One of the problems with ascertaining whether the average global temperature is rising is that measurement errors are almost always going to be biased upward, because waste heat is ubiquitous, generated in nearly every manmade device, while waste cooling is virtually unknown — and over time, the number of those heat-emitting devices is always increasing, so one might reasonably expect the error to keep getting larger.
Satellites get around this problem nicely, by taking temperatures across a wide area rather than a particular point in space that may be in proximity to a manmade heat island. We only have 30 years of satellite data, but the difference between surface and satellite over that time is striking, especially over the last five years.
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I’ve used the "heat island" and/or "waste heat proximity" argument to explain some rising ground-based measurements over the years, but I’ve also tried to analyze the data objectively and up until 1998 the evidence of actual warming unexplained by those factors was still pretty strong.
Since 1998 however, the evidence is strong that even the ground-based measurements have shown an increasing tendency towards lower temperatures.
This is why, by the way, the zealots have stopped calling it "Global Warming" and now rally around "Climate Change" instead. It was getting too embarrassing to their cause for their conventions to keep being held in record snowfall or cancelled due to freezing temperatures.
What is so hilarious about the whole "Climate Change" mantra is that anyone who knows anything about climate realizes that "Climate Change" is as redundant as "Political Corruption." Climate IS change. Anyone who thinks there is some "ideal" or "normal" climate for this planet is, quite simply, ignorant at best and an idiot at worst.
As it has been since the 70′s "Global Cooling" scare, all of this is about political power and the attempt to create and enforce anti-capitalist, anti-growth laws which advance the cause of world globalization and reigning in the West in general and the United States in particular.
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although satellite based measurements have the drawback that they are an indirect measurement which must be heavily corrected and accurately modeled to extract the appropriate numbers.
GISTEMP does not comply with any Software Quality Assurance standards. As best I can tell, Hansen hasn’t even attempted to determine what the appropriate standard is. My FOIA request wasn’t able to locate the appropriate base SQA documentation.
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