1934 - Are GW deniers desperate, just very vocal, or both?

Question

There has been a flood of questions about this whole 1934 virtually irrelevant lower-48 states temperature correction. I can only assume it's because the right-wing bloggers and Rush Limbaugh made such a big deal about it and spread so much misinformation about it. Correct information about the incident is available here:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgCxBALgHOtjhactMX_WFDjsy6IX?qid=20070810115452AAYt0LI

What I'm wondering is, why are GW deniers making such a big deal? Is it because they're relying on Limbaugh for their (mis)information and thus actually thought this was some big coverup? Is it because they're desperate for any news which can be construed in any way as being in their favor? Are they just extremely vocal? Or is it a combination of these factors, or something I haven't considered?

How can such an insignificant bit of information be blown so out of proportion and misunderstood so badly by so many?

Answer 1

It's another tool in the arsenal of the skeptics. It joins the likes of Mars is warming, the sun is getting hotter, global cooling in the 70's, plants absorb all CO2 and the host of other arguments that have no credibility to them.

Many people get their information from the media and websites, frequently these are biased. The article you linked to in a previous question describes the errors as "truly astounding", a more correct definition would have been "truly insignificant".

At the end of the day it boils down to a re-evaluation of a very small amount of the overall data. The implication it has is that the global average temperatures have changed by a truly astounding 0.0005°C. Global temps are measured to 2 or 3 decimal places, this is to 4 dp's, a figure so small as to be onconsequential.

Where it does make a difference is that 1998 is no longer the hottest year on record in the US, it's now a truly astounding 0.02°C cooler than perviously thought.

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On a more technical note, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) uses a monthly resolution to measure the change in global surface temperatures as an anomaly relevant to the 1950-80 base period. The data used is the unadjusted data of the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) with one exception - the data of the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) prior to 1999 were replaced by a corrected version of USHCN to allow for an adjustment identified during comparison of the two data sets. Such an adjustment prevented a jump in data from 2000 onwards.

Quite clearly this was not a Y2K bug as had been suggested but an anomaly between different data sets. Global temperature analysis is made up of a number of data sets, take any number of sets and run them simultaneously and anomalies are smoothed, try to link two sets contiguously and chances are there will be a jump (up or down) in the order of 0.01°C.

In short, it's of no consequence but provides those with little understanding of the data something to bandy about.

Answer 2

They're scared, mostly, that someone is going to take away their lifestyle. If you can get them to articulate why they disbelieve the science, it comes down to that. It is simply too threatening for them to believe the research is right in the first place and that the data from the research support the predictions made by the theories. So any little flaw gets amplified into a wholesale indictment of the entire subject.

There is this guy where I work who has a Lego(tm) model of a 688-class attack submarine in his office. This model is huge, maybe 4-feet long, entirely made out of little plastic bricks. It is impressive but the key thing is that you could remove a lot of the little bricks and you would still tell it was a 688-class submarine. There really isn't a key brick you could take away and all of a sudden it resembles a Focke-Wolf 190 or a unicorn. And you would have to take away a lot of bricks for it to fall apart.

The theory of climate change caused by anthropogenic CO2 altering the radiative transfer properties of the atmosphere is like that submarine model. There are all these little interlocking pieces of science fact that when assembled support to a very large degree the theory that human input of CO2 and to a lesser extent other species are affecting the radiative balance of the planet. But there is no key piece of the assemblage that is false so that the entirety is untrue. But they desperately need there to be a key piece they could take away and all of a sudden you couldn't tell what the model was supposed to be.

Gradually, the "expert" skeptics are being turned to accept fact. Even Lindzen and Christy now acknowledge that global mean temperature is rising. Climate change is scary, most people don't have the courage to face what is known, so they keep trying to take away a little grey two-block from the hull, hoping upon hope the submarine will fall apart. But it never does. c'est live.

Answer 3

Changing one years data is irrelevant. The reason that global warming is such a sham is that it is entirely based on a few decades of data. Even the CO2 ice readings only cover a thousand years or so which is a very short period of time. This data is then "assumed" that it will continue in the same pattern or often "assumed" it will exponentially increase to cause the catastrophes predicted by gw advocates. They never take into account the variations in the cycles or that there are corrections up and down. Climate cycles cover thousands of years not the short periods that are being used to "validate" the gw predictions.

Answer 4

Anti-global warming news is in your favor as well, unless you like the idea of being taxed for something that isn't real and having the govt. tell you how to live, what do drive, and what personal items you can and cannot have based upon the amount of carbon offsets you can afford to buy. You just don't get it..
For those on the left, global warming is another way to control people and thus the reason why those on the right fight it so hard.

Answer 5

I think the better question is why do the 'believers' try to deny that in 1934 the temps were the highest worldwide?

This bogus notion that 1934 was not warm worldwide shows the extent that the 'believers' select their data to fit their preconceived conclusions.

Answer 6

What the Sam Hill does this have to do with anything? I'm sure there have been hotter days than this prior to temperature recording. This proves what? These goof balls are stupid? Didn't we already know that?

Answer 7

You know, I'm simply not impressed by a chart showing that the temperatures for the last ten years have been above the mean for the last century.

It's a "mean". That's an average. By definition it implies that there are yearly variations. Otherwise, it would be like 98.6, "normal body temperature". When a human runs a fever of 104, it does indeed signal that something is wrong. When a planet spends ten, even TWENTY years half a degree above the mean, it means.... NOTHING.

You GW types fancy yourselves so much smarter than the rest of us, but you have absolutely no perspective at all. Don't you realize that the Ice Ages lasted THOUSANDS of years, not mere decades? Ten years isn't even a BLIP on the chart of the life of this planet.

You're worse than the religious types you disdain. You not only want me to take this all on faith, you want me to overlook the incidences that indicate that you have another agenda entirely, and overlook your fabrications, overlook when your doomsday predictions fail to occur. There's a LOT more evidence of the existence of God than there is for Global Warming.

Guess what? The existence of God would mean that Global Warming isn't a problem whether it exists or not.

Global Warming isn't "science", it's "politics".

Answer 8

Funny.

As I don't listen to Limbaugh, the first I heard mentioned was in one of YOUR questions.

There is so much spin and damage control being done - this "question" being a prime example, that it only solidifies the observation that global warming science is flimsy.

Keep on trying to make it seem more insignificant - the more you do, the less people will trust you.

Answer 9

Tell me why are global warming believers making such a big deal about it...You are all I hear running your mouth and telling us nonglobal warming believers that we are crazy for not believing it. It's stupid. We are just sticking up for ourselves because you cant keep your opinons to yourself.

Answer 10

Dana - by far the best answer to this nonsense is EnragedParrot's here, even though his first link is broken.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=An27hLEVtmDtwJG_ouq3sjYS.Rd.?qid=20070811204612AAMKQEj

For those who don't care to search it out, the bottom line is that this a tiny technical correction to some data in the US, which is completely unimportant (a few thousandths of a degree) in the global data. It doesn't change any of the existing science.

The fuss that the deniers ("disproves global warming") are making of it truly deserves the epithet "ignorant". And insults are not my style.

3DM - research this one. It doesn't have to be made to seem insignificant, it IS insignificant.