Fallacies, Fables and Fibs
Submitted by climaterealists on Thu, 05/09/2013 - 20:05
I see in the NZH today (26/8) Dr Salinger makes all sorts of self-serving statements about this winter being '...the warmest since records began in the 1860s, which confirms the warming trend, blah, blah, blah'. It's ironic that his warming waffle is accompanied by a picture titled 'Dippers brave freezing water at Mission Bay'. The NZH has a sense of humour!
He cites just three other winters, 1916, 1984 and 2001, as being 'warmer than average'. So a very large number were below average. But of course that's 'an inconvenient truth'. He says warming trends have been '...very consistent since the 1950s'. That's odd because 'experts' in the 70s were predicating 'crop failures', 'mass starvation' and even 'anarchy' because of global------------------------------------------------cooling!
Salinger reckons that the average NZ winter temperature is 1.1C degrees warmer than in 1870. I'm not sure that it's kosher to average averages like that. Niwa doesn't give such figures on their website so they can't be cross checked. 'Late July and throughout (sic) August', says Salinger '...the average is 9.5C...and the normal (sic!) average is 8.3C'. So what is an abnormal or subnormal average? In fact, the mean winter (July) high temperatures (Bateman - NZ Facts) for our four main centres are: AK 14.5C; WN 11.4C; CH 11.3C; DN 9.8C. Applying Salinger's 'averaging mechanism', that is an 'average' of 11.5C. So on that basis there's been significant cooling.
Were such waffle written by a 3rd Former, they'd get all sorts of 'Xs' for illogicality, fallacious argument (petitio principii, non sequiturs, 'cherry picking' and so on)... and possibly telling fibs. I guess no one takes his stuff seriously - which is a relief.
When I ask folk in the street what they think about global warming and climate change, the invariable response, and I quote verbatim, is: 'It's all bullshit'.
I rest my case. jc
PS. According to the Niwa website, the July 2010 NZ average temperature was 7.7C. That is 0.2C BELOW the 1971- 2000 July averages. I can cherry pick too!
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