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I'm not surprised that the assessment of the current global temperature has a one degree spread. It depends on sparse sampling (i.e. A few hundred temperature points around the world) and a various types of modeling. Here is a little story that shows how to assess something like global warming. My swimming pool seemed to be leaking, so I made a float apparatus to measure the water level of the pool. It was hard to measure because of slow undulations, so I took several readings each day and averaged. On a graph of the daily level, the leak seemed to be about 2 mm a day, and looked similar to the GW graphs – a noisy but definite trend. I then wondered about evaporation and filled a non-leaking pan and measured it for evaporation. That correction turned out to be .5 mm a day. I had absolutely no idea what the absolute depth of the pool was. It wasn't important in determining that there was a leak. The important factor was consistency in the way the daily levels were measured, and the evaporation correction I made after the fact. (Data tampering??!). In the same way, the important thing in measuring changing temperature of the planet is consistency of the measurement concept. And yes, science makes corrections and improves accuracy as newer models come about. Your focus on the absolute measurement of temperature at some particular point of time is quite misguided in the same way that an accurate measure of the absolute depth of my pool was not a factor.
I'm not surprised that the assessment of the current global temperature has a one degree spread. It depends on sparse sampling (i.e. A few hundred temperature points around the world) and a various types of modeling.
Here is a little story that shows how to assess something like global warming. My swimming pool seemed to be leaking, so I made a float apparatus to measure the water level of the pool. It was hard to measure because of slow undulations, so I took several readings each day and averaged. On a graph of the daily level, the leak seemed to be about 2 mm a day, and looked similar to the GW graphs – a noisy but definite trend. I then wondered about evaporation and filled a non-leaking pan and measured it for evaporation. That correction turned out to be .5 mm a day.
I had absolutely no idea what the absolute depth of the pool was. It wasn't important in determining that there was a leak. The important factor was consistency in the way the daily levels were measured, and the evaporation correction I made after the fact. (Data tampering??!).
In the same way, the important thing in measuring changing temperature of the planet is consistency of the measurement concept. And yes, science makes corrections and improves accuracy as newer models come about.
Your focus on the absolute measurement of temperature at some particular point of time is quite misguided in the same way that an accurate measure of the absolute depth of my pool was not a factor.
