Comment Re:NASA's shoddy (fraudulent?) work (Score 1) 167
From the Telegraph article linked to by the parent:
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
This is effectively using a single data point (the month of October 2008) to argue that the theory of global warming is false. Claims like this are just a red herring on this issue. Episodes like this can be consistent with global warming, provided that averaged across time and space they are the exception rather than the rule.
The theory of global warming states that on average the world's temperature will rise as a result of increasing concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases generated by human activities. A downward tick in temperature over the course of a month or a year will not refute global warming, provided the world's average temperature resumes its increasing trend soon thereafter. Using local incidents to refute global warming is also spurious. Even in the long run, there may be parts of the world that will have a lower average long-term temperature as a result of changes in ocean or atmospheric currents. Such locations, provided they are not common enough to counteract increasing temeperatures in the rest of of the world, will not refute global warming.
An analogy that I like to use to people who don't understand this fact is that of a casino. Many patrons who play blackjack, slot machines, or other games against the house do leave the casino winners after a given session. However, to claim that these winning patrons are sufficient to dispute the claim that the games are in the house's favor would be ludicrous to almost anybody regardless of whether they've set foot in a casino. Yet the Telegraph and the parent poster are effectively trying to do the same thing by taking a very limited dataset and claiming that a theory is false based on that dataset. Using 1998 (in which one of the world's highest temperatures was recorded) by itself to claim that global warming is real and occurring would be equally specious.
In order to refute global warming, you would need either (a) to identify a cause dominant over increasing greenhouse gas concentrations that is demonstrably increasing the earth's temperature, or (b) a long-term data set of stable or decreasing temperatures in the presence of increasing greenhouse gas levels. In order to prove it, you need (a) a long-term dataset of both temperatures and greenhouse gas levels increasing, and (b) a sound explanation as to how the greenhouse gases are contributing to the increase in temperature (to establish causation). What "long-term" means depend on whether a person believes in global warming or is a skeptic, but most people would want at least 20 years worth of data, preferably more, before deciding on the truth or falsity of the theory. To use a single month or a year to make a claim on it is irrelevant to the discussion and such claims distract people from really finding out what's going on.