NYTimes' Global Warming Xmas

The New York Times is the most credible news source with that portion of the public that blindly accepts anything the MSM delivers. But it's one of the most inaccurate, and biased, news sources if you do just a smidgen of homework on any given story. Unfortunately, a large portion the MSM news swallowing public never bothers to scratch the surface on anything they get from the MSM. For those trying to make news, or worse make facts out of theory, this is a green field environment.

We have unseasonably warm weather in the North East this month. The NYTimes uses a story about a warmer December resulting in fewer coat sales to coin the phrase "global warming Christmas". Interestingly, the story doesn't quote a single person in the retail, or garment, industry as using the words "global warming" but Michael Barbaro, the NYT writer, implies that's what all the industry sources are talking about. Barbaro also gives you some weather facts, lets break some of them down.

Barbaro says in Midtown Manhattan on Thursday it reached 45 degrees. Tiny points out that the 30 year average for this date is 46 degrees...oh my!

Barbaro says the average high since this Dec 1. is 47 degrees, compared to 32 degrees for that same period in 2005. Tiny wonders if he's claiming global warming wasn't in affect in the NY area in 2005, this is GW year 1?...wow it's happening at an alarming pace! Tiny also finds the average high in NYC for December using 30 yrs of data is 42.5.

Barbaro says this year the average high this month was 52, whereas it was 38 degrees since 2001. Tiny points out that Barbaro chooses only data since 2001 instead of the 30 years of recorded data used by the major weather organizations which show the avg. high in NYC of 42.5 degrees....Barbaro chooses only a period to help his case.

Barbaro adds the commentary that this remarkable weather data is "making this December the warmest since 2001". Tiny wonders if now the NYTimes admiring public will think GW has only made its presence known to us in the last 5 years?

Weather is hugely complex. Even if we had hundreds of years of data (temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, rainfall, etc.) for a grid covering the globe just one mile apart and at every 1000 feet of altitude above the earths surface...even then we wouldn't likely know if cycles are natural or man made. But one thing is clear....it's 100% unscientific, and misleading, to just use data for a few years and make any implication.

There are people who apparently just WANT to believe man is to blame for any warming patterns we see. But even they know their position is weak as they're unwilling to present all the facts as they show GW being influenced by man is but a theory....and not one universally believed.

I scratched the surface by visiting http://www.noaa.gov/ , http://www.weather.gov/, http://www.weather.com/, http://www.weatherbase.com/. My position that we DO NOT know whether normal weather fluctuations, or something else, has anything to do with today's weather comes from reading Chaos by Gleick which explores chaos theory and Weather Cycles by Burroughs, who uses logic and mathematics to put forward the theory that observed temperature effects can be due to natural variability, solar activity, and the Earth's orbital parameters.