Global temperature does not exist

Even if enough accurate surface temperature measurements existed to ensure reasonable planetary coverage (it doesn't) and some sort of global temperature statistic was calculated, interpreting its significance would be challenging. What averaging rule would you use to handle the data from thousands of temperature-sensing stations? Mean, mode, median, root mean square? Science does not tell us. For some groups of close temperature measures (and NASA and NOAA are dealing with thousands of very close temperatures across a huge temperature field that varies from -93.22 ^oC (the low temperature record, detected by satellite observations on August 10, 2010 along a ridge in Antarctica) to +56.7 ^oC (the high temperature record, observed on July 10, 1913 in Death Valley), one method of calculating an average can lead to a determination of warming while another can lead to a conclusion of cooling.

In 2007, an important paper written by Essex, McKitrick and Bjarne Andresen was published in the Journal of Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics. Titled, "Does a Global Temperature Exist?" the authors give examples of how different averaging methods can show a system is both warming and cooling at the same time. They point out, however,

The notion of being globally ''hotter'' or ''colder'' for out-of-equilibrium systems [the Earth is obviously "out-of-equilibrium" which is why we have variable weather] is not altogether without merit. Miami in January, with temperatures ranging from 20 to 30^oC, say, is certainly warmer than Toronto at, say, -15 to -5^oC. However, this ranking of relative warmth is not based on averages, but on the ranges[my bold] in respective temperature fields. Since the ranges do not overlap, all averages will agree which field seems to be the warmer. It is independent of the choice of average.

Not so for the case of comparisons of Earth's temperature field at times a few years apart. The range over the globe (about -80^oC to +40^oC) is essentially the same for both when compared to statistical trends in averages (i.e., about +/-0.01^oC/year), which are three orders of magnitude smaller. In cases where ranges overlap, not all averages over a given set of actual observations agree on trends, throwing into doubt for this case what 'warmer' or 'cooler' means.

Essex, McKitrick and Andresen come to three critical conclusions:

• "Sums or averages over the individual temperatures in the field are not temperatures. Neither are they proxies for internal energy."
• "The utility of any global spatial average of the temperature field as an index for global conditions has been presumed but not demonstrated."
• "If there are no physical or pragmatic grounds for choosing one over another, and one increases while the other decreases, there is no basis for concluding that the atmosphere as a whole is either warming or cooling."

So, how can we tell if a system, in this case, the Earth, is warming or cooling? You cannot, unless the range of temperatures at different times change so much that they do not overlap. There is no chance of that occurring anytime in the foreseeable future on this planet, so confident pronouncements of global warming in the past century are entirely misguided. We have no way of knowing if "global warming" is real since we have nothing meaningful to base it on.

Governments must stop wasting trillions of taxpayer dollars trying to stop a climate crisis that no one knows actually exists. The world has real problems to solve.