Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

22 December 2009

Rural US Sites Show No Temperature Increase Since 1900

Using data downloaded from NASA GISS and picking rural sites near, but not too near, to urban sites, a comparison has been made of the temperature trend over time of the rural sites compared to those of the urban sites.  28 pairs of sites across the U.S. were compared.  The paired rural site is from 31 to 91 km from the urban site in each pair.  The result is that urban and rural sites were similar in 1900, with the urban sites slightly higher.  The urban sites have shown an increase in temperatures since then.  The rural sites show no such temperature increase and appear to be generally unchanging with only ups and downs localized in time.  Over a 111 year time span, the urban sites temperatures have risen to be about 1.5C warmer than the rural sites.  So, the much touted rising temperatures in the U.S. are due to the urban heat island effect and not due to a global warming such as has been proposed to be caused by human emissions of CO2 due to the combustion of fossil fuels.

You should find this video very interesting:



I find myself wondering how the scientists at NASA GISS have been such proponents of the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis given this temperature data.  It sure seems insane that the EPA has declared CO2 a pollutant, which it will suppress vigorously with command and control tactics.  It is clear that there is no problem caused by CO2 emissions to be addressed.  Waxman-Markey carbon cap and trade type bills and EPA regulations on CO2 as a pollutant are nothing but the politics of Mass Destruction leveled upon American industries and households by the party of massive power lust, the Socialist Democrat Party.

As the fable of man-made global warming due to man's CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels continues to unravel, the American People are going to become ever more untrusting of the Democrats, the print and non-cable media, and, unfortunately, scientists.  Those who have failed to earn our trust generally have some common characteristics.  They are elitists, socialists, and man-hating environmentalists.  When these same people propose to overhaul our health care system, to regulate the financial industry, increase the minimum wage rate, promote labor unions, increase deficit spending, and increase taxes, we should be sure to remember how unreliable their judgment was on the issue of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.  Not only is there no looming catastrophe, but there is no such problem at all!  They have created a phantom problem to justify a huge power grab.

There is a dirty secret behind the scientific side of this scandal.  As the universities have become more and more hotbeds of socialism and political correctness, the scientists who receive federal funding for their research at those socialist/environmentalist/elitist/political correctness hotbeds have not wanted to be left out.  Once, they were more objective and more scientific than the so-called social scientists and the humanities faculty.  Most of this difference has now disappeared because we have so long allowed the lunatic left to run our universities and our government funding agencies.  The scientists are now about as engaged in the cause of advancing socialism/elitism/radical environmentalism/political correctness as is the rest of the faculty at our universities and our government-run laboratories and institutions.

Many say this catastrophic man-made global warming conspiracy could not possibly happen, but they greatly underestimate the power of the socialist control of our once proud institutions of objective learning and study.  They are massively corrupt now.  When we clean house of the politicians in Washington and most of our state capitals, we also need to find a way to clean house in our universities and government laboratories and institutions.  We need real scientists, not socialist pretenders.

Postscript added on 29 January 2010:

Some people have assumed that I made the video above.  This is not the case.  I was impressed by the effort and I thought it was most likely a science fair project which was unlikely to be blemished by artifices and was probably a fairly straightforward treatment of readily available data, so others could readily check up on these results.  It was a challenge to others to see if they could show the same thing as was claimed in this video.  I wish I could tell everyone who did make this video.  They deserve credit for it.

My own assessment of the bad science backing the theory of catastrophic global warming due to man's emissions of CO2 is very broad-based and is not dependent upon the reproducibility of the results in this video.  However, analyses of temperature data from many other areas of the world are showing similar results and I am more inclined to believe than not that if unbiased scientists examine the data as this father and son did, they will find that any increase in U.S. temperatures in rural areas is much less than the alarming results claimed by the advocates of catastrophic AGW.  The urban heat island effect is large and most of the data in the U.S. database is heavily affected by that.  I live and work between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, where the temperature is higher due to the urban heat island effect.  Nonetheless, the temperatures recorded at Baltimore-Washington International Airport and at Reagan Washington National Airport are commonly 2 or 3 degrees Fahenheit higher than those at my laboratory or home.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm seeing the same thing in Canadian temperature data. No warming, just a narrowing in the variation:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25338819/What-Does-Averge-Temperature-Actually-Mean

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25995131/Ontario-Surface-Temperature-Trends-no-Warming-happening

Anonymous said...

"For example, catastrophic man-made global warming alarmists wish to deprive man of the energy needed to maintain modern civilization and personal choice."

Absolute nonsense - Why then all calls for project to generate energy via sun, biofuels, wind, waves, etc, etc.

Why then do I (a scientist who has carefully looked at the literature on AGW and found it to be strong and credible), someone who loves to downhill ski excited by the fact that my local ski area will be generating all its energy needs from wind and wood over beginning in 2012.

Because I am happy to see s demonstration of the use of alternative energy to maintain my energy hungry lifestyle.

So, we can maintain our lifestyle without using fossil fuels.

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

The second anonymous comment points out a problem I often face. Someone wants something politically which is not going to come about in reality, or at least not for many people or in a timely way. How do I assess to what degree a group, say environmentalists, want what will result or simply have dreams which are inconsistent with reality?

This commenter can afford downhill skiing and claims to have an energy-hungry lifestyle which he wants to maintain and believes he can. Maybe he can. He will induce governments to withdraw valuable resources from the private sector and dole them out to special interest alternative energy development companies as subsidies. He will have government mandate that others cannot use coal and other fossil fuels. The cost of energy will go up and electricity will become undependable and expensive. He is OK with this. Others will hurt in fact, but maybe he dreams that the alternative energy sources will become inexpensive and plentiful and efficient very quickly and no one will suffer too much. Maybe he is that foolish.

Obama says energy will become very expensive. He is OK with that. Many people will suffer, but many environmentalist enthusiasts are also OK with that. I will tell you with certainty that if Obama bankrupts the coal-fired electric generating plants as he has sworn he will do, whether he does it in 4 years or in 8 years, it will result in disastrous electricity shortages in the U.S. Many people will lose their jobs and many businesses will be destroyed or have to move to any part of the country with more dependable power.

I work and have worked on many power generation issues. I am very much in favor of research and development to further fossil fuel, nuclear, battery, wind, photovoltaic and other sources of energy. But, I want to see that effort proceed with minimal distortions on the economy and people's lives and given the time it should be given. Rushing in the name of the false global warming alarm is very foolish.

So, yes there are those who do not want their lifestyle to suffer too much and can afford and are willing to pay more to maintain it. There are also those who are constantly scolding others for their consumerism and their supposedly excessive use of resources. There are those that confuse their wishes with reality. There are the uncaring, the other-worlders, and the ascetics. They are all out there.

Anonymous said...

"Why then do I (a scientist who has carefully looked at the literature on AGW and found it to be strong and credible),"

May be then you can show me with peer reviewed papers any climate or weather event that is beyond normal variation of 1000, 10,000 and 100,000 year cycles. Don't use puny time frams like 30 or even 100 years. As a scientist you know such time frames are way to small to get any statistical meaningful trend. Go ahead, try because I have not seen anything that is beyond normal variation. My region of Ontario shows NO WARMING AT ALL for the past 110 years. Please explain that.

BTW, your "alternatives" you cite, they cannot replace FF because they do not have the energy density, nor the ERoEI that FF have. That's why they are, and will always be, expensive and impractable.

BTW2, if you plot the output of wind turbines with the X axis the percent of Name Plate, and the Y axis the number of hours at each percent, you will see that wind turbines spend 80% of their time below 14% name plate. 50% of the time less than 10%. Wind turbines are a pathetic way to generate electricity.

Richard Wakefield
London, Ont.

(I did the first post).

Unknown said...

The animation is interesting. It is not suprising.

Two years ago, I plotted a number of transects while driving through the Monterey Valley. It was early morning before sunrise, thus the primary difference between driving through rural Monterey County and the small towns was the contribution of the UHI. I found UHI effects in all the small towns. These transects showed that there are easily recognized UHIs. Even Phil Jones admitted that they existed. The data in the animation shows that the UHI impact is far greater than Phil Jones' estimate of 0.1 C per century.

The plots are on Warwick Hughes' website.

Anonymous said...

While you rant at "the Socialist Democrat[sic] Party", you miss the point entirely. The elite play good cop, bad cop with us. The Republicans bring fake terror and war and the Democrats bring fake environmental catastrophe. (There's real environmental catastrophe out there, but they're focusing on the fake one because that's where the next big financial bubble is planned to be.)
Get pissed at the Democratic Party all you want and call out their frauds but please read up on socialism and the actual working socialist systems in this world, such as those in Scandanavia.
Those countries are getting such a better deal for their tax dollar than we are, it's not even funny.
The Democratic party is not a socialist party and anyone who tells you it is is a red-baiting fraudster trying to manipulate you.
The system that both parties are now promoting in the US is called fascism (corporatism).. where corporate and state power blur to such a degree that they are inseparable and the rule of law serves to protect the rich from the poor only.
Friedman economics and the "free (totally unregulated) market" serve only the richest and this race to the bottom is undoing over a hundred years of protecting US citizens from dangerous psychopaths whose greed is unbounded. Woe are we for the near future.

Unknown said...

Your comparison of rural and urban temperature data would be a lot more interesting to me than the video. Could we see some graphs please and have some background information on the sites.

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

Since at least WWII, most western socialists have been desperate to separate themselves from fascism, so they re-defined socialism as state ownership of the means of production and property. In fact, it is a matter of secondary importance whether the state owns the means of production and property or it owns some and controls the rest heavily through regulation, mandates, and the ability to put the fear of God into the People with their arbitrary and capricious dictates and threats. Fascism and communism and the many possible mixtures of the two have a long history of being intertwined. I do not accept the redefinition of socialism to exclude fascism and I have previously written on this subject.

The modern American progressive believes in government ownership of property and industries such as the postal system, Amtrak, many other bus and transit systems, the Nation Park and Forest System, the education system, and by and large the medical and health insurance industries. But, in many more areas, they do advocate fascism as you say. I recognized this when I read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as a 9th grader in 1961 or 1962. I have been an observer of the phenomena ever since. Americans tend to like property ownership, so fascism is the more popular form of socialism for most purposes in America.

Capitalism and the free market are the only way to allow individuals to choose their own values and to manage their own lives in accordance with those values. Freedom of conscience, free speech, property ownership, owning one's own body, the freedom to develop one's own sexuality, the freedom to choose one's profession and pursue it freely and much more exist only in such a system. This is the only moral system. Any system which uses force to oppress the self-expression of the individual, is evil. It is the Capitalist system which has done such an incredible job since the Enlightenment in bringing longer life and a richer set of human options to at least hundreds of millions around the world. Feudalism and the forms of socialism have never proven they can improve the lives of whole societies as has the system which allows men to manage their own lives.

Sweden is a dull and slowly innovative country, which I would not wish to live in. It may be as good an example of a relatively well-run socialist country as there is, but it is not for a strong individualist. I wish to spend my own time and money, not give them to a government which some elitists believe spends the People's time and money relatively well.

Capitalism does allow large differences in income, but if everyone is better off and if there is the large upward mobility that we see, only those mired in the low emotions of envy and jealousy are offended by Capitalism. It is common to attribute problems to Capitalism which are really the result of mercantilism, fascist corporatism, and other government interventions. One needs to be careful in distinguishing their baleful effects from those of free people making free associations to trade ideas, goods, services, and to make personal relationships.

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

Frank,

Please read my postscript at the end of the original post.

Best wishes, Charles

Denis Ables said...

I definitely enjoyed the "dad & son" youtube. As I recall, back in December it was included in someone's commentary on WhatsUpWithThat (but not certain).

You will be interested in the following website, which shows a recent comparison of using raw data from 1853 forward (no global warming) with a CRU "homogenized data" conclusion that shows global warming.

But there is another instructive PR program on this website which all should review:

http://euro-med.dk/?p=11956