Wow – this is really an important study

A new paper comparing NCDC rural and urban surface temperature data

This is a doozy of a study – one that is way long overdue.  It looks at the raw data for rural weather stations in the U.S. and then the urban raw data.  Then it looks at the adjusted data for rural ad for urban and looks at the net adjustments that the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) makes.  (This is only a study of U.S. stations, and a small sampling at that – which will need to be replicated, preferably with a much larger sampling of weather stations, and replicated worldwide.)

[Note: the reader should be made aware that the NCDC is one of the three climate databases used for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and dovetails closely with the other two, so what they are doing here is likely close to what is being done elsewhere, too.]

Without peeking, which do you think the numbers show?

1. Rural data is adjusted upward
2. Rural data is adjusted downward
3. Rural data is not adjusted at all
4. Urban data is adjusted upward
5. Urban data is adjusted downward
6. Urban data is not adjusted at all

Two of these seem to be taking place.  Which ones?

What Do You Think of These?

I had heard of the Rio Cuarto craters about 7 years ago, and had seen a copy of the cover of Science magazine with three large craters.  Really LONG craters.  REALLY LONG craters.  One of them was 4.5 kilometers long, about 3 miles long.

Take a look at this:

Pretty cool, huh?

These are craters that seem to have impacted 10,000 years ago.  That happens to be right when the end of the Ice Ages was.  Since I don’t think the ice age really existed, I think that is wrong, but for different reasons than scientists might contend.  They do consider that time to be the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of our current age, the Holcene.  I think it is when Atlantis went down for the last time, and I think they read their interpretation into it, while I read mine into it.

But I had not thought of that when I first read about these craters.  Now I have to wonder.

I will cover that in another post, one about the Younger-Dryas Impact Event maybe, or just one on Atlantis.

Back to Rio Cuarto, here is a view from inside the one in the left foreground:

The articles – scientific ones and main stream media ones – all talk about there being something like 10-20 craters over a 30km long area, all NNE of the city of Rio Cuarto, about 600km west of Buenos Aires.

In this post I am writing to point out that there are more craters.

A LOT more craters.

Most of them are south-southwest of the city of Rio Cuarto.  I suspected there might be more, so I started looking for them on Google Earth.  I found them.  Here are the Google Earth images (click on them to enlarge them):

Winter Weather – NO, not as relates to Global Warming! (well, maybe a tiny bit)

Let’s get the global warming bit out of the way then:

Global warming started after 1984, when I decided I didn’t want horrible winter weather anymore.  I was REALLY REALLY fed up with -30F temps and white outs and blizzards.  So, I asked if we could PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE have milder winters. [Prior to that, I had been eagerly enjoying the horrible weather we had been having.  By 1984, I’d had enough!  Terrible winters SUCK!  But it had taken me a few bad ones to really get to hating it.

Starting in 1985, that is precisely what happened.

Am I claiming responsibility?  Am I claiming supernatural powers?  Do I have a link to the gods?

You tell me.

I thought it was a nice coincidence.  And knowing what I thought I knew about the human mind, I thought, well, let’s go with that and see where it goes.

In 1999 I started reading up on global warming and concluded that the buggers were wrong about it.

By 2000 I thought, why not try to push my luck on this, so I started saying the climate was going to get better.

In the fall of 2009 I decided that, once and for all, they were going to be shown to be wrong: I decided that this winter was going to be a doozy.  ALL the weather forecasters on all continents said it would be a warmer, milder winter than most.  But I made my call, and I stuck with it.

Now why would any sane, science-based person make such statements about what was going to happen?

Yes, I do think I am sane.

But I also assume that I don’t know all that is possible, for the human mind, for the universe, or for the interaction between the human mind and the universe.  There are certainly some things that are possible that we have not figured out yet.

This post is some level of anecdotal “evidence” that we do not.  Some will say I am delusional.  All I can say is that I am reporting this all as it did occur.  I do not make claims here that are not true, as far as they happened in my experience.

Science skeptics (the people who claim that anyone who doesn’t toe the line on current scientific thinking) would have a field day accusing me of self-delusion.  I have no intention of convincing them.  I am only telling this as what happened.  They can tell you I am remembering things wrong.  They can tell you I am living in la-la land.  They can tell you I believe what I am saying (but that I really do need to be committed to some institution).  I don’t give a rat’s ass what they think.

Catchy Titles, The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg – and The Long Road Back

I was advised a bit ago that I needed to make great opening paragraphs, something to catch the attention of those who visit here.  I assume that means headlines, too.  It was good and sound advice.  Thanks, Lloyd.

When the message is grim, what constitutes an attention-grabber, though?. . .

I am not into alarmism, so I won’t go around yelling “The Sky Is Falling!”  Even if it is, what good would yelling do?  Better to just share thoughts and perhaps some of us will find common ground and a way forward.  My two sons are having to try to find work in this rotten economy, and so far it is not pretty.  I am free-lancing in mechanical engineering, and as closely as engineering is tied to manufacturing, that is not a nice place to be, not early in the year 2010.

And so, without further adieu, on with the post. . .

One last Climate post for a bit…

Given the comments of climatologist Susan Solomon in this article from last week  in The Guardian, Water vapour caused one-third of warming in the 1990s, who said

…the new finding does not challenge the conclusion that human activity drives climate change. “Not to my mind it doesn’t,” she said. “It shows that we shouldn’t over-interpret the results from a few years one way or another.”

she and her cronies won’t be changing their conclusions any time soon.

It is downright amazing that she can say with a straight face – after an 11-year slightly declining plateau in global temps – that “we shouldn’t over-interpret the results from a few years one way or another.”

Why is that amazing?  Because during the 11-year period from 1988-1998 (inclusive), she and her cronies were certainly drawing interpretations – and all one way.

Now THAT is a double standard!  Wow.  Amazing!  (Didn’t I tell you?)

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation – Something to Think About?

First off, readers might be wondering, what is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation?  In 100 words or less:

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is an alternating pattern of warm(er) or cold(er) surface water in the northern Pacific.  This condition stays in one “phase” (warm or cold) for 1 to 4 decades, then switches over and spends 1 to 4 decades in the opposite phase.  Compared to El Niño, it is like a slow boat to China.  It affects the climate all across the US and Europe.

And get this: It wasn’t even discovered until 1997, and then not even by a weatherman or climatologist, but by a biologist who discovered it while studying salmon catches.

In an online article I was reading from the spring of 2008, its authors made a seemingly innocuous and uncontestable assertion, one that most people would agree with.

Here is what the authors said:

“The long term warming trend indicates the total energy in the Earth’s climate system is increasing. This is due to an energy imbalance – more energy is coming in than is going out (Hansen 2005).”

–  John Cross and John Cook “Is The Pacific Decadal Oscillation the Smoking Gun?” (2008)

And I was just about to accept it and go on, when I thought – wait a minute!  Not necessarily!

Science Gets Blindsided Again – Episode 001

“In fact,” says Doug Rowland of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “before the 1990s nobody knew they even existed. And yet they’re the most potent natural particle accelerators on Earth.”

Is Rowland talking about Yeti cyclotrons?  Bigfoot in Batavia, where the Fermi Lab is?  Maybe conCERNed ghosts in Cern, Switzerland?

Wow, something science didn’t know about!  Who’dathunk?

In these days of Climategate, Glaciergate, Amazongate who’d have thought we’d see an article on Fessin’UpScienceGate?  I wonder if Tricky Dickie Nixon knew he was birthing a whole galaxy of gates when he erased those 18-1/2 minutes of criminal Oval Office activities…

Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters

The stilted guy is gone.  Off the cliff and to that place where we will never find him now.  JD Salinger, if you hadn’t heard, has gone to his great hermitage in the sky (or wherever).

Some of you read him, perhaps all.  I may be the only one of us who wasn’t required to read Catcher in the Rye.  I read it, it changed some of what I was, as it did all of you.  In me, it made me want to write.  What did it do to you?

An Insider Looting Party

What will the insiders do, when the system finally looks like it is about to blow?

Reading this on NPR’s website: Watchdog: Bailouts Created More Risk In System reminds me of some thoughts I had many moons ago.

The insiders will find every way they can to not only game the system, but to loot the system for every dime they can.

And what is “the system’ that they will loot?