M Courtney,
Interesting points about the wide applicability of ~30 year spans. It might also have a tie-in to the old saw about science advancing one funeral at a time, with each scientist tending to remain a "senior" for about 30 years.

Anyway, I'm happy with *climate* defined as weather in a given place averaged over a 30 year period. It's particularly useful as an annual pattern: average rainfall each month, average max daily temperature each month, etc. Gives an idea what to expect when you move somewhere.

But there is no such thing as a *global* climate, or not that I'm aware of anyway, so the global mean surface temperature is not a climate figure and doesn't need further averaging. It's ready to be compared with itself second by second. What would be the point of averaging it over a longer time?

Here's a stab at an answer. The *true* GMST would be a continuous and reasonably stable value. Its gradient might vary a little through the day as larger and smaller areas of sun's energy hit cloud, ocean or land, and as the sun's energy itself fluctuated, but it would still be pretty smooth. What we actually have is very rough approximations to GMST based on Hadley, NOAA, etc., and the value would jump around radically if it were plotted at the finest resolution. This is down to us not having values available for the whole surface. To make it look smooth, they average over space AND time. That will make it much smoother, but also even more meaningless. And, as DaveS's link showed, it opens opportunities for deception: averaging over different intervals to exaggerate claims.

tomo,
Yes, chasing money and/or political clout is at the heart of it, perhaps with some assistance from those paving the road to Hell.

tomo,
I was a little glib saying it didn't worry me personally, but if they are going to make mistakes rushing out mRNA vaccines, it's less worrying if it's cattle getting injected rather than people. Still plenty of bad possibilities of course.

It is very iffy experimenting with mRNA in vivo. I can see how it might be intoxicating for the scientists — the cells make what I tell them to make — but as I'm always saying, each of us is unique (even the cattle); every injection is an experiment with N=1. I haven't seen any concrete figures, but there are plenty of reports of rapid onset cancers after COVID vaccination, just the sort of thing that might result from unintended mRNA messages.

I don't mind them using mRNA to get cells to produce proteins in vitro, where the cells are more or less a catalyst; that's been in use for a while. But the sudden rush to take it into living organisms seems like another call on the modern articles of faith: Moore's Law is universal and fake it till you make it. I don't suppose Theranos led to more than a few dozen deaths, and similar numbers for self-driving/crashing vehicles, but I suspect the mRNA vaccines have already done in hundreds of thousands of people.

I usually like articles at Judith Curry's by Planning Engineer, but while his latest covers good points (especially that all our actions will have little effect if China, India and Africa keep going the opposite way), it feels a bit up in the air when it ends. I gather it's a step in a bigger argument, but it felt more like a half-step.

Ross Lea,
Thanks, good link. As DaveS says, the IPCC's scientific veneer over base politics is pretty thin.

Somewhat related, the Quadrant article Jo Nova links to today is a dive into more political credentialism: Australia's so called "Climate Council" (an earlier government invention, abolished and re-birthed as a charity).

tomo,
Not sure what to make of the mRNA vaccines for cattle. I don't understand the urgency given that we haven't had much trouble with foot and mouth disease. Our previously strong port quarantine measures may have been badly weakened (so many other things have), so it might be that something's got past and the headlines will be bursting forth in a week or two. OTOH, I don't consume beef *intravenously*; any foreign RNA/DNA in there will have to run the gauntlet of my digestive tract, so not too worried personally.

Your Tucker Carlson link: I was fully expecting to be able to say "you think that's bad, but look what's happening here...", but no; you're absolutely right. America is well in the lead in the going bonkers stakes.

While trivial in comparison with the obvious absurdities, the CNN coverage was notable for its repeated use of "Historic" when referring to the Trump charges, convoy, flight, etc. Haven't journalists long prided themselves on giving the first draft of history? Bit redundant to keep saying historic then, eh? (But it does make a change from unprecedented, I suppose)

Another piece of madness is the trans rights stuff. The podcast itself was so-so, but I thought it interesting that I needed to listen to the Brendan O'Neill interview with Posie Parker to hear about the vitriolic reactions to her here and in New Zealand. Not a peep from Australia's media. Perhaps they're working on history's second draft.

Ross Lea

Your linked article provides a useful summary of what we are faced with. In reading its final paragraph I can't help feeling that too many politicians are more than willing to be mislead if it presents them a "crisis" that they can then be seen to be responding to.