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Catastrophism and Scientology

The Heartland Institute
Published on Sep 21, 2018

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Anthony Watts, founder and editor at wattsupwiththat.com, explains why the oft-reported surface temperature record is inaccurate, misleading, and an insult to proper science, gate keeping, data source problems and inconsistencies between various data sets.



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The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, or NIPCC, as its name suggests, is an international panel of scientists and scholars who came together to understand the causes and consequences of climate change. NIPCC has no formal attachment to or sponsorship from any government or governmental agency. It is wholly independent of political pressures and influences and therefore is not predisposed to produce politically motivated conclusions or policy recommendations.
NIPCC seeks to objectively analyze and interpret data and facts without conforming to any specific agenda. This organizational structure and purpose stand in contrast to those of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is government-sponsored, politically motivated, and predisposed to believing that climate change is a problem in need of a U.N. solution.

http://climatechangereconsidered.org/
 
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Here is an interesting PBS interview of Antony Watts discussing the problems with data collection, and his research into those issues, responses to criticism, the use of scare tactics, the use of climate scientists as tools to introduce additional regulation etc. The second is an in depth lecture on the issues with climate change.


 
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Teanntás

Silver Meritorious Patron
Mention birds and you're bound to get a response from me, I'm obsessed with 'em. They're more than conscious, they're highly intelligent (ask Sheila).

An interesting detail - if I've got six small pieces of cheese in my hand, my friendly crow will unerringly go for the largest piece first and leave the smallest until last even if the difference is measured in millimeters, and this is the case with whatever food I give him. The instinct to capitalise is simply awesome and there's no time to waste, he'll grab the biggest bit first every time. His judgement is astonishing.
(1) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...shermans-fish-day-incredible-close-video.html

(2)
 

TomKat

Patron Meritorious
An important thing to recognize about so-called global warming is that it is being SOLD. And when something is being sold we need to look at the tools of propaganda, in this case, primarily BANDWAGON and REPETITION. We're not allowed to argue the data, just that "98% of scientists believe it, you should too."

https://marketingwit.com/types-of-propaganda-techniques

I remember in the early 90s they were selling "globalism" the same way so that Clinton could pass NAFTA. Now that turned out real good, didn't it?
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Paul, you've got to be joking. There is not a shred of science or evidence there. Small planets orbiting "below" large planets? Moons of Jupiter interfering with moons of Saturn? Science has come a long way in the last 500 years, and that author seems to be totally ignorant of it.
He has about 400 papers indexed here on his science site: http://milesmathis.com/index.html. Guess he smoked a lot of hash.

Paul
 
One of the interesting things in the videos by Watts is the methods of data collection that are skewed. In the longer of the videos he shows a map showing where the data collection stations are in the USA, and in several their temperature readouts are higher than the surrounding ones. So he checked them out - some were in parking lots. Another on the roof of a building. Another near a building's AC compressor. If you have ever walked on a hot parking lot - or near a south facing masonry wall, you can feel the heat radiating off them.

The data is skewed high, yet NOA still takes in the data and uses it as if it were completely accurate. Some of the data centers are in city or urban settings, and they read hot in the evenings - they are picking up the ambient heat from the paving, buildings , etc. that was not there years ago when the units were in open fields. The units were, prior to electronic data collection, louvered wood boxes with a thermometer in them. The louvers allowed the ambient air to flow through and raise or lower the thermometers within.

He did say that these units, did not meet NOA's own standards, and after his reporting them, some of the offending ones were removed.

Mimsey
 

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
The units were, prior to electronic data collection, louvered wood boxes with a thermometer in them. The louvers allowed the ambient air to flow through and raise or lower the thermometers within.

He did say that these units, did not meet NOA's own standards, and after his reporting them, some of the offending ones were removed.

Mimsey
The units, prior to electronic data collection, were recorded by some human walking out to them, squinting at the thermometer (which was generally only accurate to withing +/- 2 degrees or so in many places), and writing down what he read. Researchers then try taking these historical readings and trying to figure out trends of a tenth of a degree.

With low-paid humans in the picture, you CAN'T rely on the data as being that accurate. Is the average human going to reliably go out to take a reading in a sleet storm? Or is he more likely to stay in his warm building and put down his "seat of the pants" guess and go have another cup of coffee?

Also, many of these temperature recording stations were never intended to supply scientific data for climate research. The primary purpose of temperature stations at airports, for example, is to provide reasonable readings of what the runway temperature is for pilots, because colder air is denser and easier to take off in than hot air, and pilots need to adjust their takeoff power.
 

Bill

Gold Meritorious Patron
So while some natural processes are helping us along in this process, all the evidence points to us being the ones who started it, and still being the major contributors.
"All the evidence". Great. What "evidence"? You just don't seem to be able to come up with any factual, relevant, verified "evidence". In truth, no one needs to "disprove" Anthropogenic Global Warming if it hasn't been proven in the first place. Please provide proof.
If you can find a fault in the sequence - "we release carbon - carbon blocks heat radiation - the earth gets hotter" please let me know. And if you have an alternative explanation for the heat levels rising, I would love to hear that too.
Ah! The "sequence". IF you ignore all other factors, then the "sequence" is simple. Unfortunately, the Earth isn't ignoring all the other factors. In case you actually thought it was "simple", the climate IS NOT SIMPLE. Carbon dioxide is only one of the many, many greenhouse gasses and other factors affecting climate.

By the way, it isn't "carbon" it is "carbon dioxide". The difference is important.
Over the past two years just about every temperature record in Australia has been broken. But of course that is just one large island. I haven't seen figures on how other countries are faring, but there seem to be a lot more hurricanes and tornadoes.
Note that the alarmists carefully ignore record- breaking cold temperatures and, every year, there are a lot. Just today there are a lot. More record cold than record heat. "Record breaking" isn't proof and it sure isn't science.

Haven't heard back from you with the "obvious" and "simple" proof that global warming is primarily human caused. I'm patient. Who knows, you might convince me.
 

TomKat

Patron Meritorious
Note that the alarmists carefully ignore record- breaking cold temperatures and, every year, there are a lot. Just today there are a lot. More record cold than record heat. "Record breaking" isn't proof and it sure isn't science.
One of the tricks they use to prove global warming is they use airport weather stations. With urban sprawl the temperatures continually rise year-on-year as the airports become surrounded by city. But that's just one of many tricks.
 
One of the tricks they use to prove global warming is they use airport weather stations. With urban sprawl the temperatures continually rise year-on-year as the airports become surrounded by city. But that's just one of many tricks.
I don't know if that is intentional. Perhaps they just see it rising over the years and they don't bother to see why. Watt wondered why several were reporting higher values than the ones close by - so he checked them out and found a bunch of problems.

What is bothersome, no one in NOAA wondered why few of them were skewed, and investigated to see why.

"Also, many of these temperature recording stations were never intended to supply scientific data for climate research. The primary purpose of temperature stations at airports, for example, is to provide reasonable readings of what the runway temperature is for pilots, because colder air is denser and easier to take off in than hot air, and pilots need to adjust their takeoff power."

Nope. Watch his video. They were for collecting scientific data - they had been in use for decades and decades. They became inaccurate as urban development ate up the available land, and they were moved into parking lots, roof tops etc. But many are still functioning out in the boonies and are accurate.

There are plenty of people who are meticulous and honest - and some are clearly uninformed, placing them next to heat sources with no malice intended.

The real problem is this: All the data flows from the field sites to NOA where it is then sent out to different agencies. At NOA is where the data is massaged. There's your bottle neck. He discusses that in the longer video I posted.

Mimsey

redding2.jpg


U.S. Climate Data Compromised by Sensors' Proximity to Heat Sources, Critics Say
By Joseph Abrams, | Fox News
A critical cog in the machinery that drives the theory of global warming is a small white box not too far from where you live. Inside the box sits a thermometer that tracks the local temperature, which in turn becomes part of a data trail for the monitoring of climate change on Earth.

But there's a problem: Nearly every single weather station the U.S. government uses to measure the country's surface temperature may be compromised. Sensors that are supposed to be in empty clearings are instead exposed to crackling electronics and other unlikely sources of heat, from exhaust pipes and trash-burning barrels to chimneys and human graves.
The National Climate Data Center (NCDC) uses this massive network of sensors to determine daily highs and lows at the 1,219 weather stations in its Historical Climatology Network (HCN). The network has existed since 1892, but only in the last decade has it come under intense scrutiny to determine whether the figures it measures can be trusted.

For the past three years, a group of zealous laymen has visited and photographed nearly every one of the weather stations to determine whether they have been placed properly. And what they found is a stunning disregard for the government's own rules: 90 percent of the sensors are too close to potential sources of heat to pass muster, including some very odd sources indeed:
• A sensor in Redding, Calif., is housed in a box that also contains a halogen light bulb, which could emit warmth directly onto the gauge.
• A sensor in Hanksville, Utah, sits directly atop a gravestone, which is not only macabre but also soaks up the sun's heat and radiates it back to the thermometer at night.
• A sensor in Marysville, Calif., sits in a parking lot at a fire station right next to an air conditioner exhaust, a cell phone tower and a barbecue grill.
• A sensor in Tahoe City, Calif., sits near a paved tennis court and is right next to a "burn barrel" that incinerates garbage.
• A sensor in Hopkinsville, Ky., is sheltered from the wind by an adjoining house and sits above an asphalt driveway.
• Dozens of sensors are located at airports and sewage treatment plants, which produce "heat islands" from their sprawling seas of asphalt and heavy emissions.'

"So far we've surveyed 1,062 of them," said Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who began the tracking effort in 2007. "We found that 90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."

More at link

https://www.foxnews.com/science/u-s...sensors-proximity-to-heat-sources-critics-say
 
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U.S. Climate Data Compromised by Sensors' Proximity to Heat Sources, Critics Say

A critical cog in the machinery that drives the theory of global warming is a small white box not too far from where you live. Inside the box sits a thermometer that tracks the local temperature, which in turn becomes part of a data trail for the monitoring of climate change on Earth.
But there's a problem: Nearly every single weather station the U.S. government uses to measure the country's surface temperature may be compromised. Sensors that are supposed to be in empty clearings are instead exposed to crackling electronics and other unlikely sources of heat, from exhaust pipes and trash-burning barrels to chimneys and human graves.

snip

For the past three years, a group of zealous laymen has visited and photographed nearly every one of the weather stations to determine whether they have been placed properly. And what they found is a stunning disregard for the government's own rules: 90 percent of the sensors are too close to potential sources of heat to pass muster, including some very odd sources indeed:
• A sensor in Redding, Calif., is housed in a box that also contains a halogen light bulb, which could emit warmth directly onto the gauge.
• A sensor in Hanksville, Utah, sits directly atop a gravestone, which is not only macabre but also soaks up the sun's heat and radiates it back to the thermometer at night.
• A sensor in Marysville, Calif., sits in a parking lot at a fire station right next to an air conditioner exhaust, a cell phone tower and a barbecue grill.
• A sensor in Tahoe City, Calif., sits near a paved tennis court and is right next to a "burn barrel" that incinerates garbage.
• A sensor in Hopkinsville, Ky., is sheltered from the wind by an adjoining house and sits above an asphalt driveway.
• Dozens of sensors are located at airports and sewage treatment plants, which produce "heat islands" from their sprawling seas of asphalt and heavy emissions.

"So far we've surveyed 1,062 of them," said Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who began the tracking effort in 2007. "We found that 90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."

Watts, who has posted pictures of the sensors on his Web site, SurfaceStations.org, says he believes that the location of the sensors renders their recorded temperatures inaccurate, which in turn brings some of the data behind global warming theory into question.
"It's asinine to think that this wouldn't have some kind of an effect," Watts told FoxNews.com.

But climate scientists who analyze the data say that they are able to account and adjust for the faulty locations by comparing warming trends they spot at bad sites to trends they see at good ones.
"If you use only the sites that currently have good siting versus those that have not-so-good siting, [bcolor=#ffff00]when you look at the adjusted data[/bcolor] :roflmao:basically you get the same trend," said Jay Lawrimore, chief of the climate monitoring branch at NCDC.

So much for accurate data gathering - unbiased climate science at it's best

More at link

https://www.foxnews.com/science/u-s...sensors-proximity-to-heat-sources-critics-say
 

Enthetan

Master of Disaster
But there's a problem: Nearly every single weather station the U.S. government uses to measure the country's surface temperature may be compromised. Sensors that are supposed to be in empty clearings are instead exposed to crackling electronics and other unlikely sources of heat, from exhaust pipes and trash-burning barrels to chimneys and human graves.
The National Climate Data Center (NCDC) uses this massive network of sensors to determine daily highs and lows at the 1,219 weather stations in its Historical Climatology Network (HCN). The network has existed since 1892, but only in the last decade has it come under intense scrutiny to determine whether the figures it measures can be trusted.

For the past three years, a group of zealous laymen has visited and photographed nearly every one of the weather stations to determine whether they have been placed properly. And what they found is a stunning disregard for the government's own rules: 90 percent of the sensors are too close to potential sources of heat to pass muster, including some very odd sources indeed:
• A sensor in Redding, Calif., is housed in a box that also contains a halogen light bulb, which could emit warmth directly onto the gauge.
• A sensor in Hanksville, Utah, sits directly atop a gravestone, which is not only macabre but also soaks up the sun's heat and radiates it back to the thermometer at night.
• A sensor in Marysville, Calif., sits in a parking lot at a fire station right next to an air conditioner exhaust, a cell phone tower and a barbecue grill.
• A sensor in Tahoe City, Calif., sits near a paved tennis court and is right next to a "burn barrel" that incinerates garbage.
• A sensor in Hopkinsville, Ky., is sheltered from the wind by an adjoining house and sits above an asphalt driveway.
• Dozens of sensors are located at airports and sewage treatment plants, which produce "heat islands" from their sprawling seas of asphalt and heavy emissions.'

"So far we've surveyed 1,062 of them," said Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who began the tracking effort in 2007. "We found that 90 percent of them don't meet [the government's] old, simple rule called the '100-foot rule' for keeping thermometers 100 feet or more from biasing influence. Ninety percent of them failed that, and we've got documentation."

More at link

https://www.foxnews.com/science/u-s...sensors-proximity-to-heat-sources-critics-say
If there is a consistent and widespread pattern of disregarding issues that may bias the data in favor of a particular viewpoint,

AND that viewpoint is the viewpoint which would result in increased funding and power to government

AND the people whose job it is to oversee the issue have their funding (and prospects of promotion and career advancement) controlled by that same bunch of government officials

-- it indicates it's not simple carelessness.
 
That video about the equator shifting shows the ignorance of the narrator. The orientation of the poles has changed, as he describes, because of the 26,000 year precession cycle. The Earth's north pole points towards the star Polaris at present, but like a spinning top it moves around relative to the heavens. The poles and equator do not shift relative to the Earth's surface. Any shifting that does take place is due to continental drift, and the continents do not drift in unison - they go off in different directions, colliding with each other, splitting in half, opening up oceans.

I wish the authors of these Velikovskian theories would study a little geology, plate tectonics, physics and all the Earth science advances over the past fifty years. The scientists have a very good understanding of the Earth's history based on facts and research. The author of this video has no concept of the law of conservation of momentum, and the tremendous planet-destroying forces that would be required to make the Earth rotate about a different axis - at the very least a collision with a Moon-sized object.
Hi Mike - after reading your post, I was curious about the def. of plate tectonics, so today I looked it up. It does say it is a slow process. It has a lot of allure as a theory, but it doesn't seem to have all the answers. For instance:

It doesn't explain why there are fossil coral reefs above the artic circle
Also why were the glaciers the most massive in north America, and none in northern asia?
Why was the direction of the southern hemisphere glaciers moving southwards?
Why were the mammoths etc. frozen solid and showed no signs of purification?
Why was Siberia warmer then it was now?

I am not trying to be hostile to your concerns, but these questions have been unanswered for many years by the plate tectonic theory and the earlier versions of it, yet it is still bandied about as if it were settled science.

Lets look at your comment about conservation of momentum - the solid crust is very thin in relation to the volume of magma below it. Could the crust move on the liquid core because of it's much lesser inertia? Or conversely - if whatever is responsible for the magnetic poles and their flip were to rotate the core, causing the magma to move, the plates would move about and smash into each other.

There' s plenty of sections of the earth that were once under sea and now high ground, such as the Himalia's etc. In response to the above questions - were the crust to suffer a paroxysm of biblical proportions, and the pole move from where it was in Hudson's bay to where it is now, all those questions can be satisfactorily answered.

The concept of the catastrophic reshaping of the lands doesn't have the traction of the plate tectonics theory. I wonder why?

You mention Velikovski - have you read Worlds in Collision? I just started reading it, and the so far it is quite interesting.

Mimsey
 
"Hi Mike - after reading your post, I was curious about the def. of plate tectonics, so today I looked it up. It does say it is a slow process. It has a lot of allure as a theory, but it doesn't seem to have all the answers. For instance:
It doesn't explain why there are fossil coral reefs above the artic circle
Also why were the glaciers the most massive in north America, and none in northern Asia?
Why was the direction of the southern hemisphere glaciers moving southwards?
Why were the mammoths etc. frozen solid and showed no signs of purification?
Why was Siberia warmer then it was now?
I am not trying to be hostile to your concerns, but these questions have been unanswered for many years by the plate tectonic theory and the earlier versions of it, yet it is still bandied about as if it were settled science."

Mostly these questions are not answered because they have nothing to do with plate tectonics.
Corals also form in deeper, colder waters. Plus the earth was a good bit warmer 65 million years ago, so a bit of research would be required to date those reefs and find out the conditions under which they grew.
I think the rain/snow generally moved in from the west, and it didn't get as far as Siberia. Blocked by the Ural mountains. Europe certainly got its share of glaciers.
Have never studied southern hemisphere glaciers. Try googling it.
Mammoths were frozen thousands of years ago, not millions. This has nothing to do with plate tectonics.
When was Siberia warmer? How many thousands of years ago? Earth has been warmer many times in the past. The Ice ages have come and gone for a while, largely controlled by the Milankovich cycles (Earth's orbit and rotation), and we are still coming out of he last one. No, that is a very slow process and doesn't explain recent global warming.

Continental drift was proposed by Peter Wegener, but was not accepted for ages after. We can now measure the rate of drift using GPS systems. And vthe answer matches up with the dating of successive layers of volcanic rock welling up from the mid-Atlantic ridge. Another site is the group of islands created as the Pacific crust moves over the Hawaii hot spot. The more northern islands were over the spot longer ago, and their radiometric ages confirm this. Also the split between Africa, South America and Antarctica matches to the evolutionary split between the marsupials and placentals.

So I think there's more evidence for plate tectonics than your catastrophic theory.

"There' s plenty of sections of the earth that were once under sea and now high ground, such as the Himalia's etc. In response to the above questions - were the crust to suffer a paroxysm of biblical proportions, and the pole move from where it was in Hudson's bay to where it is now, all those questions can be satisfactorily answered."

How does it answer any of them? The resulting tidal waves would sweep right across all the continents, and just leave a lifeless, scoured wasteland. Fish would have to start evolving into land dwellers all over again. Anyway, India is still crashing into Asia, and the Himalayas are still growing.

"You mention Velikovski - have you read Worlds in Collision? I just started reading it, and the so far it is quite interesting."

Yes, I've read that, and "Earth in Upheaval" and a couple other of his books. I still have "Carl Sagan and Immanuel Velikovsky", which lists a few predictions where Velikovsky was right and Sagan wrong.

I am still reading about the Earths temperature measurements, but a big problem is finding the dates of the various articles. For every article there is another rebutting it, so I haven't found a definite answer yet. There are not many articles post 2008, but I found one from 2017. I suggest you guys do some reading and research too. Don't just stop at something that supports your beliefs. Why should I do all the work?
 
Mike, you take all the fun out of a wonderful catastrophe theory. What ever are we going to do to lighten you up?

I know that Hapgood's pole shift theory suffers from a stout driving mechanism, that his original hypothesis of the cause centered on the buildup of ice pack, and the centrifugal force caused the shift. I take it that you don't much believe in Velilovsky's theory or that the earth has suffered recent close calls with similar sized celestial bodies, of orbit changes and the like.

Do you ever wonder where the megalithic society(s) went? Any ideas? I gotta run. More later.

Mimsey
 
"Do you ever wonder where the megalithic society(s) went? Any ideas?"

That's us!

I guess the societies disappeared because of the vandals at the gate, or overpopulation and lack of food, or climate change resulting in crop failures. Possibly also disease after too much rubbish accumulated and the rat population took over.

Have you read anything about ley lines? "The Old Straight Track" by Alfred Watkins? I don't think there is anything magical, but am amazed at the methods used to communicate and transport goods (salt) across large distances. Those lines and landmarks would have helped to knit the very widespread civilisation together when people only got around on foot.

Edit: It is also amazing how islanders in canoes navigated the Pacific ocean. Our ancestors were pretty clued-up guys. I gather the Australian aboriginies had a country-wide culture, and the African iron age was suppressed by the British (and others), who told us they were all savages ripe for exploitation and slavery. History re-written by the conquerors.

And no, I don't believe in any planetary close encounters affecting history. They must have occurred billions of years ago, in one case resulting in the creation of the moon, and in another causing Uranus to spin the wrong way. But just look at what a small piece of rock did to Earth 66 million years ago.
 
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strativarius

Inveterate gnashnab & snoutband
Mike, you take all the fun out of a wonderful catastrophe theory. What ever are we going to do to lighten you up?

I know that Hapgood's pole shift theory suffers from a stout driving mechanism, that his original hypothesis of the cause centered on the buildup of ice pack, and the centrifugal force caused the shift. I take it that you don't much believe in Velilovsky's theory or that the earth has suffered recent close calls with similar sized celestial bodies, of orbit changes and the like.

Do you ever wonder where the megalithic society(s) went? Any ideas? I gotta run. More later.

Mimsey
Interesting to see you mention Velikovsky's books. I read 'em and threw them away back in the 70's when I was smoking a lot of weed.

In all your posts I've yet to see any mention of Charles Fort. I'm surprised. You need to look into him, he'll give you plenty of ammunition to wind Bill, HH and guano up with. :biggrin:
 
I've never read Charles Fort himself, but years ago I used to read the Fortean Times just for fun. Always amazed at human gullibility.

I love borderline science - the aquatic ape theory, Hoyle's continuous creation, Lamarks evolution, Gaia, Arp's galactic evolution, van Flandern's history of the Solar System. My home library is full of these books.
 

strativarius

Inveterate gnashnab & snoutband
I've never read Charles Fort himself, but years ago I used to read the Fortean Times just for fun. Always amazed at human gullibility.

I love borderline science - the aquatic ape theory, Hoyle's continuous creation, Lamarks evolution, Gaia, Arp's galactic evolution, van Flandern's history of the Solar System. My home library is full of these books.
Yes, my library is too, and if you like that sort of material, Robert Anton Wilson is quite entertaining too. Some of the stuff you mention above has credibility and some doesn't IMO, it's just a question of separating the wheat from the chaff.
 
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