Andre's Musings

2008 Global Temperatures Similar to 1940

Excerpt: By Richard Courtney, DipPhil, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant.)

Courtney took up the NRDC challenge to skeptical scientists to 'let NRDC's real climate experts take them on'

Excerpt: Richard S Courtney says that the temperature is similar to 1940. […] The global temperature fell from 1940 to 1970, rose from 1970 to 1998, and fell from 1998 to the present (i.e. mid-2008). This is 40 years of cooling and 28 years of warming, and global temperature is now similar to that of 1940.” [..] It is simply true. Please do not take my word for it but check it for yourself. I cite CRU data from: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/had
crut3gl.txt In that CRU data set the 1940 monthly values of temperature anomalies from the 30 year mean are presented in degrees Celsius. They range between -0.191 and +0.057 with an annual mean of +0.018. In that same data set the monthly 2008 anomalies to date are +0.053, +0.192, +0.430, +0.254 and +0.278. This is a mean value for the months in 2008 to date of +0.241. The ranges of the monthly values for these years overlap; i.e. the highest monthly value in 1940 (+0.057) was higher than the lowest monthly value in 2008 (+0.053). I think it very reasonable to say they are “similar” when their ranges overlap. However, my use of the word “similar” could be considered to an understatement because the mean values differ by only 0.223 degrees Celsius and the data has inherent error of +/- 0.2 degrees Celsius. So, within their inherent errors the mean values are not similar because THEY ARE THE SAME. But atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased by more than 30% since 1940 and increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is supposed to induce "dangerous" global warming.

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