Reply to post: Re: Many Bothans died to bring us this plot device

Re: Many Bothans died to bring us this plot device

"Here is one: UNKNOWN MEASUREMENT ERROR.

This is a device into which you pump a LOT of energy and then check whether there is force at the boundary of the instrument sensitivity."

That would certainly be precedented. NOAA spent 30 years basing their global climate forecasts on instruments with tolerances that exceeded the entire reported trend:

"Instrument quality varies from country-to-country. Surface temperatures can be recorded to within 0.5 degree C."

(http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/tn404/text/tn404_6.html)

To anyone who says 'But it'll average out!,' go read the papers. There were uniform changes to large blocs of instruments, spotty documentation of exactly how large those blocs were or when the changes were made, no calibration documentation kept, and no blinds.

There were notable upward biases, like the change from buckets to engine room intakes for sea surface measurements, with lots of wiggle room in setting the correction factors.

There's more of the same over at NASA (http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/):

"Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006"

...out of 684,000 cubic miles, or 0.009% or the total. (I'm being generous. If we use their low estimate, it's only 0.005%.)

"...while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005."

...out of 7.2 million cubic miles, or five ten-thousandths of a percent. So in 2,000 years of melting at that rate, Antarctica would lose 1% or its ice volume.

Those two figures were used to argue that a global net heat gain of 0.17% of the total greenhouse effect ("net absorbed" vs. "back radiation" here: http://bit.ly/2i5QgFq) is severe, but it's not a direct measurement of that. You have to assume a strong net positive feedback based on the instrumental data above, which was never designed for this.

Some of the other points in that link over-state the degree of corroboration because they're non-independent. (They rely on the instrumental record.)

Then there's Anderson's paleo-index, which is geographically non-representative (skewed toward land and coasts) and has no corrections for precipitation (which is increasing: http://bit.ly/2ipGBu2 ...and under-reported: http://bit.ly/2hjpckS) or methane distribution (skewed toward land: http://bit.ly/2i3AbOo).

This is a long way of saying that while it's entirely possible that this 'reactionless drive' is just a measurement fluke, it's not fair to knock NASA's measurements unless you're ready to hold other areas of science to the same quality standard.