Analysis Points to Global Warming (If the science ain't broke, fix it)

Cato Daily Dispatch ^ | May 2, 2003 | Christopher Kilmer, editor

[bruinbirdman]

According to the Orange County Register, "A new analysis of atmospheric temperatures recorded by satellites suggests that there has been significant global warming in the past two decades, a finding contrary to earlier studies."

Despite the new satellite findings, Cato Institute climatology and global warming expert Patrick Michaels warns that the science behind the new study is anything but.

"For years, the reluctance of satellite-measured temperatures of the lower layers of the atmosphere to warm dramatically has been held up as evidence that climate models for future warming are unrealistic," Michaels said today. "In a new twist on this argument, Department of Energy climatologist Benjamin Santer matched a new, 'adjusted' version of the satellite temperatures -- which shows a warming trend -- to a climate model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and found a better correspondence than occured with the original,'unadjusted' data.

"This finding is not science. In science, we make hypotheses (called 'models') and test them on data. We don't adjust the data to fit the model. More important, there is another set of atmospheric data to see whether the cooler or 'adjusted' hotter satellite data are correct -- weather balloons that are launched daily around the planet take the temperature of the same layer that the satellite senses. It turns out that they match the original, cooler data rather than the adjusted, hotter set.

"Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this story is how little coverage it has generated. Normally, this would have been on page one or two of the Washington Post. Clearly, the environmental journalism community has looked at this paper too, and found it to be a curious inversion of science, where the data have been adjusted to fit a preconception, rather than an earth-shaking finding.

"What is also missing from the paper and from press coverage is that the computer model used to match the data predicts only a modest warming for the next 100 years when the recent emission rates of greenhouse gases are factored in -- about 1.6 degrees Celsius, which is precisely the amount predicted in my book, 'The Satanic Gases', published three years ago."

[LasVegasMac]

Anything - ANYTHING! - from KA (where the fruits, nuts and flakes are in charge) is automatically rated as "Suspect" by me. And promptly circular filed.

No offense intended to the CA FReepers.

LVM

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Bump

[boris]

World Climate Report

This temperature update presents the NASA satellite measurements of monthly temperature anomalies—the difference between the observed values and the 1979–1998 mean values. Global satellite measurements are made from a series of orbiting platforms that sense the average temperature in various atmospheric layers. Here, we present the lowest level, which matches nearly perfectly with the mean temperatures measured by weather balloons in the layer between 5,000 and 28,000 feet. The satellite measurements are considered accurate to within 0.01°C and provide more uniform coverage of the entire globe than surface measurements, which tend to concentrate over land.

March 2003: The global average temperature departure was 0.104°C; the Northern Hemisphere temperature departure was 0.085°C; and the Southern Hemisphere departure was 0.122°C.

Below: Monthly satellite temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere (top) and Southern Hemisphere (bottom). Trend lines indicate statistically significant changes only.

[VOA]

bump

[Number_Cruncher]

They forgot to mention that the new 'adjusted' hotter satellite data was adjusted using a climate model. So a climate model adjusts the data and the data is checked against a climate model and this is supposed to confirm climate models are ok. It is very circular reasoning.

[bruinbirdman]

I see a lot more dots below the zero line.

yitbos