Republicans Introduce Legislation to Bar EPA CO2 Regulation

Richard S. wrote:The law doesn't specifically address greenhouse gases but instead was intended to reduce pollution like lead and particulate matter. CO2 wasn't even on the table when it was enacted. While they have the authority this is something that needs to be addressed by Congress because of the enormous impact it will have across our entire economy.

I agree, it is a stretch to regulate CO2 under the clean air laws, because that was not specifically envisioned when the laws were made. The problem with CO2 is, we don't know what its effects will be. Higher CO2 levels DO raise average world temperatures -- there's eons of geological evidence for that. There will be winners and losers when that happens. Some places will get wetter, some dryer, some hotter, some cooler. For example, ironically, much of the Sahara Desert resulted from LOWER temperatures in the region. Who'd of thunk it? Maybe more CO2 will avoid the next ice age. We don't know. The regulations seek to keep climate unchanged, when maybe we should be embracing higher CO2 rather than fighting it. But we don't know.

Understanding global weather is like trying to understand the human body. Incredibly, complex. One of my recent engineering journals described a global trend of lower wind velocity. This is of great importance to electrical wind power generation since the power provided by the wind varies as the cube of the wind velocity. So a small reduction in average wind velocity makes a really big difference.

No one can tell with absolute certainty what the weather is going to be like a few days from now yet they expect me to believe they can predict global temperatures... and yes I know the difference between weather and climate. All this stuff is based on models, if the model is wrong then the conclusions are flawed. If we take hurricane models for example it took them 30 years to refine them and they still aren't 100% accurate. They were able to refine them over many years by testing them again and again against known results and going back to the drawing board when the prediction was wrong.

That's even before we get into the mess the input variables are. There is a lot of concern about the accuracy of the data, for example this is/was a temperature station:



One thing a lot of people don't realize is they don't use the raw temperature readings, they adjust it and rightly so. For example if we have a reading in Alaska that says it's a balmy 85 degrees on Jan 1 and none of the readings indicate that would remotely be correct then they throw it out because they don't want to corrupt the results. This is where many other issues start because now we have man intervening and deciding what is or is not acceptable, bias is inevitably going to creep in. Take this adjustment for example. the blue line is the raw readings. The red is what it was adjusted too.



Obviously around 1940 there is an issue with the data because the reading drop like a rock but simply looking at it will tell you there is no justifications for the amount of adjustment done to it. In this case we have temperature station that shows global cooling which is proabaly wrong, but now it shows a very warm bias after adjustment. There is a lot of examples like this and most of what I read shows when they are making these adjustments it's always a warm bias.

It doesn`t look like that barrel has ever been used to burn anything, paints not even bubbled & its sitting on a wooden pallet. Looks more like a storage area, there would also have to be a power source for the weather station if thats what it is. It doesn`t matter one way or the other except if pointing out the close proximity as some sort of example of how stupid someone would be to expect accurate readings.

That's a USHCN temperature station, more information here: http://www.surfacestations.org/

That's why you should research this stuff Sam. Here's a few more generating data used to determine global temperatures:

At least that's a Harley sittin there & that's about all of that riggamarole I understood---LOL

All that I was referring to was the picture that was posted, I`m sure there are plenty like your other pictures I would guess that there are others that are correctly installed, didn`t mean any offense but its apparent to me anyway that the barrel hasn`t been used, at least not there or at any type of expected temp. The site you listed gives a picture of both correct & incorrect sites & gives guidelines as to how far from heat sources & vegetation & such so perhaps someone does check up on the installation.

samhill wrote: I would guess that there are others that are correctly installed, .

These are unofficial ratings based on the criteria for a properly cited station set by NOAA, 64% are deemed "poor":

Newest information that I could find, seems that global warming is much like the weather, if you wait awhile it will change.http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=e ... a97aebfa72

It's been changing since the earth was formed...

Since so much of the earth is ocean or places where no human goes the data set for measuring global weather will never be good. Just too many missing locations. The standard method for predicting future weather events is to create a model and then test the model with historical data. Using old data then allows comparing the models accuracy to a date when you know what happened. Models like this is used for weather forecasting. The 1-2 day forecast is surprisingly accurate. The slow global weather changes preclude using this method to validate the model. So no matter how many supercomputers are used the predictions will just be an educated or biased guess, depending on your viewpoint. Using it to drastically change man's activities on earth is shear folly. You could be making any perceived problem worse!

Yanche wrote:Since so much of the earth is ocean or places where no human goes the data set for measuring global weather will never be good.

Which doesn't prevent Hansen of NASA who leads GISS from producing images like like this one. If you're unfamiliar with Hansen he's frequent attendee of protests and was even arrested once. He has also compared the coal trains to the Nazi death trains of WW2... clearly the man has no bias.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/25/gisscapades/


The oddity about the picture is that we are given temperature data where none exists. We have very little temperature data for the Arctic Ocean, for example. Yet the GISS map shows radical heating in the Arctic Ocean. How do they do that?

The procedure is one that is laid out in a 1987 paper by Hansen and Lebedeff In that paper, they note that annual temperature changes are well correlated over a large distance, out to 1200 kilometres (~750 miles).

This is like trying to say what the temperature in Florida is based on temperatures here in Pennsylvania.

Just so there isn't a miss understanding I said "weather data set", not just temperature. Meaning temperature, wind velocity and direction, barometric pressure, etc. All the things you need to predict future weather. Hansen's map is temperature only. That's a straight forward measurement that can be made globally with orbiting satellite mounted instruments. Given where Hansen works the data shown in the above map was likely measured by orbiting satellite and is likely accurate. Interested researchers could have access to the raw data, if they wish, to verify the map.

That map was generated from stations, no satellite data. Hence the reason for the gray areas where there is no data. Most of the very dark red over the arctic should be gray too.

Those arguing against global warming focus on any discrepancy, real or imagined, to say it is all a big fraudulent conspiracy. But while there certainly could be a ride-the-band-wagon effect, much of the respectable world scientific community HAS bought into the fact of global warming. Are they all naive dupes? At this point, the way to really make a scientific reputation would be to DISPROVE that warming is taking place at an unprecedented pace. So I would have to suspect there are some sharp minds looking for that evidence. As a society, we have become so used to being lied to, we are skeptical of anything we hear, especially if it is something we would rather not believe in. Personally I accept the reality of man-made global warming; what I'm not convinced of, yet, is whether we should fight it or welcome it.