Posted on 01/22/2011 3:39:06 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The physicist cited in the article was clear in stating that since the atmosphere varies by about half a degree a year, there was no valid way to assess cause for changes at that magnitude. IOW, a change of half a degree would be considered random error.
This of course was published before psychotics like James Hansen made hysteria into a scientific cottage industry.
GOOD POST....send to EVERY member of Congress and to the honchos at NASA and the bean counters at the United Notions....
One possibility is that the thermometer is radiating heat to the surrounding environment, or conversely, the surrounding environment is radiating heat into the thermometer. Heat is transferred by three methods: convection, conduction, and radiation. Assuming the thermometer is isolated from any conduction errors, its reading is effected by convection from the surrounding air, and also radiation to and from any surrounding surfaces.
For instance, depending on the emissivity of the bulb, a thermometer surrounded by a white painted box will read significantly different from an open thermometer which can radiate heat to the near absolute zero temperature of outer space on a clear night.
There is no place in Minnesota tonight reporting temps above zero....The whole damn State...
Normsrevenge posted a thread where it was down to 46 below near Int Falls....
Meanwhile here we will have Santa Ana winds tonight...some areas around 3 am will have the wind howling at 70 mph....temps tomorrow up to 76 df.....
Hansen and his crew routinely fudge the data to get the numbers they want. They have been caught doing this, multiple times, but the press still reports what they say, as if they are a credible source.
Oh that would be great! Where do we get one of those? Anyone?
BTTT
Dang - I’m a Quality Engineer - why have I never thought about this? Also didn’t realize that global temperature data is still read manually - an R & R study would be very interesting. Any data that the warmists have at their disposal is probably useless even if they haven’t fudged it - whatever “change” exists might just be inspector and instrument error.
Glass is technically not a solid, but a supercooled liquid. It's equilibrium state is crystalline. My guess is that as micro-crystals begin to coalesce in the matrix, it inhibits diffusion, thus increasing internal stress of the matrix and increasing the elastic modulus of the glass. Increasing the modulus of the material changes its response to the expansion of the internal fluid that indicates the temperature, resisting its expansion and thus modifying the temperature reading.
Sorry to disagree with you Carry. The ‘glass as a supercooled liquid’ thing needs to be put to rest. Glass is an amorphous (i.e. non-crystalline) solid at room temperature. It has no measurable flow. Crystallization always causes the glass to fracture, rendering it useless.
Ever measured a window's thickness top and bottom after 50 years? It's flow, albeit very slow. It gets more brittle too.
The distinctions of which you speak is a matter of redefinition of terminology in order to incorporate a distinction in behavior (fracturing), not molecular structure of the "solid." The definition I gave you is according to Van Vlack's Elements of Material Science and Engineering, p127, published June 1980. You can "disagree" with him.
What is being measured appears to be utter crap. They are trying to come up with a figure of "average global temperature", and use that as a way of measuring "climate change".
The problem is that what really needs to be looked at is the effect of any climate change on people and the biosphere. You can have a change in temperate-zone weather that has hotter, crop destroying summers and milder winters, versus where summers stay the same and winters get milder, versus where the only change is milder winters in Canada and Siberia -- each of these changes may involve the same shift in "average global temp" but have vastly different effects on the human race, whether negative or positive.
Now that we disagree on something, let us not fall into the trap (used by ‘global warming’ fans) of trying to define reality without using the scientific method. Can you post a link to a scientific study which verifies ‘measurable flow’ at room temperature? Or which verifies changes in ‘hardness’ over time? The brittleness you refer to may easily be a result of chemical weathering, which occurs due to exposure to water and other chemicals in the air. Weathering causes microscopic changes in the surface of the glass, making it easier to break. Not quite the same as brittleness, but close.
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