On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 21:57:35 -0700, the opaque Mark & Juanita
clearly wrote:
FF said:
One example is found he
http://www.greeningearthsociety.org/...4/wca_24c.html
The chart appears to be a graph of temperature as a function
of time. Note the caption on the left side which indicates
the temperature origin is a "1961 to 1990 average." What is
meant by "1961 to 1990 average" is a mystery to me but inasmuch
as choice of origin is arbitrary let's not worry about
that.
You have the correct chart. This is the chart that various ("Earth in
the Balance") former presidential candidates have used to highlight the
future devastation to be caused by the alarming increase in temperature in
only the past several years. The 1961 to 1990 average temperature was
taken as a baseline and is the zero bar of said chart. The numbers below
zero indicate average temperatures below the reference bar and those above
indicate average temperatures greater than the reference. The large spike
at the end of the chart is intended to cause alarm due to a) it's large
slope and b) the fact that it is fully 0.5 C above the average from the
previous 30 years and well above the average for the past millenia.
It looks to me like the error bars (in grey--if those are
not error bars I don't know what they are) are about +/-
.5 degree for observations prior to about 1600, perhaps +/-
.3 degrees from 1600 - 1900 and I won't hazard a guess as
to what they are in the more recent data.
Given that the grey bars are error bars, then the overall exercise and
alarmism raised by the presentation of said chart are beyond simple
hysterics and border on fraud. The blue and red lines are those focused
upon the by the Chicken Little crowd. The error bars indicate that this
entire exercise is attempting to extrapolate future climate from noise.
Fraud, misreading, hysteria = the Greens.
Having spent the last 15 years of my career in various development projects
that rely heavily upon integration and test and data collection, I can
categorically state that attempting to extrapolate performance from noise
measurements is a fool's errand.
That's what the Chicken Littles ARE, Mark. g
So, what again is your objection? Do you feel the the variance
in the data prior to 1600 was underestimated? If so, what
do you allege has been mishandled in the error estimation?
That the error bars are only 0.5C is the first part that anyone with some
degree of skepticism should focus upon. The second is the deltas that are
being extrapolated for periods before the advent of the thermometer are
being assessed at less than 0.5C, when the exact causes for tree ring size,
ice core sample depth, and other "indicators" are hardly precise enough to
estimate global average temperature to such a degree of precision.
"How can we make our point with so little data to go on? Aha, make the
increments so small the data (with which we want to scare folks) is
off the charts!" Oh, and "Let's estimate data about 10x longer than
we have ANY data for.)
The point is that this is the kind of evidence that is "widely accepted"
and "peer reviewed" and critically acclaimed as showing the coming
environmental disaster that is global warming. It is also the kind of
evidence to which people are referring when they say, "it has been proven
that global warming is occuring."
The peers should be reviewed accordingly, wot?
Recommendation for Chicken Littles: Read Michael Crichton's book
"State of Fear" for both a great story and an excellent reference
work with detailed bibliography for further research. It will give
you a whole new perspective, I guarantee!
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