In The News
My Qualifications (skip this section, if unimportant to you)
My lifetime work has been in the measurement and control field, also known as I&C, Instrument, and Control.
My first challenges were in the aerospace business. In aerospace, the control systems challenges included predicting the precise moment to release a bomb or missile from an aircraft to ensure the ordinance would do the most damage to a designated target far from the aircraft. Ballistics, air temperature, gravity over the target area, altitude of the aircraft, and wind speed and direction were the variables in the firing solution.
My second challenge was in the offshore drilling business. While on an engineering team to build the world’s first automatic (computer-controlled) drilling rig, some of the challenges included precise positioning of the drill pipe downhole. The total weight of the drill string, depth of the hole, fluid flow rate, and rotation speed were some of the many variables of the drilling solution.
Most of my later work was dedicated to controlling HVAC-related processes for indoor climate control, indoor air quality management, and energy conservation. My customers included commercial office buildings, hospitals, educational facilities, central energy plants, power generation equipment, jail locking systems, fire alarm systems, noxious gas detection and mitigation, manufacturing, and incarceration facilities.
Why do I mention the above? I mention the above to emphasize the importance of understanding the principles of measurements. For this discussion, measured temperature and average temperature.
Although retired, my inventory of calibrated instruments includes equipment for precisely measuring dry bulb temperature, dewpoint temperature, infrared temperature measurement, barometric pressure, relative humidity, carbon dioxide, combustible gasses, carbon monoxide, relative humidity, dewpoint temperature, airflow, air pressure, combustible gas pressure, water column temperatures, etc.
Focus: Temperature Measurement
There are only two temperature measurement instruments: spot and average.
The location of a temperature measurement sensor is of paramount importance to the mission of the temperature control system. Hot air rises; cold air falls. In an office environment where people are usually seated, we place room temperature sensors at 4 feet above the finished floor (AFF).
Unlike indoor temperature measurements, outdoor temperature measurements differ greatly from indoor comfort-control measurements.
I quote from the National Weather Service Instruction 10-1302: REQUIREMENTS AND STANDARDS FOR NWS CLIMATE OBSERVATIONS. Specifically, on page 8, paragraph 4, Air temperature.
“Air temperature is temperature of the free air conditions surrounding the station at a height between 4 and 6 feet above ground level. The air should be freely exposed to sunshine and wind and not close to or shielded by trees, buildings, or other obstructions.”
On 10/5/2023, at 0730 hours, in Rockwall, Texas, the NWS indicated 69°F, 100% relative humidity. My own weather station indicated 72°F, 90% relative humidity. My outdoor sensor is on the north side of my home, 7 feet above the ground, and shielded from sunlight.
The Heat Island Effect
The urban heat island effect is a phenomenon whereby cities experience higher air temperatures than the surrounding countryside. This effect can be quite noticeable. On average, cities tend to be 1-7°F warmer during the daytime.1 This difference continues well into the night, during which cities can still be as much as 5°F warmer than the areas around them.1 Scientists refer to areas afflicted by these higher temperatures as urban heat islands. — MIT Climate Portal
I state the obvious: the National Weather Service standard does not include satellite infrared measurements.
Average Temperature
From what and where does the National Weather Service (NWS) get its temperature data? I quote: “Today’s temperature data come from many sources, including more than 32,000 land weather stations, weather balloons, radar, ships and buoys, satellites, and volunteer weather watchers.”
The geographical area of our conterminous states is 3,119,884.69 square miles. Doing the math,
3,119,884.69 ÷ 32,000 = 97.49 square miles per weather station
In the instrument and control industry, we do not consider one measurement per 97 square miles as precision.
In my industry, one mesurement per square foot is a minimum requirement.
Whether you are a believer in a 4.5 billion year old Earth or you believe God created the earth around 6,000 years ago, knowing the history of the average temperature of the contermnous United States of America cannot come from empirical measurements by standard National Weather Service monitoring stations. Shortly after Februay 9, 1870, the Weather Bureau (forunner of the NWS) began measuring temperature and recording cloud conditions. This informaion was disseminated across the nation via telegraph, according to NOAA: National Weather Service Heritage. This information has been recorded using sensors suspended by kites to mercury thermometers for only 153 years. Year by year and day by day, the NWS dramatically improves measuremenst, weather forecasts, and storm warnings.
The Geological Record of Temperaure
“A sudden warming of climate lasting several centuries took place in equatorial Africa some 2,000 years ago, according to a new study reported by a Weizmann Institute of Science-led team in the August 14 issue of Science.”
2,000 years ago, the estimated populaion of the entire world was between 150 million and 190 million persons. There were no coal-fired electrical plants, no gas stoves or gas furnaces, no jet airliners and no automobiles pumping metric tons of CO2 into the atmophere.
Summary
As a young Navy man, my squadron of A6A Intruders (VA-42) regularly trained aircrews to accurately drop practice bombs in the desert around Yuma, Arizona. How well I remember Yuma in the summertime: 120°F and upward IN THE SHADE. The highest recorded temperature for Yuma, Arizona was 124. Not even one of the self-anointed climate alarmists attributed the heat to ‘climate change.’
As a young Navy man, my squadron of A6A Intruders (VA-42) regularly trained aircrews to accurately drop practice bombs in the desert around Yuma, Arizona. How well I remember Yuma in the summertime: 120°F and upward IN THE SHADE. The highest recorded temperature for Yuma, Arizona is 124°F on July 28, 1995.
As a traveling salesman in the 1980s, I have traversed the United States of America looking for signs of life from 40,000 feet. Finding none, my only choice was to be ‘grounded’ in my searches.
Tokyo, Japan is the world’s largest city with a 2023 population of 37,194,105, has a few million more people than the great state of Texas. If not for the pointer in the Google Earth image, a perspective 2,000 miles high, one would neve suspect human habitation in that great city.
The point is simply this. The whole of mankind, all 8,064,773,038 of us, is miniscule in the context of the whole earth.
Phenomena greater than our imaginations affect the atmosphere of our planet, including Jupiter, the Sun, Milankovich Cycles, tectonic plate collisions, volcanic activity, changes in the Earth’s orbit about the Sun, the ebbing Moon orbit, movement of the magnetic poles, and variable solar radiation due to sunspot activity.
A belief in anthropogenic climate change is based on idolatry, a belief that man is the god of this world.
The Creator of the Earth and the entire observable universe has a name, several, in fact. Yaheh (aka Jehova, ‘I Am’), Adoni, Yahweh-Maccaddeshem, Yahweh-Rohi, Yahweh-Shammah, Yahweh-Rapha, Yahweh-Tsidkenu, Yahweh-Jireh, Yahweh-Nissi, Yahweh-Shalom, Yahweh-Sabbaoth, Yahweh-Ghmolah, Elohim, El-Elyon, El-Gibhor, El-Olam, El-Roi, El-Shaddai-Rohi, El-Chuwl, El-Deah, and Attiyq Youm.
“The Lord is high above all nations, and His glory above the heavens.” Psalm 113:4
Knowledge is Power; Ignorance is a Choice.
John White
Rockwall, Texas
John N. White 