16 Jan 2004 E-Mail About Al Gore’s Speech on Bush & the Environment, Part II

An e-mail worth sharing on the subject of our comments on Al Gore’s speech. We’re getting a lot; some of it very thoughtful. We’ll share several over the next few days. In my opinion, the American people are a lot smarter than Al Gore gives them credit for.

Thank you for your strong position. I am a retired research electrical engineer, and a life long devotee to astronomy. The data they are using to champion global warming is fraudulent. Cyclic temperature changes sometime exceed 400 years in period length. There is evidence to support the theory that the great flood of Biblical Times is believed to have been a period of global cooling, as evidence shows that the polar ice cap extended into Northern Europe, about 700 years BC. I am 80 years old, but as a young man I, and other young men, read the weather bureau gauges for the elderly guards on top our building, as getting to the weather station was dangerous for them. It was about a 30 foot wall-ladder climb to the roof, and another 12 or 14 foot climb to the weather station atop a quadrapod on our 11-story office building. Although the thermometers had Veniers for accuracy, we read them from the roof, and in rain from a slit in the hatch cover, probably thirty feet away. These data for the Weather Bureau downtown temperatures in St. Louis, MO, are undoubtedly being used as scientific evidence of global warming, by the uninformed pseudo-scientists trying to validate global warming.

Mercury and spirit thermometers are accurate at only two points, at freezing and at the temperature of boiling water, at sea-level. Even barometric pressure impacts these data. Glass, and now plastic tubes are drawn from a tubular extrusion of molten plastic state, to create the tubular shape of a mercury thermometer. The internal diameter of the tube is determined by the temperature of the material being drawn, during the drawing process. Temperature variations, cause diameter changes, resulting in inaccuracies of readings. Due to the variation of tube size, a calibration chart is used with all mercury laboratory thermometers to correct data to probably +/- 1/10th degree accuracy.

Data prior to the invention of the mercury thermometer by Fahrenheit in 1714 is highly questionable, but is sometimes used in justifying weather phenomena. Data from 400 years ago probably used the Galilean water thermometer. Thermistors were developed in the late 1950’s, which could be used to calibrate mercury thermometers, leading to the proliferation of correction charts. Prior to that time, laboratory thermometers were calibrated, using a copper wire’s changing resistance with temperature, measuring resistance with a Wheatstone Bridge. The data in our Weather Department archives, is of shotgun accuracy, and cannot be used for serious scientific work. Just imagine the accuracy of third world data which is often used in critical analysis. As the manager of R & D, I often pointed to the plaque on my office wall, saying; “Show Me The Data.”

Thank you for keeping the single digit IQ guys at bay. You hit my hot button.

Respectfully,

Edward Kitsch