Much Ado About Nothing -- The Global Average Temperature Debate

The global warming priests have presented no evidence that the process they claim causes "global warming" exists.   They just illogically claim that any increase in what they call the "global average temperature"  can only result from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.   
     
Paul  Homewood has   reported on questionable manipulation of temperature data used to calculate this global average temperature.   Anthony Watts has documented problems with temperature data for several years on his blog.   

The controversy over the accuracy of the data can be viewed as much ado about nothing because the so-called global average temperature  "is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada." 

"It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth", Bjarne Andresen says,  an expert of thermodynamics. "A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate".

"While it is possible to treat temperature statistically locally, it is meaningless to talk about a a global temperature for Earth. The Globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average."

Even if the concept of a global average temperature was meaningful, the method of determining it is too primitive to produce a valid average.  Instead of using hourly temperatures, they just use the high and low temperature which may not be representative of temperatures during the day.   For example, the arrival of a strong  cold front late in the day can make the low temperature significantly lower than temperatures during the rest of the day.  

Even social scientists have moved away from using broad averages because such averages cover up too much information.   For example, social scientists look at the number of people in various age groups instead of the average age.   The number of homes with children or with one adult or two adults is used rather than the average household size which always ends up with a fraction of a person.   In the last presidential election people talked about the 3% in one income group and the percentage that didn't pay any income tax instead of the per capita income. 

 A third problem with the climate shaman's obsession with temperatures is that although a temperature decrease would disprove the claim of global warming, a temperature increase would not prove that CO2 was responsible.   The global warming preachers routinely commit the logical fallacy   "post hoc ergo proper hoc".    I learned that basic logic concept in high school English class. The global warming fanatics either didn't learn about the fallacy or don't understand that the fact that A follows B doesn't necessarily mean A causes B.

With their simple minded view of the situation they blithely assume that any temperature increase could only be a result of an increase in CO2.   They seemingly cannot understand that they must provide evidence that an increase in CO2 would cause any temperature increase.  They ignore the fact that other factors are known to be able to increase air temperature.

The teracalories of heat human activity generates each day would be the most likely cause of any temperature increase that wasn't caused by an increase in the sun's output.    Each teracalorie is capable of  raising the temperature of a trillion grams of water by 1 Celsius.   A teracalorie would raise the temperature of about 4-5 trillion grams of dry air 1 C.

Except in desert and tropical areas, most of the time the human body has a higher temperature than the air.   Automobile engines and other human technology generate sufficient heat to boil water.   Many types of air conditioning systems remove heat from the interior of buildings and transfer it outside where it heats the outside air.   Some of the heat used to warm the interiors of buildings in cold weather leaks out and heats the outside air.