Uncertainty of Measurement [Global Warming]

I stumbled across this [which is also fed to the Sky News ‘Daily Climate Show’]

**LINK**

https://www.globalwarmingindex.org

°C displayed to nine decimal places

MichaelG.

Things didn't really get accurate until the 1990s with satellites etc

I took readings for various organisations in the 70s and 80s at sea and up to 2 degrees of error is realistic

The gear just wasn't that good and you worked with whatever you had

Claims going back to the 1850s are just plain daft, a few select observatories based in capital cities would have good equipment, the rest of it was rough and ready practical kit in a ruff tuff period of human history

Sometimes you just made it up because you couldn't be bothered going outside and peering at the tiny graduations in the rain and wind, just stick a number into the log that looked ok

Remote machine gathered data like from satellites is far more reliable than people gathered data

histor

Edited By Ady1 on 07/07/2021 09:48:17

Attribution science graphs.

"Attribution science" meaning any climate variation that the maker of the graph could not explain must be due to carbon dioxide and human activity.

A novel approach to science that will probably last at least 20 seconds beyond the point where the funding runs out

If they made the vertical scale more realistic say max 4 degrees then the chart would show a much less steep rise. Just what you can do with manipulated charts and figures.

To be fairit's the warming index that is shown to 9 places, not an actual measurement. There are a lot of "estimates" in there though. It's also silly to chow CO2 in trillion tonnes to digits, just drop the decimal point and say tonnes.

Robert G8RPI.

Remember, this is attribution, so there doesn't have to be any warming to make the temperature rise.

All you need is a fall during the calibration period, in this case 1850-1900.

The problem is how to make the issue clear. The silly display catches the eye because it's continually rising: it's advertising rather than science.

The graph is more meaningful. The black line zigzags due to weather and measurement issues, and only becomes meaningful when the average is extracted and the trend identified. Average temperature has increased by 1.2°C since 1861, which isn't much in human terms and therefore difficult to comprehend. The problem is the amount of heat rather than temperature, and the effect heat has on weather, which is also difficult to grasp.

An enormous amount of energy is required to lift the average surface temperature of the whole planet by 1°C. It's more energy than human activity could provide, and it's building up because of the insulating effect of invisible green-house gases. Insulation is also difficult for Joe Public to grasp.

What happens to the extra heat being bottled up on the surface? We know that IC and steam engines convert heat into motion, and that's exactly what Global Warming is doing. Heat is a form of energy, and energy does work - things move. Global warming translates into extreme weather events, and - even if you don't understand numbers and concepts - it's very obvious that something unusual is happening around the world. Flash floods, droughts, receding glaciers, shrinking icecaps, record breaking temperatures and record breaking storms. Severe events that previously occurred once per century are now happening every few years. Everywhere. Another hard to grasp concept, it's not what happened in my garden over the last 5 years, it's what will happen to the whole planet over 50.

Might be imagined that an extra 1.2°C simply means it will be nice out. If only! Actually it means significant amounts of land becoming agriculturally unproductive while rising sea-levels flood low lying areas. Food, water and land shortages will cause large-scale population movements. The average Brit might have to let the population of Bangladesh get on with it, because he's top busy re-homing Londoners in the midst of food-shortages.

It's too late to avoid the consequences now. Our grandchildren will have to cope with whatever comes because Climate change can't be undone. Let's hope the future doesn't get too rough, but as all previous civilisations have collapsed, there's no reason to think ours is permanent.

Human activity has allowed the sun to pump energy into the planet faster than it can escape. There will be consequences, and it's not looking good. Maybe it's a Lizard-people conspiracy and Climate Breakdown is the ultimate weapon. More likely we are all guilty...

Dave

I think the thing that the Canada heat bubble has thrown into sharp perspective is the way that although 'weather is not climate', underlying changes in climate make extremes more extreme, and in particular how more energy in a chaotic system can make it more active in unpredictable ways.

As for the impact of 1.6 degrees, 2 degrees is the typical temperature drop from going up a 1000-foot mountain. Anyone familiar with the UK landscape will know farming and vegetation can be very different just 1000 feet up.

Neil

The whole matter has been so poisoned by ignorance, politics and commerce it's hard to know actually what is happening, but poor reporting standards and possible bias make things worse.

I wonder how many "Londoners" really would be affected by even a 1m rise in sea-level: how high are the Embankment and Canary Wharf walls above the maximum tides they see now, including storm surges which the Thames Barrier protects against? How many homes are genuinely in danger? Food shortages would be the bigger problem by affecting everyone in this country, even up on the lofty heights of Muswell Hill.

I understand there was a recent "report" from a supposedly scientific-journalism organisation that highlighted the above but was found to have used no more than a few estimates from American sites!

The irony of the ultimate fate of the human race is, that it will consist of a few of us living in caves wearing animal skin clothes ( from the nearest Primark and maybe , an old ML7 in the corner of the cave ).

.

Exactly my point, Dave

… which is why linked to the source, rather than to Sky News

I was disappointed to see that the Oxford team provided no explanation under its own silly display.

MichaelG.

Developments on flood plains are a crazy idea but seem to impact us all.

When my neighbour's house was up for sale there was a map of possible flood risks in the area. One location not far away was in a field where there was a slight hollow of only a few inches where, when extremely heavy rain falls, a puddle forms briefly before soaking away. We could only assume it was due to satellites picking up the topology of the hollow and declaring it to be a flood risk location. The maximum length of the puddle (and the hollow) is about 4m. The field starts off lower than the gardens nearby and slopes away from the houses. Overkill is the word that comes to mind.

When I renew my house insurance I have to state that there is a watercourse within 100m. It doesn't seem to matter that it is a minor beck and is about 3m below my garden and dries up in summer, they have to be told so they can't wriggle out of an insurance claim. If my house ever floods then there will be some nearby houses totally submerged because I am at the top of a hill. Too many people reading a screen and filling in tick boxes in offices these days I think.

Martin C

< snipped from the site >

Human-induced warming: +1.229640534 °C

on Wed, 07 Jul 2021 13:27:08 GMT

This number shows an up-to-the-second assessment of human-induced global warming since the second half of the 19^th century.

[ /snip ]

I watched it for a while, and; whether by accident or design, the ninth decimal place appeared to increment by 1 every second.

… How very convenient.

MichaelG.

Wouldn’t we still be in an Ice Age without global warming?

Edited By V8Eng on 07/07/2021 14:53:11

When I made the final payment of my mortgage I asked the building society to continue the house insurance through them but was told that I couldn’t carry on the insurance because my house was in a flood risk area and they couldnt therefore provide insurance. I asked the question how up until the mortgage had been repaid could they insure the house but now it was suddenly in a flood risk area, their reply was well we didn’t use your post code we put in a post code for another area which had no flood risk problems but as it would now be a new insurance policy they had to use the correct post code for the house. I was left speechless, in order to get the commission on the insurance sale for a mortgaged property they had committed fraud. Anyways I shopped around for insurance and found plenty of other insurers who deemed that my house was not in a flood risk area. I also consulted the environment agency flood risk maps and found that the risk line for flooding actually runs about three feet the other side of my front fence which is at the top of a six foot high bank above the road, we are within about 2 miles of the sea and are at 4 metres above sea level, I think the last time there was any water encroaching on my property was during the great flood that occurred during the late 1600’s, so I feel reasonably secure perhaps until the sea level rises a couple of metres, and I probably will be long gone by then. Dave W

The actual mathematics being done is this: (t being the number of seconds since a basis date).

function calculateTempRise(t) {
return (1.2163 + (0.00000000075481*t));

While it's clearly ludicrous in terms of accuracy, as a visualisation of ongoing change for a non-technical audience I don't really see anything wrong with it.

> I wonder how many "Londoners" really would be affected by even a 1m rise in sea-level

Right now, the Thames Barrier prevents about 45 square miles of land in and around London being flooded by a major storm surge coinciding with a spring tide. More minor floods are averted by the barrier being operated six or seven times a year, around three times the expected usage when it was built. A normal spring tide in London brings the river almost to ground level in central London, and in fact routinely floods several areas further upriver.

What sounds like a small increase in sea level can have massive effects. Six inches would render large chunks of England's east coast untenable. A metre would mean the UK looking like nothing we would recognise.