So, How Hot Is It, Really? And Other Loaded Questions . . .

My kids don’t like riding in the car very much these days. Since our van has one seat they ALL want to sit in, trips to wherever always begin with a lively bout of full contact musical chairs. For this and many other reasons, I continually offer thanks to the Minivan gods for any and all types of attention-grabbing gadgets or gizmos.  Distraction d’Jour: the built-in thermometer. 

As LA hopped into the 90s for a bit last week, the kids took a brief break from the madness and analyzed the temp data.  They noted on one trip: 93° in our driveway, 91° down the street, 96° at Costco, 89° near the school, 87° at the park, etc and so forth.  And then came the question, “Dad, so how hot is it, really??”  Good question, and I have been pondering the answer for a while now.

Nowadays a thousand different scientists, institutes, panels, politicians, pundits, newscasters, bloggers, etc, all chatter a thousand different opinions on the definitions and theories of climate change vs. global warming, vs. man made global warming.  Pop culture is weighing in, green is the new black, Al Gore is the (very well compensated) hero, and CO2 is the villain (not mass consumption or urbanization).  Oh, and let’s not forget, the venture capitalists are drooling, markets are emerging, supply chains are linking, and it’s like Christmas year-round at the patent office.  It’s truly amazing to watch. But for all this amazing reactivity, the fact of the matter is that nobody can really answer that fundamental question my kids asked the other day. 

Here’s why: In 1997, the USNRC convened a panel of scientists to study the policies, processes and systems used to gather and report actual (not modeled) temperatures, with the simple idea that a flaw in these mechanisms could greatly skew the data.  The report can be found here, but their basic conclusion is that “. . . the global capacity to observe the Earth’s climate system is inadequate and is deteriorating worldwide [and] without action to reverse this decline . . . the ability to characterize climate change and variations over the next 25 years will be even less than during the past quarter century.” 

The stations studied by the USNRC produced at the time nearly ALL the underlying data feeding the chatter and the amazing reactivity noted above, and simply stated, they concluded the data coming from these stations are not sound.   So, how hot is it really?   We cannot answer that question with any reasonable degree (har har) of certainty.   If the stations are flawed, the data are flawed.  If the data are flawed, the chatter is nothing more than a bunch of noise.

So, how bad can it be?  Check out surfacestations.org and wattsupwiththat.com.  These sites document the numerous errors, omissions, anomalies, and policy violations found at climate monitoring stations across the US.  As an example, the following images show two different stations - the first appropriately follows the rules.  In contrast, the second has located its sensor in a parking lot, next to a cell tower and several AC exhaust outlets.  (This is like placing the thermostat of your house directly above your stove.  DUH!)  For fun, note the temperature decline of the former and the incline of the latter:

Consider the following comparison: IF my employer released financial statements declaring to the world our businesses made $341 centillion dollars last quarter, what would happen?  Our stock price would soar 100,000% (and I would retire), competitors’ stock would soar, broader market indicators would rise, bond markets would likely fall, other equity/debt markets would scatter, speculators would jump, etc, and then eventually arbitrage would thin things.  In short, lots of chatter and lots of amazing reactivity.

Then, after all that, what if my employer said, “Whoops.  Did we say $341 centillion???  Uh, we really meant just $3.41.  Sorry.  Turns out our computers told us that 2+2 was actually 4 billion, and we believed them.  Our bad.”  Imagine that.  Enron all over again: panic and pan-duh-monium ad nauseum. 

Fact: The business world now spends billions of dollars every year protecting the integrity of financial data in order to prevent that pan-duh-monium from happening again.  But despite all the chatter and reactivity associated with climate change – the opinions, the new markets, the supply chains, the inventions, the predictions, the alarmism, and of course, the MONEY – not much has been done to ensure the integrity of the temperature data that drives it all.  As a result, everybody takes a different read of the thermometer, and it’s usually the read that most closely resembles the reader’s financial or political self-interest. 

Ideally, at the end of the day, I believe the true principles of resource conservation and responsible stewardship should always be the motivation for the chatter and the reactivity.  We should treat this wonderful Earth with the respect and reverence it deserves, regardless of what Sir Gore the Great Green Bard sings.  There will always be marketers looking to capitalize on going green, and if that alone helps drive awareness of true principles, then so be it.  But as long as temperature - not true principles - continues to be the fundamental basis for the chatter and reactivity, it just seems to me we ought to actually figure out how hot it really is before we identify our targets and cast our stones. 

Ok, I’m done with my soap box for now.  But, FYI, LA is back down into the 70s, or, um, the 80s, depending on your read of the thermometer. 

Cheers.

PS:  In case you didn’t know, I am fascinated by the global warming debate.  So I will probably continue to study it, and maybe write about its various angles.  Please let me know what you think . . . I’d appreciate any and all perspectives.