Anyone who has looked into the science of climate change will have found themselves in a murky world of closed source, filtered and smoothed data, that no one is allowed to examine, surrounded by accusations of cherry picking, manipulation and downright fraud.
I would therefore propose an alternate method of analysis - that of trillions of individual data sources provided by mother nature herself. Raindrops.
Lake Mead is fed by rainwater that falls over millions of square miles of North America. This rainwater then washes down into the rivers and streams that feed the lake which is ultimately held back by the Hoover Dam. The rain waters that feed this lake therefore represent every extreme of temperature and weather condition that occurs during the year from the freezing temperatures in the clouds to the heat of the summer deserts. Each raindrop can be considered an independent data source, it's temperature, one of trillions upon trillions that all end up mixed together in Lake Mead.
The Hoover Dam then regulates the release of this water into the Colorado River via the Dam's sluice gates that are located at the bottom of the dam. This means the water that is released comes from the bottom of the lake, therefore it is not exposed to temporary weather conditions that might affect the surface temperature of that lake. If we take the temperature of this water as it runs out of the sluice gates and enters the Colorado River we should recognise it represents trillions of data sources and the only smoothing algorithm that has been applied is that of nature itself when all those trillions of drops of rain ended up mixed together by the rivers and streams and in the lake itself.
Of course just knowing the temperature of that water today does not tell the whole story. We need to know what it was a decade ago and two decades ago etc. It just so happens that the temperature of this water that flows out of the dam has been tested ever since the Hoover Damn was built 85 years ago in the 1930's and it has been widely published thousands of times that the year round temperature of that water is exactly 53° Farenheit.
There are similar dams at locations all over the planet. Each one, in the same way, holds back a lake that is fed by trillions of raindrops that represent the climate in their own region and I feel quite sure, just as the temperature of the water in the Colorado has been recorded since the dam was built so has the waters that are released by those dams too.
The point is obvious. If climate change is really happening, we will see it reflected by the temperature of the waters that are entering the rivers at the bottoms of those dams. They represent absolute, irrefutable proof of the climate from more independent data sources than there are grains of sand on the beach. All we need are willing individuals to go to those dams with a ten dollar properly calibrated thermometer to test the current temperatures of those waters. We can then compile an accurate, independent analysis of the changes (if any) that are presented by the current and historical temperatures of those waters as they are released by the dams.
TLDR: A raindrop can be considered to be an individual temperature recording device. A lake held back by a dam collects trillions of them, day in day out, mixing and combining and averaging their temperature. This average temperature is then output by the temperature of the water at the sluice gates at the bottom of the dam. At the Hoover Dam that temp is 53°.
[–]Otacon 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - (1 child)
[–]raven9[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun - (0 children)