Ice Cores

Ice cores are used to demonstrate on charts what the global mean temperature was thousands of years ago.  I read this wikipedia article on Ice Core and it was talking about how the cores only show local temperature.  Put this great bit of knowledge together with today's explanation of cooler temperatures being a side-effect of global warming because an increase in global temperatures will cause a greater disparity of local temperatures, up or down.  So, how can we trust the temperatures in just a few locations to show us to any degree of accuracy of what the temperature really is?

What can be Greener than Nuclear Power

Seriously??  Why haven't there been any nuclear power plants built in the last 30 years?  They are safe, clean, and produce a lot of power.  Is it the transportation of nuclear waste?  Is it the disposal of nuclear waste?  Is it the threat of a possible meltdown?  How much was spent in the Gulf trying to plug that well and clean up the oil? I'm sure you could have built a couple of nuclear reactors with that money.  Why are we putting so much money in green technology when we already have it?  I don't mind research, but if it works, use it!

Global Warming Watch: Our problem is climate change is not our problem

Global Warming Watch: Our problem is climate change is not our problem

CO2 emissions have no bearing on changing the temperature. It has historically lagged behind indicated temperature.

Probe seeks Climate-Panel Changes

I'd like to comment on this article about Climate-Panel Changes for the IPCC.  Yes, there are errors in most publications, it just happens.  However, the vast majority of them are typos and not problems with data manipulation or citing unreliable sources.  This is a step in the right direction.

The fact that the panel is not going to reconsider the main conclusion of the 2007 report that global warming is "unequivocal" and "very likely" caused by human activity is bad.  Is unequivocal 100% and very likely 98%?  What are the actual percentages that they believe humans are causing global warming?

Here's my thought... we are a flea on a dog.  The Earth can have us wiped out any time it wants.  Try to find ancient pyramids in Peru.  We are still finding them today, and it is taking satellites and technology to find them.  After we are gone, the evidence we were even here will be gone in a few thousand years.

Midieval Warm Period

Are we warmer now than in the Midieval Warm Period?  Or, is it colder?  I've found a chart from the IPCC that shows it was warmer then than now:

So, if that has changed, what data changed, or was it massaged because it was incorrect?  Help me out here!  I don't know what to believe.  Is global warming getting out of control, or are we slowly returning to a warmer temperature that we are supposed to be at?

How can I get my hands on the raw data for all this?

The Sun's Role in Climate Change

Seeing that we get nearly all of our heat from the Sun, and the Sun not being a perfect object, it must have some variance.  If it has a variance, then it must affect our temperature, right?

So I found this article on wikipedia about Solar Variation, and noticed that we differ about 1 watt per square meter during the solar maximum and solar minimum.  Give the wattage is about 1366 watts/sq M, that variance is about +/- 0.07%.  Does that mean our temperature can vary by 0.07% just from the Sun alone?  How much does the solar output really contribute to global warming and cooling?

Measuring Global Mean Temperature

Ever since ClimateGate hit the news, I have been wondering about the collection of temperature measurements and how that figures into Global Mean Temperature.

I imagine it's all done by ground based stations and at any moment in time, all the stations' temperature readings are averaged together giving a global mean temperature.  That's probably a very simplistic view of the scenario.  Here's a few problems that I see:

1)  Adding more measurement stations means you are adding more points of data, and depending on where they were added (say warmer climates), it could skew the results.  How do you calculate for this?

2)  Heat islands.  Ever stand in the middle of an asphalt parking lot and feel yourself baking?  Ever stand just to the side of one and still feel the baking?  What happens if buildings or parking lots or roads are built close to these stations?  Is the data corrected for this change?  How do you correct for this?