For the next installment, I wanted to get the temp history for a more rural area of Georgia. One theory suggests that part of the recorded uptick in temperatures is due more to land usage than greenhouse gasses. So, as I review temperature histories for various locales, I want to get a mix of urban and rural locations.

So, now I have chosen 2 entirely random cities near my home: Atlanta and Jasper. Atlanta being the urban location which I reviewed in my previous GW post. Below is the raw data for Jasper, GA.

Interestingly, it appears that the 50s were the warmest decade and the temperature was somewhat stagnant since then. Actually, there is a what appears to be a very small rise in the curve (see the previous post for particulars on how I created the graph) which plateaus in the mid-1990s.

The next graph places the Atlanta temps and the Jasper temps on the same graph and the results are very interesting:

The linear trend for Atlanta is a rising trend while the Jasper trend is a similarly steep, but downward trend. I'm certain there could be a million reasons for this, but on it's face, it could in part support the theory of land use impacts on temperature increases.

The question that comes to mind is if two cities less than 100 miles apart can vary this widely in terms of temperature trending, is it possible to say definitively what the difference is? What percentage of that change, if any, is related to greenhouse gasses? My point is that if global average temperature has gone up about 2 to 3 degrees over the last century, is it possible to say that that increase (assuming it's accurate) is 100% attributable to solely greenhouse gasses. That would assume that all other factors just happened to cancel each other out - is that likely? At this point, I suppose one could say it would have gone up more if factor X hadn't been working to cool us down. Or conversely, one could say that greenhouse gasses have a cooling effect that was more than canceled out by the warming effects of factor Y.

I may get some more temperature data, but I think I will turn my attention to the case for how we know the impact of greenhouse gasses amongst all of the other factors in the equation.

Two events have recently sparked me to consider this question: What is the role of the press?

I watched "Goodnight and Good Luck" about Edward R. Murrow and just last night I caught an NPR program where the speaker was asked questions about the performance of the press. I got the impression from both of these events, that the press feels a collective role, or responsibility, in AFFECTING policy. For example, in one instance in last night's show, the speaker indicated that he felt that the press "had failed" in the wake of the Iraq War to be critical enough of the administration's build up for the war.

While I will vociferously support the press' right to print whatever they like, regardless of the purpose or intent behind the content, I find their self-appointed stature a bit annoying.

From my perspective, it's not the press - which is really just a small group of journalists representing their corporations' interests - that is supposed to hold the government accountable, it's us - the people. We need straight, unbiased information by which to make decisions on how we vote or gather to protest. Sure there's a place for editorials from press outlets, but when news is editorialized, that role is compromised and we become servants to the agenda of the press. When they "feed" us the information they consider important, shield us from information they feel we don't need to know, they are taking sides and forcing that side on us. How do we hold the press accountable?

I believe what we've seen over the last 10 years in the growth of the internet and talk radio is a backlash against left-leaning media. I don't think the NYT is more liberal than it was 20 years ago, but now those biases are pointed out. However, on a more global level very few people get much more information that headlines and sound bites and form opinions without the benefit of all of the facts or the "other side" of the story. The current "drive-by" media is presenting us news like McDonalds serves us fries: give me the bottom line in a sentence or less instead of making me consider the merits for myself - tell me what to think. And thus, the press has usurped our power by acting as a proxy for what we should think.

As an example, for those that believe in Global Warming as a big issue, how many have actually done any research beyond reading some headlines?

Okay, I'll grant you, polls are interesting and fun, but what they tell us is a whole different ball of wax. Here's my general (conspiracy) theory on  polls:

• Most people, and thus most polled, are not that bright, not that well informed, but love to give their opinion (this is equally true throughout the political spectrum).
• These unintelligent, uninformed people form opinions based on what they see, hear or read in passing - i.e. the Media
• So, once influenced, to some extent by the media (biased that they are), the media then perform "scientific" polls with the outcome in mind and the questions geared toward that outcome (I don't mean all the way, but I am suggesting that some bias can find its way in here too).
• Now that the poll results gathered by the media are in, they then provide their expert (biased) opinion on just what exactly the poll means and lo and behold guess what - It's Bush's fault.

So, here's the latest poll from NBC/WSJ titled "U.S. Pessism on Increase". This particular article has a large picture of Bush at right (It's Bush's Fault!) and the first section:

With congressional midterm elections less than four months away, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that candidates will be facing a public that has grown increasingly pessimistic, as nearly two-thirds don't believe life for their children's generation will be better than it has been for them, and nearly 60 percent are doubtful the Iraq war will come to a successful conclusion.

And there's more pessimism: Among those who believe the nation is headed on the wrong track, more than 80 percent say it's part of a longer-term decline.

"This is just a horrendous set of numbers," says Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican Bill McInturff. The mood is "as dank and depressing as I have seen."

According to the poll, 65 percent say they feel less confident that life for their children's generation will be better than it was for them. In December 2001, the last time this question was asked, respondents — by a 49-42 percent margin — said they were confident life would be better for their children.

One gets the impression that it is all Bush's fault and that with the coming elections, democrats will surely sweep the contested seats and bring us all new hope for our otherwise depressed nation. I'll ignore the makeup of the respondents (which it doesn't provide except to say 48% men and 1010 respondents) and just assume it is a representative sample (yeah, right). Below is my analysis of some of the raw poll results:

America's Direction. 60% say "off on the wrong track" and 81% of those feel like it is a "longer-term decline." So what does that mean? Does it mean that the decline started a long time ago - before Bush was president? Does it mean that it is seen as a decline that will continue for a long time into the future? The question was not posed as a politically specific question so does the result reflect anything about how our politicians are to blame? The older generation always seems to think young people today or today's culture is "on the wrong track". How many times have your parents say something like - "we never did that when we were kids" or "kids today have it so easy". I would suspect that number of 60% is higher than "normal", but what is it a reflection of - we really don't know.

Bush as President. Bush's approval rating went UP 2% from 37% to 39%, but no mention of that in the article. Of course, if it had gone down we would have seen the headline read "New Low for Bush approval." That's low, but not by historical standards. Many past presidents at this point in their second terms were similar (although I'm not sure I'd give him a favorable right now except to spite my liberal friends). The article only mentions that his poll numbers are "still under 40%".

More approve of Bush's performance on the current Israel situation (45% to 39%). More approve on North Korea (43% to 41%). Less approve of his job on Iran (38% to 46%).

Federal Priority. Even as much as the Democrats would like to get back to domestic issues, the top issues probably still fall in Bush's and the Republicans favor. The War in Iraq and the general issue of Terrorism gets 43% in the question of what should be the highest priority. While many might not be happy with Bush's performance in Iraq, the Democrats STILL HAVE NO PLAN except to bash Bush. Next is job creation and economic growth (12%) as a priority. I know the Dems like to say the economy is not going so well, but it's hard to argue with the key numbers used to measure any economic cycle - consistent, strong GDP growth for several years now and unemployment below 5%. So fully 55% believe the federal government's priority should be national security and the economy before anything else and if Bush can be said to have any strengths - these are them!

Al Gore. And I can't resist a shot at my favorite moonbat presidential candidate that almost won and since has totally gone off the deep end, Al Gore. Apparently his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", has done little to shed light on this catastrophic issue before us - the environment. On the list of federal priorities, only 4% believe that this should be the top issue. Poor Al, he just can't get enough people on his bandwagon which says that the environment is a greater threat to mankind that terrorism. Sorry Al.

Immigration. Stunning to me is the fact that immigration is way on down the list of priorities behind the Economy and Jobs, Healthcare and Energy and the cost of gas. Just one month ago, it above all of these. How quickly people forget about important issues! Now that congress has continued to stall, they can probably just let it go once again since the public seems to have forgotten about it once again. The problem will continue to get worse and it will eventually bubble up to the surface again and it will be even harder to fix then than now. Also, I don't understand how the economy is always so high on the list. Do people not understand that the government can only substantially impact the economy in a negative way by taking action?

And finally, Israel or Arabs? Buried in the article, they actually mention this in passing - respondents said that they sympathize with Israel over Arab nations by almost 5 to 1. I find this startling given that most news coverage conveys more of a 1 to 1 ratio as if Israel is just as culpable as Hezbollah in this whole mess. I cannot explain why that is and can't even guess.

On the whole, if you compare my "news coverage" of the poll results you will find a much different story than what was posted by Mark Murray of NBC News. Does bias color our reporting? Of course it does. As much as I see the positives (ok, glimmer of hope) from the poll for Bush and the Republicans, he sees how depressing it is.

We see what we wish to see. BTW, I'm not a pessimist and I think that overall our future is very bright!

Ok, here is graph #1. No, that's not all I've been doing, but I thought it would be fun to post. I found a site that seems to have a lot of raw data (http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/). I was able to find data for my home base, Atlanta, for 1950 through 1999. Yes, this is an arbitrary pick, I need to figure out how pre-1950 data figures in and of course other areas in the world, but I had to start somewhere.

So, what's interesting about this graph?

• There definitely seems to be a cooling trend from 1950 to 1970. I would think that that would be a period during the industrial revolution where CO2 was increasing so why not temperatures?
• There's a definite warming trend from 1970 through to the mid to late 1990s.
• The trend seems to have stalled right at the end of the curve (I don't have data from 2000 to now, but I'll look for it). Regardless it seems to have at least levelled off a bit. I have heard an Australian Climatologist suggest that there was warming up until 1998, but he believes that it has ceased. How would he know? Isn't that a pretty short period of time to call a trend "over"?

I am going to look at some other locations as well as try to get additional years of data both before 1950 and since 1999. From my perspective, this graph does demonstrate overall that the 1990s has been the warmest decade since 1950 on average about a degree hotter than the 1950s.

Notes: I took the raw daily average temps from the web site listed above. I then averaged all each months' temperature and then I averaged those averages (the results could have been slightly different if I averaged every data point to get the annual average temp) for each year to get my data points for this graph. The trend line is a polynomial regression line with an order of 3. This was created in MS Excel.

So I have begun some research into Global Warming. I started by trying to collect some web sites that would be beneficial and have so far put together a pretty good list. The list includes sites that are on both sides of the argument.

But my first goal is to go back to the beginning. What is global warming (i.e. what constitutes the warming - 2 degrees since 1930 for instance)? Where did it all begin? I'm not worried about what might have caused it or what the consequences are or what we could possibly do about it. Those will all come later. For now, I want to look at raw data to see the warming trend on my own. I realize that this is the least controversial part of global warming, but I still need to see it for myself.

I will start presenting some graphs in the next several days to show what I've found.

On another note, of the web sites I've reviewed, there is a clear division of what each side believes and they are clearly partisan in nature. I found one site that suggests that Global Warming is a big problem and provides things we can do help the problem including steps we can take every day in our home (which I am a fan of) to donating money and calling our congressional representatives (which I am not a big fan of). Here is the link to StopGlobalWarming.org

I won't be using this site as a reference as it is less based on facts and proving that it is an issue and leans more towards activism and advocacy. That's not a problem, I'm just saying that I can't get much information to support Global Warming theories from a site like this. Further, and the funniest part to me, is that the site provides little support for its statements. I went to the Learn More section to learn more about it and here is what I found:

"Global warming isn’t opinion. It’s a scientific reality. And the science tells us that human activity has made enormous impacts to our planet that affect our well-being and even our survival as a species."

There are no facts and figures or supporting references. There is only assummed associations and gloom and doom. As a skeptic, this site does little to influence me since it doesn't even want to acknowledge another side of  the story. In a nutshell it says:

Earth is warming, it's our fault and we may all die as a result unless we take drastic action now which will no doubt reduce warming.