Science Forums 2

[Boerseun]

cwes00_03, this being my 2,000th post, it's cause for celebration. Bring out the bubbly, I say. I have had ideas for how to celebrate my 2,000th post, and replying to this specific post of yours will do just fine:

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Boer, I don't know what scientific background you have.

Information Technology, Geography, Geology and Physics. Does it matter?

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Thermometers more than 100 years ago were made with mercury. Funny thing, mercury can evaporate.

Besides being poisonous, mercury thermometers (the kind not bought at the bargain-basement counter) are normally sealed. You have a bulb and a stem, and the top part of the stem is sealed so that the nasty mercury can't get out. And they are still manufactured, to this day.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Thermometers break and mercury gets out. So then they started using alcohol in thermometers (and most thermometers in the developed world were exchanged for these new ones). Then along came the personal computer with thermistors which are accurate down to the thousandth of a degree. These coupled with wireless communication made it possible to place electronic (not mercury) thermometers all over the place as long as they had a power line and communications equipment to transmit these things.

I don't dispute that for a second. Although, as anybody using Microsoft products would testify, stupid is as stupid does. The fact that is has all kinds of bells and whistles and wireless connections and email facilities and can sing the blues in three different shades of muave does not make it one whit more accurate than, say, a good ol'fashioned mercury thermometer. It all depends on the initial calibration.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Now you ever use a mercury, alcohol, and digital thermometer in a hot water bath? Which one are you going to trust to be accurate?

Seeing as I'm biased, I won't tell you. You know what I'm a'gonna say, dontcha?

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Since every grade schooler in the US has done this experiment and realized that the glass tubes holding the liquids can move up and down according to the scale just by picking the thermometer up off a shelf, they all learn to use the digital.

DUDE!!! I toldya not to use the bargain basement stuff! Go to any lab supply shop and see if they sell those cheapie glass-tube-with-the-movable-scale models! You need to shop around sum, brother! If that's your idea of how the liquid thermometers work, I can understand why you'd wanna go for the electronic gizmos...

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Then when they learn how easy it is to calibrate the digital by running a simple piece of software, and that they can get an accurate reading down to the thousandth of a degree, verses maybe an inaccurate tenth using a liquid based thermometer, they never go back.

I'm at a loss. Once again - the Microsoft parable...
Calibrate a digital. Fine. Use a calculator. Fine. Do you now why you're doing what you're doing, or why the answer is what it is? There's a reason they call it a sliderule... the sucker rules...

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Now besides the innacuracies of the measuring device, let's consider number of devices and locations. 100 years ago, how many locations were attempting to record an accurate temperature?

I dunno. Depends what country you're talkin' about. We've had metereological stations over here for many years, now. And they've been keeping very accurate records... all with mercury thermometers.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Were these recording the temperature of the ground or the air?

The air.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Were they dry or were they being affected by relative humidity?

Neither - they were sealed mercury thermometers. Do you actually know how they work, or are you regurgitating anti-global warming propaganda here?

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Were they in urban environments only or were they spread equally all across the surface of the earth (land and sea)?

We had weather stations set up in all the big metropolitan areas, as well as in godforsaken little towns in the Kalahari desert. The ocean temperatures were taken by the Royal Navy as they cruised the world's oceans. And every reading's position was recorded at sea, as accurate as it was at the time. They did this in order to learn more about ocean currents, the knowledge of which were crucial to commercial and military shipping in those days.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

You go draw up a bath of water and vary the temperature while your filling it and stick one thermometer in after you are done. Is that thermometer going to accurately read the temperature of the entire bath? NO. Just one single point. Will data based on that point represent the trend of the entire bath? NO. Just one point.

'zacktly. That's why we measure the ocean all over, not only at one point. One spot might be cold where a current comes from the poles, whilst another spot only a few hundred miles away will be mild to warm, bringing water from the tropics. You can make strawman arguments all you like, but I still fail to see your point.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

How do you compare data from the past 100 years when you keep adding new points, methods, equipment, etc.? You try to find a datapoint for which these things has not changed.
So they went to the poles. What did they find? Not a temperature, but a trend between thickness in the ice and CO2 trapped within that band of ice.

Nobody measured the temperatures of core samples. Even alluding to that simply displays your ignorance of the matter. It is impossible to measure the temperature of air bubbles that was locked into solid ice thousands of years ago - all we can do is infer a likely temperature based on our knowledge of the gases the sample of the atmosphere trapped in the sample consist out of.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Well that's a start, now we have a good idea that temperature of the air and thickness of the ice are related, and we have a strong correlation between thickness and CO2,

THICKNESS of the ice and CO2? Er... No.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

and we believe that we can say that the CO2 levels are higher now than they have been in a very long time (again how long is questionable)

We don't *believe* it, we can measure it in the samples. There is no *belief* here. It's empirical. Cold-blooded. Black-and-white.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

and we can begin to say that there might be some relationship between that and industrialization.

No. It's all a big conspiracy.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Except that industrialization began more than 100 years ago, and the temperatures only appear to have begun rising in the past 30 years and before that they were actually falling enough to make some people think we were entering another ice age (look at those people now and shake your head shamefully). So now someone needs to provide data on whether industrialization 30 years ago suddenly drastically increased in production of CO2.

If I fart right now, I can guarantee you won't smell it. Not right now. The stuff need to spread. You dig? Besides the fact that industry have been growing exponentially over the last hundred-odd years, the atmosphere's a big place - but by no means boundless. It will reach its fill. It takes time, though.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Oh and don't even try to say that it took a while for the increase in CO2 to kick in.

Why can't I say it? It's the truth, brother. You might not like it, though.

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

The study of the 2 mile deep core sample in Vostok shows that there is a strict relationship between air temperature and CO2 levels (not an offset of 70 years relationship but a strict relationship meaning every hot year there was an abnormally high amount of CO2).

Yes?...

Originally Posted by cwes99_03

Now take into consideration the effects of the sun on Mars on the movement of the dry ice from one pole to the next and the rise and fall of CO2 levels in the atmospher when this happens. On the hottest years more CO2 is realeased into the atmosphere, thus the following year more is frozen into the ice because there is more in the atmosphere to freeze out. Seems like CO2 from an ice core sample should follow the hot years (of course on earth we don't have dry ice at the poles, we have gas bubles in the ice.)