Via Michael Tobis and Climate Progress, an astoundingly outspoken reply by Jim Hansen to Michael Griffin and others who quote a Motl
1) Our junior high school English teacher admonished us that ‘ignorant’ was not a derisive word, it means ‘uninformed’, not ’stupid’. Given that 15 years ago, under George Bush the elder, the United States (and practically all other countries in the world) signed and ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which calls for stabilizing climate, it seems that ‘ignorant’ or ‘uninformed’ is an appropriate adjective for describing his remarks. Not to mention all the research results of NASA, other agencies, the IPCC, etcAfter a few other considered remarks, Hansen points out that
The significance of the Administrator’s remarks is the insight it provides into the February 2006 massacre of the Earth Science Research and Analysis budget (which funds NASA support of Earth Science research at universities as well as NASA Centers, primarily Goddard Space Flight Center), as discussed hereSomething that Eli mentioned a few months ago in his seminal post, Those who governments would destroy they first defund. The Bunny knows all.
Those who governments would destroy they first defund.
ReplyDelete..which is why our government has been in self-destruct mode for several years now.
And Bush et al have clearly decided that the best way to destroy the individual parts is to destroy the whole -- or at least destroy the American publics' overall confidence in their government.
Bush is doing a great job on the latter.
-- Horatio Algeranon
Hey Eli, let me know if I have this correct:
ReplyDeleteThe anomaly for individual stations in the network is reported as how it has varied from its own average. The actual temperatures are not reported because we are dealing with a variety of temperature ranges, so only the change in that one location is reported. These "anomalies" are gathered over large areas and combined, then (or after being?) subjected to complicated statistical manipulations. We come up with an approximated rate of change globally. This data is then averaged over a 30 year period which is the baseline. This is some meaningless number we just use to offset from. We then compare the anomaly figure for a single year to this number for the thirty. So if that number for 30 years is 100, and 2005 comes out to 100.51 then it has gotten .51 warmer overall. If it comes out to 99.49 then it has gotten .51 cooler overall. This even applies to the individual years that comprise the baseline. We use 30 years because it smooths out minor variations and gives us a more accurate picture. The best data is from 1961-1990 so we use that. We do have monthly data on the stations, and we could combine them. This would give us the actual temperatures overall. But we can't compare them to the anomalies because they are derived differently. It would be like mixing ounces of fluid with ounces of weight.
Basically correct and understandable?
HadCrut2v states their grid-box anomaly base period as 1961-1990 but not what that number is (which I'm only curious about). It would be less confusing if it were put like this: "The base number is 3742.23 and covers the years 1961-1990. All the numbers on these charts are the change from 3742.23."
I did find out the following though, the global mean temperature, which is what I was originally asking about:
1901-2001 13.94C
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html#means
(I think; it's not clear if they're talking about 1961-1990 instead)
1880-1997 14.4C
http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/stories/sir24.html
or
1880-1997 "about 15 C"
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/1998/may/may98.html
Sorry if this is in the wrong place.
Thanks, Robert S.