Analysis says NOAA global temperature data ‘doesn’t constitute a “smoking gun” for global warming’
Anthony Watts / 2 days ago October 1, 2017
Summary
The global temperature record doesn’t demonstrate an upward trend. It doesn’t demonstrate a lack of upward trend either. Temperature readings today are about 0.75°C higher than they were when measurement began in 1880, but you can’t always slap a trendline onto a graph and declare, “See? It’s rising!” Often what you think is a pattern is actually just Brownian motion. When the global temperature record is tested against a hypothesis of random drift, the data fails to rule out the hypothesis. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t an upward trend, but it does mean that the global temperature record can be explained by simply assuming a random walk. The standard graph of temperatures over time, despite showing higher averages in recent decades than in earlier ones, doesn’t constitute a “smoking gun” for global warming, neither natural nor anthropogenic; merely drawing a straight line from beginning to end and declaring it a trend is a grossly naive and unscientific oversimplification, and shouldn’t be used as an argument in serious discussions of environmental policy.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/01/analysis-says-noaa-global-temperature-data-doesnt-constitute-a-smoking-gun-for-global-warming/
