It is all about the Av’er-ij

Average is a common concept easily understood by most people. Average is how we understand global warming to occur. Take all the measurements in a particular place for a year, add them all up and then divide by the number of measurements. Now take many locations yearly measurement, add them up, then divide, and here is your average global temperature. Do this for a while and then you can see a trend. Either the global average temperature goes down, goes up, or stays the same. Our planet’s is going up, on average. A…v…e...r...a...g...e… with a “rij” at the end. So if you live in say Las Vegas, and it seems to be a little cooler at times then you need to actually look at the entire yearly temperature median, keeping in mind that this is only one measurement among many thousands of locations.

This is very linear thinking. Now for something a little less linear. Because the Earth’s atmosphere temperature is trending higher, on average, things change. Call it global weirding (Thomas Friedman’s phrase). If oceans contain more heat that changes how currents move and give off h2o and effect winds. This is showing to have a temporary cooling effect in some regions. Some places will get cooler, some warmer, some will stay the same, on average, for a certain amount of time. Most places are getting warmer. You may wonder “how”, and a lot of folks are working on that, but the “what” is as easy as reading a thermostat. At least reading one over and over again in thousands of locations for years.

An example of how much faith is put into averages look at the Down Jones Industrial Average. As you know, many of those who question global warming depend on the measurement of just a handful of companies to tell them how their own money is doing at the moment. Then they follow the average trend to predict the future. If they are willing to make huge bets with their money in the market then they should be ready to not bet against a warming globe. Global temperature measurements are a lot more accurate than the DOW at telling us where we are and where we are headed.

I wrote this post in response to a linked-in chat room "what if Global Warming is a hoax". I also learned that they really don't like Mr. Gore, or apparently the scientific method.