Integration

In mathematics, integration is the process of estimating the area under any curve by assembling small slices of this area into a whole. This approximation is accurate only when these slices are made infinitely small. What does this have to do with things? Because when "scientist" estimate the temperature of our Earth, they must assemble a large number of temperatures across many sections of our planet (from four different surface data sets plus satellite data ... generally not collected simultaneously) into a whole ... and then interpolating and/or extrapolating this annual time series into a single number ... a very complicated process, see: Carbon Brief Explanation.

Reading through this process makes it clear to me that there are an enormous number of places where, in constructing this single annual temperature for the Earth, human judgment is applied to a wide range of deficiencies in the raw data. And when this human judgment is predisposed to a given result, then this desired result often happens. Then when one discovers that at least two of these raw data sets (NOAA and East Anglia) were post facto "adjusted" when they didn't produce the desired results, more suspicion overhangs this magical number that politicians use to claim that our Earth is warming. And finally, to get back to this notion of integration, the Earth's grid sections used in this process are not infinitely small. They range from 2 to 5 degrees of longitude and latitude ... enough to make a mathematician cringe ... particularly when we are talking of differences of tenths of a degree Celsius.