[asa] New paper denouncing an average global temperature

In their latest effort to cast doubt on the topic of global warming some
'scientists' have chosen to argue that there is no reason to define an
average temperature and thus that the concept of global cooling or warming
is meaningless. To the unaware such arguments may sound interesting but as
several people have since long shown, there is a very good reason for how we
average temperatures

http://timlambert.org/2004/05/mckitrick3/
<quote author=Tim Lambert>

"In the absence of physical guidance, any rule for averaging temperature is
as good as any other. The folks who do the averaging happen to use the
arithmetic mean over the field with specific sets of weights, rather than,
say, the geometric mean or any other. But this is mere convention."

Physics does, in fact, provide a basis for defining average temperature.
Just connect the two systems that you want to average by a conductor. Heat
will flow from the hotter system to the colder one until the temperatures
are equalized. The final temperature is the average. That average will be a
weighted arithmetic mean of the original temperatures. Which is why the
folks doing the averaging use weighted arithmetic means rather than the
geometric mean.

</quote>

Also at
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2005/11/temperature-rex-bites-essex-and.html more
examples are provided as to the vacuity of the arguments.

Also at
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/03/open-book-test-in-comments-over-at.html

<quote>In the comments<http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/02/figure_22_explains_it_all.php#comment-372451>over
at Deltoid, note is made that Essex and McKitrick joined by one Bjarne
Andresen have succeeded in getting their strangeness about temperature, Does
a global temperature
exist?<http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Ermckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf>,
into the Journal of Non-Equilibrium
Thermodynamics<http://www.atypon-link.com/WDG/doi/abs/10.1515/JNETDY.2007.001>.
This new candidate for the Chillingar and Khilyuk
Cup<http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/12/paper_claims_human_co2_emissio.php>is
based on the same off the wall basic mistakes about thermodynamics and
atmospheric temperature measurements that E&M put forth in their opus "Taken
by Storm" and which was taken apart at Rabett
Run<http://rabett.blogspot.com/2005/11/temperature-rex-bites-essex-and.html>(compare
the figures to those the article), and at
Deltoid<http://timlambert.org/2004/05/mckitrick3/>and more
Deltoid<http://timlambert.org/2005/11/rabett-runs-right-over-essex-and-mckitrick/>,
and yet more Deltoid<http://timlambert.org/2005/11/telephone-with-temperature/>,
and even MORE Deltoid <http://timlambert.org/2005/07/climate-audiot/> (pay
careful attention to Robert P's comments in the last one. Hopefully he has
pen in hand at the moment to write to the journal with some of the folk over
at NOAA). Still, they come back for more.</quote>

I wonder how much time it will take for global warming deniers to take up
these fallacious arguments. At least the people on this group should be well
educated in their choice of what to believe.

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Received on Thu Mar 15 23:47:25 2007