Measuring Global Temperature

Feel the heat
Pushing you to decide
Feel the heat
Burning you up
Ready or not
--Power Station

Climate change enthusiasts point to series like the one below as 'proof' that the earth is warming. Makes sense at first blush. After all, gauges like thermometers generate objective measures, and measures are the basis of science, right?

 

Not so fast, my friend. So-called 'science' is easily corrupted by false signals from bogus approaches to measurement. Consequently, the reasoning mind will need acceptable answers to a number of questions before the above data series can be admitted at face value. Let's list a few:

Where is 'global' temperature currently measured? Presumably, it is not a single location. What sites are used? Why are these sites representative of the world? How are temperatures combined statistically to get a 'global' number? Why is this method valid?

What instrument is used to measure temperature? Are the gauges the same at each site? How are they calibrated to maintain precision and accuracy?

How often is temperature measured at each site? By the minute? Hourly? Daily? Is the frequency the same at each site? Why is this frequency reasonable? How are all the readings combined? Why is this combination valid?

Once the current measurement process is understood, then questions must be aimed at the past--because it is a near certainty that historical temperature data in the above series were not all collected using the same method. So we must understand the old locations, frequencies, methods, etc associated with temperature measurement. Then, we must understand how old data have been combined with new data in a manner that validates the notion of continuity over time. The central question is this: How confident can we be that we are comparing apples-to-apples knowing that the global temperature measurement process has changed over the period encompassed by the above series.

Then, of course, come questions about global temperatures prior to 1850--i.e., the first year appearing in the above graph. The earth is estimated to be more than 4.5 billion years old. Temperature data collected over the past 150 years represents a mere speck on the historical timeline. Any claims w.r.t. temperature levels and trends since 1850 must be compared to long ago to judge their significance. This gets us into methods for estimating global temperatures thousands of years ago, and their comparability to modern measures.

Not surprisingly, questions along these lines have not produced satisfactory answers. Until they do, global warming theory has trouble getting out of square one.