But being floated in the pool wouldn't preserve the same temperature or wind conditions. The experiment would be easy enough to do with a thermometer and some dry ice. Take your pan of water out and float it in your pool. Put a thermometer in it and the same sort of thermometer in the pool. They won't be the same temperature during the day because the bottom of the pan will absorb more radiation at its depth than the surrounding pool and will therefore cause the water in the pan to be warmer and therefore evaporate at a different rate. Then put a piece of dry ice in the pool and one in the pan. You will see entirely different wind variables in the pan than on the surface of the pool as a result of the sides of the pan above the pool's surface.
Your idea, while it may seem reasonable on the surface, is, in fact terribly flawed when you get down to the physics of it and the information you got from your experiment didn't give you anything like the information you were looking for. There was a 50/50 chance you would be right whichever decision you made but the information you gleaned from your experiment wasn't a valid basis for that decision.
You view unemotional, rational thought as conspiracy thinking? Interesting.
It was a simple experiment that didn't give you valid information regardless of what you think because you didn't look deeply enough into the physics of the situation you were trying to assess. That is evident in the fact that you believed that floating the pan in the pool would equalize the temperatures and give you the same rate of evaporation. In the end, you made a guess based on something other than facts. Your guess was either right or wrong but the data you gathered was useless.
Nothing could be simpler except perhaps an accurate means of telling whether or not you have a leak. Turn off your pump for a while to allow your water to get still. Mark the water level. Then put a 5 gallon bucket of water next to your pool (home depot plastic bucket). Mark the water level there as well. Wait 24 hours. If your pool loses more water than the bucket, you have a leak. Then repeat the "experiment" over the course of 2 more days. One day with your equipment running and one day with the equipment off. If the leak only occurs when your equipment is running, then you know that your leak is not actually in your pool, but in your plumbing. If it happens on both days, then you can be pretty sure that the leak is in the pool shell itself. By the way. your bucket should be full of pool water as heavily chlorinated water evaporates at a different rate than tap water.
Your pool analogy isn't very applicable with regard to accurately assessing the climate. One involves a relatively predictable set of variables and the other is mostly chaos with very little predictablity at all.
You gave a good example of believing in data that was gathered via a flawed hypothesis followed by less than effective methodology.
Tell me, where in linear regression is it acceptable to alter past data in order to change the appearance of data being gathered in the present. Another important thing to remember with regard to linear progression as a tool for predictive modelling is that if the predictions generated by the models don't match observations, then the models are useless and a rational individual would scrap them and begin to look in another direction for cause. Present modelling.....all present modelling assumes CO2 to be an important driver in the climate. Till that assumption is dropped, models will continue to be a waste of money and a useless waste of time.
