Its summer and it’s hot, very hot. I know because I wither just in Maryland’s moderate heat. It’s even hotter elsewhere. The past month’s climate headlines seem to place us in the middle of those wildfires burning across California and the West. Hottest temperature ever in Death Valley, broiling well into the hundreds across many other states. Climate change is real, yes? Maybe, or maybe not in the way it is portrayed.
As I read each of these headlines, I ask myself, what did the writer have to curve to make this sensational headline? My natural skepticism at work here I suppose, but is not science built on skepticism? Produce data, prove its accuracy, put your thesis under pressure and see if it still holds up, and last but not least, is it repeatable in the hands of someone else. Ironically, the climate change science crowd works in a reverse universe: make the data fit the hypothesis, put all objections under pressure, demand conformity to the end state.
So when I see a headline here is the healthy skepticism at work
- ‘The hottest ever’ – How far back? Were we keeping thousands of data points prior to the twentieth century
- How many temperature readings did you get? One station, several? This level of detail is rarely if ever disclosed; why would a stupid news-reader care?
- Where is that data station located? This is important because some stations were discovered to be in heat-sinks, near buildings, cars, parking lots, and highways, all places that will collect and hold heat. It would be common sense to most to place a station away from artificial heat sinks but it starts to make sense if the station decision maker is gunning for higher readings.
- Is the thermometer correctly calibrated? This must be asked because some stations have been found to deviate upward for the same reason as poor station placement.
- Is the calibration validated by a third party? While some stations get a second look, (after all, they found stations with errant calibration) it would make sense to systematically validate all calibrations at all stations with an independent agency that would place their stamp and their reputation on the line. But who really wants all of that?
- One reading, a climate change does not make. Well that should be obvious. A record is being broken somewhere every day but many records including multiple annual totals were broken back in the 1930s before man had destroyed so much of the earth. I personally recall the late 80s and 90s as especially hot and dry here regionally and we are nowhere near some of those conditions.
- While the world is full of idiots, there are enough people around the US of A that are educated and do understand data and could not only parse the presentation of data but also synthesis it. Or would that constitute an ‘inconvenient truth’?
- Are we also getting record colds? I know we’ve seen some close record breakers in the Mid-Atlantic area in the past few years
- It really pisses me off to hear a climate dramatist say: ‘Such and such a hot day is proof of global warming – and – such and such a cold record day is ALSO proof of climate warming. By their rhetoric, Any day that is wet, dry, windy, not windy, night, and day, is proof that their theories are true.
- Why do climate change articles attack non-believers as a de-rigueur focus?
- Any wild headlined article that includes a preposition like “scientist say”, should immediately be questioned.
If my blog were not so obscure to start with, my skepticism here would be worthy of censure from the climate tribunal via Google, FB, etc. It would almost assuredly be classified as ‘hate speech’.
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
While we are screwing the earth in countless ways that need to be addressed, I doubt the climate is one of them. Clean air, water and land are far more basic and worthy tasks than an over layer of climate guilt. Hundreds of billion dollars are being blown on worthless academic crap in lieu any boots on the ground. Meanwhile, it took a friggin high school student to initiate cleaning the plastic dump from the middle of the Pacific ocean! I have no more patience for climate freaks!