“Temperature is an intensive property that is defined only in equilibrium systems and cannot be meaningfully averaged across non-equilibrium systems.” − Cohler, 2025
A 2007 math proofs study that asserted a global mean temperature does not exist in reality (because a temperature average can only be defined in equilibrium systems) has never been disproved.
For example, determining whether a cup of coffee is warming or cooling – and by how much – is entirely dependent on the averaging formula one arbitrarily chooses. In the study 4 averaging methods were chosen to assess change in the average coffee temperature over time. All four were shown to yield different warming vs. cooling results.
Image Source: Essex et al., 2007
A new study reopens this debate by reasserting there are “infinite ways to average temperature.” The averaging method chosen in modern “climate science” is arbitrary, non-physical, and yields fundamentally different results vs. other methods.
“Each method produces different numerical results and different [average temperature] trends over time.”
Image Source: Cohler, 2025
A 2020 study illustrating this unheralded statistical problem fundamental to modern “climate science” pointed out that a large volume of scientists had calculated the global average surface temperature as ranging from 14.0 to 15.1°C from 1877 to 1913, or approximately 14.5°C.
And yet according to calculations from HadCRUT4, NASA GISS, and Berkeley Earth, the global mean temperature was 14.4°C, 14.5°C, and 14.5°C, respectively, from 1991-2018. In other words, it can be shown that there has been “no change for the past 100 years” in the global mean temperature.
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I have always thought that the “daily average” temperature (the average of the high and low of the day) was disingenuous. Two points to average an entire day? During the summer, the high temperatures last longer in the day and vice versa for the winter. Do they average out? Who knows because they are not examined like that.
In the past part of the Journal text:
“constitutes a deliberate deception”
This accusation seems harsh or misguided. It implies that, historically, people collecting and reported “average temperatures” for specific places knew the use of “the mean” was not appropriate. Likely, they did not.
Search Assist tells me: “The first systematic weather observations in what would become the United States were taken in the 1640s at a fort [Christina?] near present-day Wilmington, Delaware. However, organized weather recording began to expand significantly in the 19th century, particularly with the establishment of the U.S. Weather Bureau in 1891.”
Wikipedia says: ” The terms “intensive and extensive quantities” were introduced into physics by German mathematician Georg Helm in 1898, and by American physicist and chemist Richard C. Tolman in 1917.”
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I recall writing about the existence of a global means surface temperature way back in 2005. The following article was rejected by the American Journal of Physics for, in my opinion, spurious reasons. The AJP is very woke on this topic.
https://pennance.us/home/downloads/science/pennance_gw4.pdf
Further writing on this can be found at the website below.