RE: #127

godamnfrank, your degrees mean little unless you have experience in the field. And yes, there is a difference between radiation heating and convective heating. We go back to basics, how much solar radiation makes it to the surface to effect atmospheric temps and climate. On Mars it is a different process because different factors determine how the solar radiation impact the atmosphere. But all this aside you brought up the linchpin point:

in spite of 30 years of consistent instrument data to the contrary

There are two sets of data over the past 30 years. The satellite data (using a single calibrated instrument to measure all points on the globe) shows no significant warming. The ground sensors are not a single instrument, but various instruments of varying quality and precision and placing. The ground network is basically crap. It is not calibrated or maintained to a level that will produce or sense tenth of a degree values. Even if they did, they are so sparsely located they only measure local effects (a few feet) versus the satellites which use a uniform measurement and sense broad areas and up and down the air column.

If you look at how some researchers on the alarmist side do the data processing you find they overwrite the highly precise, uniform sat data with ‘corrections’ from the crappy suite of ground sensors. Which is completely backwards. The satellites, being a single uniform sensor, should be used to calibrate or correct the ground sensors, remove the errors and local effects.

When you do this the warming is not all that high. Hopefully those advanced degrees can help you understand this.

But that is not the only problem here. When you try and claim that this is the warmest period in 10,000 (or 1,000) years there are no temperature records to a tenth of a degree.

The researchers who claim this have also done some very shoddy work. They use proxies like tree rings and varves. But local effects, genetics and many other factors mask any temperature signal in these proxies. A tree is not a thermometer with tenth of a degree accuracy. It just isn’t and no one as ever proven that is it. NEVER!

So when you compare today’s temps to the MWP etc, you cannot claim you know the temperature in those periods they claim.

Look, it is pretty simple. You have to define ‘normal temp’ even for a small region. There are no sensors or proxies which can drive out the temp to a couple of degrees with confidence. You change the assumptions slightly and the entire record goes the opposite direction. They just don’t know.

Then, you have the problem of trying to create a global temp from regions that differ as much as Antartica does with the Sahara. What is the global temperature? No one has proven they can derive a single value within a tenth of a degree that represents the global number.

For example: what is the global nominal rain fall or precipitation per season? Rainfall is completely dependent on local climate and geography. If the US sees 3 extra inches ones summer and the Sahara sees 3 extra inches the same year, is that an increase in global precipitation that can be established to a tenth of an inch?

Of course not. Because we don’t know how wet or dry it was over the oceans (that 75% of the surface would over ride anything we see on the land).

It is arrogance to think we have established a global or hemispheric or land/ocean normal value of temp, or measured deviations from that proposed (and that is all it is right now, proposed) normal value within a tenth of a degree.

The instruments you have on the ground are as precise as a butter knife when you need a scalpel. And I do not think, orders of magnitude wise, that is an exaggeration.

Prove otherwise! Because remember, the burden of proof is on the ones who support the theory.