6 feet deep, they broke their old record of -37ºF with a temperature reading of -40ºF.
In March of 2008, NASA reported that the oceans have been cooling for the last 5 years. Sea levels have stopped rising and the Northern Hemisphere cyclone and hurricane activity is at a 24 year low.
As the environmental alarmists are in denial stating that is a short-term trend, the government of Great Britain is forging ahead with legislation to “cool the climate.” This after London experienced its first October snowfall since 1934 and Ireland went through the coldest October in 70 years.
On April 11, a Purdue professor told the Christian Science Monitor "this is what you might expect of global warming," because global warming "isn't necessarily always a warmer climate, but a more variable climate." In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. If that makes sense to you, then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
Patrick Wentworth is a certified arborist and biologist that has been studying and working with the environment for the last 35 years in Central Texas. Pat’s company, Austin Tree Specialists, has been caring for trees and landscapes in Central Texas longer than any other company in town under the original ownership. Services offered include pruning, removals, cabling and bracing as well as arborist reports, diagnostics, pest management, oak wilt treatment, and fertilization. Find out much, much more at www.austintreespecialists.com.
