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SciCheck: Cruz on the global cooling myth and how he's like Galileo
Philly.com ^

Posted on 03/30/2015 12:51:30 PM PDT by Phillyred

Sen. Ted Cruz cited a 1975 Newsweek article on “global cooling” to question the evidence of global warming, and in the process made several incorrect and unsubstantiated claims.

The Newsweek story, which did warn of a “cooling world,” has been criticized and largely debunked — by its own author. Cruz’s claim that “advocates of global cooling suddenly shifted to global warming” ignores the fact that there was no scientific consensus in the 1970s about global cooling. Cruz said that “satellite data demonstrate that there has been no significant warming whatsoever for 17 years.” This is misleading. Though the trend line in recent years has been relatively flat, Cruz cherry-picks a particularly warm year (1998) to deny the clear longer-term warming trend. There have now been 360 consecutive months when the global temperature was above the 20th century average. Cruz compared “global warming alarmists” to “flat-Earthers” and himself to Galileo, saying “this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier” for insisting the Earth was round. This is wrong. Galileo’s troubles with the church stemmed from his belief that the Earth orbits the Sun. The fact that the planet is round was accepted before Galileo was born. In an interview with the Texas Tribune (at the 14:24 mark), Cruz, who recently announced his candidacy for president, told reporter Jay Root that the 1975 global cooling story in Newsweek is evidence that “alarmists” simply want the government to control the energy sector.

Cruz, March 24: I read this morning a Newsweek article from the 1970s talking about global cooling. And it

(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: 2016election; climateliars; cruz; election2016; globalcooling; globalwarming; tedcruz; texas
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To: justlurking

And who decides what “average” is?


41 posted on 03/30/2015 2:00:45 PM PDT by Fledermaus (The GOP is dead to me! McConnell and Boehner can drop dead!!)
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To: Pontiac

Mean is the same as average. Your post confuses me.


42 posted on 03/30/2015 2:09:39 PM PDT by impimp
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To: Fledermaus
And who decides what “average” is?

The calculation of the average is agreed: it's the arithmetic mean. But, it's also worth mentioning that other statistical measures like median might be more appropriate.

The problem is that you can cause significant changes to any summary statistical measure by careful selection of data. Just choosing a time window can change it. The article's author accused Cruz of doing so, and then proceeded to do the same thing by choosing the 20th century.

Once you go back more than about 30 years, the source of data also affects the results. In the climate models, they do a lot of adjustment of source data (to "correct" it), and actually exclude data deemed "unreliable", sometimes because it is outside their expected range. But, what if the data is right, and your expectations are wrong?

43 posted on 03/30/2015 2:12:15 PM PDT by justlurking (tagline removed, as demanded by Admin Moderator)
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To: Phillyred

And the reason the atmospheric temps have been high but stable the past 17 years is because of the cherry picked El Nino of 1998. Progressives are duplicitous at best.


44 posted on 03/30/2015 2:18:13 PM PDT by justa-hairyape (The user name is sarcastic. Although at times it may not appear that way. Was)
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To: justlurking
Ummm, "mean" and "average" are the same thing. :-)

Equating Mean and Average is a gross over simplification Mean .

Using the 18th century data (assuming we could get accurate data) would lower both the mean and the median. But, if you were to go all the way back to when Greenland was green (and the climate was much warmer), that might raise them.

The same would be true of the Twentieth Century. Accurate data for global temperatures do not exist before the 1980s and the advent of infrared satellites.

Those simple and easy to understand facts are why the whole global warming hoax is laughable. There simply is not enough data to support the hypothesis.

45 posted on 03/30/2015 2:19:39 PM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: Phillyred; Pontiac; zipper; Fledermaus
Ok, I forgot something that is kinda important:

There have now been 360 consecutive months when the global temperature was above the 20th century average.

360 months is 30 years. If there was truly an upward trend, then there should be somewhere around 600 consecutive months, because it it would have crossed the axis halfway through the past century.

46 posted on 03/30/2015 2:25:06 PM PDT by justlurking (tagline removed, as demanded by Admin Moderator)
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To: Pontiac
Equating Mean and Average is a gross over simplification.

In the absence of a adjective like "geometric" or "harmonic", most of us equate "mean" with "arithmetic mean".

Even your citation says that:

The arithmetic mean (or simply "mean") of a sample [...].

47 posted on 03/30/2015 2:30:05 PM PDT by justlurking (tagline removed, as demanded by Admin Moderator)
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To: iowacornman

“They don’t believe in a God at all. None of them do. They think mankind is the key to the design and destruction of the world. Most I talk to are so shallow...”

I couldn’t agree more! This is a thought/observation I have made and had, too.


48 posted on 03/30/2015 2:32:48 PM PDT by Canedawg (Panem et circenses)
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To: Pontiac
Sorry, I meant to reply to this:

The same would be true of the Twentieth Century. Accurate data for global temperatures do not exist before the 1980s and the advent of infrared satellites.

Yes, I posted that earlier as well. Before that, there has been so much potential for measurement error, as well as measurement bias.

I remember an article a few years back: someone literally took pictures of every measurement station they could find. There were many siting problems: stations were next to heat sources like parking lots, roofs, exhaust vents: things that would introduce an upward bias.

Coincidentally, the temperature record has leveled off about the time we started getting satellite measurements.

49 posted on 03/30/2015 2:35:03 PM PDT by justlurking (tagline removed, as demanded by Admin Moderator)
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To: justlurking

I think he means median instead of mean.


50 posted on 03/30/2015 2:36:07 PM PDT by hlmencken3 (I paid for an argument, but you're just contradicting!)
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To: Da Coyote

I would LOVE it if for the the first time since Reagan, a Conservative reached out to Conservative Scientists and Engineers for advice.

It would only take 2-3 hrs of QA.


51 posted on 03/30/2015 2:38:12 PM PDT by Zathras
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To: Fledermaus

My memory from 5th grade is that Pluto was a dog.


52 posted on 03/30/2015 2:47:15 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Point of persnickety.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Are you feeling better these days?


53 posted on 03/30/2015 2:50:13 PM PDT by Fledermaus (The GOP is dead to me! McConnell and Boehner can drop dead!!)
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To: Fledermaus

I’m slowly on the mend. In fact, I need to go out and walk right now, before we run out of daylight.


54 posted on 03/30/2015 3:07:35 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (I believe in One God, the Father Almighty. Creator of Heaven and Earth.)
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To: justlurking
Excellent points

The Global warmist build their models using dearth of data which they massage to support their hypothesis.

Very scientific indeed

55 posted on 03/30/2015 3:12:43 PM PDT by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: Phillyred
Riiight. There was no worry of "global cooling" in the 70s.


56 posted on 03/30/2015 7:16:04 PM PDT by VeniVidiVici ( Better a conservative teabagger than a liberal teabagee)
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To: Phillyred

Aside from his ONE mistake (referencing flat-earthers rather than heliocentriism), Ted Cruz was correct. His reference is to those Climate Crisis advocates who choose to ignore 20 years of data related to an atmospheric “pause” in the rate of warming which appears to contradict, at the very least, the models used to arrive at the mid and upper range predictions, and thus should be used, by those actually professing a belief in science, to reevaluate those models.

True science is an ongoing process of experiment and reevaluation, and even more so as it relates to a predictive science (like climatology, seismology or economics) which are never settled. There is a BIG difference between a “settled” observation of a physical science (such as adding CO2 to the atmosphere will lead to warming, which is true) and making long-term predictions, which relate to that observation AND many other variables based on that science. While the former is settled, the latter most certainly is not, and those who want to claim otherwise by crying “the debate is over” and pointing the fingher of “denier” at anyone who dares question them are indeed the ones acting like flat-earthers, as THEY are the ones who refuse to consider any evidence that might conflict with their belief in any way.

And the comparison Cruz makes is even better if it more accurately referenced Galileo’s heliocentrism, as those very same folks refuse to study or even consider any significant effects that changes to the solar cycle might have either on past observations or future predictions. So they’ve taken the outdated Earth-centered view of the church, and by putting mankind in the place of God, have now stubbornly, and in a way, religiously, latched on to their man-centric view of climate … as if man has more power than any other forces on earth or in the heavens (i.e. the Sun) to affect the climate.

And if a 20-year pause during a period of inreasing CO2 output is NOT a long enough period to start asking those questions and reevaluating our predictive models, than how long does it need to be?

So yes, we need another Galileo to remind the Climate Dogmatists that all our climate concerns may NOT, in fact, revolve around us.


57 posted on 03/31/2015 2:15:45 AM PDT by zencycler
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