By Jack Hellner
We are seeing daily scare stories that the Earth is setting record highs for average daily temperatures. These reports base their talking points on taking the average temperature from what appears to be around 11,000 weather stations, and it seems they just add those temperatures up and divide by 11,000.
Earth’s global mean temperature (GMT) is determined by averaging measurements of air temperatures over land ocean surface temperatures. Thousands of weather stations spread over land surface worldwide measure the local air temperatures while thousands of ships and buoys measure the local sea surface temperatures.
A mathematician or statistical analyst would tell these people that is not a proper way to calculate the average annual temperature of anything because the weather stations aren’t divided evenly. A proper statistical way would be placing weather stations based on square miles of area.
For example:
The Earth covers around 197 million square miles and there are 11,000 weather stations.
Siberia has 5.1 million square miles and only 59 weather stations when a proper statistical sample would be over 250 stations
Antarctica has 8.5 million square mile and only 57 weather stations when a proper statistical sample would require over 450 stations.
Why is there such an obvious underrepresentation in cold areas? Could it be the leftist agenda?
The 48 contiguous states in the U.S cover around 3.8 million square miles, which is only 2% of the Earth’s area yet it appears we have 1,218 weather stations or over 10% of total stations. Why is the sample skewed so much?
There are very few weather stations covering the oceans despite over 70% of the Earth being covered by water. If the scientists actually wanted an average global temperature, over 7,000 of the temperature stations would be in or over the oceans, instead of just a few ships.
About 71 percent of the Earth’s surface is water-covered, and the oceans hold about 96.5 percent of all Earth’s water (source)
It is not generally realized that twelve ships, representing eight nations and acting as floating weather observation stations, are pinpointed over the 3,000 miles of rough water between North America and Europe. (source)
It is statistically impossible to calculate an average daily global temperature and misleading to tell the public that they do that every day in order to scare them into capitulation to the green pushers.
It is blatantly misleading to pretend we can tell what the average temperature on Earth was 100 years ago or 125,000 years ago. There is also no way to tell what causes temperatures to fall or rise, which they have done many times throughout history.
The climate is fluctuating and has always fluctuated cyclically and naturally. It is arrogant to believe politicians and bureaucrats can control temperatures, sea levels, and storm activity if we allow them to destroy industries that have greatly improved our quality and length of life.
On a side note: In Springfield, Illinois, where I live, the warmest day ever was July 14, 1954, during a global cooling period. This year we will be about 30 degrees cooler than 69 years ago. I guess our coal fired power plant hasn’t killed us.
These records were observed at Springfield’s Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport and go back to 1901. The highest temperature measured during that time was 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44 Celsius) on July 14, 1954