Your Opinion: Variables in temperature calculations

Dear Editor:

Two American agencies released reports on 2013, NOAA and NASA. NOAA's report proclaimed 2013 as the fourth warmest year on record and NASA reported that 2013 was tied with three others for seventh warmest on record.

The reason for the discrepancy between NOAA and NASA is how they calculate the temperatures in Antarctica. Notice they calculate temperatures, there are whole sections of the world where temperatures are calculated as there are no reading stations there. Even when there are stations they still don't use the actual temps, they use anomalies based on reference temperatures.

The web has many sites with detailed explanations of the various calculations used and how they work. Also the word anomalies and references have multiple meanings in the reports. The year 1880 has been a big reference point for charts (not the anomaly baseline however) for that is when the U.S.A started recording data but not other countries. Then most of the weather stations were in the northern hemisphere in cooler climate areas and the technology was less accurate.

Some countries didn't start recording temperatures till 1956. Often temperature measurements from the time are adjusted. When looking at reports not all are the same; they do not use the same points of reference for anomaly calculations. Despite this all reports show decimals of a degree and if they were made to whole degrees once again no temperature change. If you look at the NOAA global chart for land for 2013 http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/glob/201401.gif temperatures for the last 10 years have been pretty stable. If you look at the chart with the ocean and land added together there is even less of a change. Even satellites don't measure temperature, they measure microwaves given off by oxygen atoms, strange concept to prove CO2 is heating the earth by measuring microwaves released by oxygen.

Now my turn to scare; while researching climate change you will find many pages of people wanting to ban meat production because meat production releases methane which has four times the heat retaining capacity of CO2 so beef farmers look out, first coal, then wood stoves and next you.

As a footnote I was so happy to find that I am now officially in a clique. For years I felt like an outsider, being in the minority and all, for believing in natural climate change (prefer to be called a naturalist). I hope there are T-shirts.