GHCN Part 3: Creating a Temperature Model

This is part three of a series on Global Warming using records from the Global Historical Climatology Network. In my first post of this series I discussed my data source, my means of selecting which records to use, and the time frame of study. I used only station records which were complete for the time frame of study. I had determined not to impute or estimate any data.

The previous post of this series described the results from that data in terms of number of days above   85°F, 90°F, 95°F, and 100°F as well as the number of days where the daily highs did not exceed 32°F, 20°F, and 10°F. As we saw, for the locations involved, the number of warmer days has consistently fluctuated up and down at apparently regular intervals, but have generally decreased since the 1930’s. The number of colder days has consistently fluctuated up and down in a repeated pattern. For the number of days at or below freezing the data indicate the years of 1900 to 1930 and 1980 to 2003 are nearly identical. There is evidence to suggest that pattern began to repeat again in 2005 to 2010.

As I explained in the first post of the series there are certain limitations to this study which bear repeating here. The long term data from the GHCN daily max min tables is very limited. Most of the coverage is in the lower 48 states of the US. Canada, Europe, Central Asia, and Australia are all represented but to significantly lesser degrees. Africa, Central America, and South America are not covered.

With those limitations in mind, let me describe in general terms the process I used to develop the data into useful information.

Goal defined

When performing an analysis for this type of data the goal is to develop a model which accurately describes the data and then determine a means of applying that model to other, similar situations which fit the definitions of the model. This is a process which involves creating a model, testing the model against known data, evaluating the results, and adjusting the model accordingly. An accurate model will be able to perform accurate predictions for known data within acceptable levels of data variation. A model which cannot make accurate predictions against known data is flawed and therefore would not be useful.

Creating the Model

My first pass approximation for such a model was the simplest model available, which is a raw average of all the data. I chose to test this model by comparison to selected samples of individual station data. Without going into details, let me just say this initial model failed. For example, the model failed to describe the general time series trend of individual stations. Meaning where things started off and where they ended up. That failure informed my method for refining the model.

I refined my data model to address that failure by creating a new data set consisting of beginning and ending temperatures for each station. I analyzed that data by calculating a temperature change delta for each station and performing statistical analysis on that data set.

I found quantifying stations by the overall start to finish temperature change, the temperature delta, produced a near normal data set. Using this as a starting point I refined my model in to three separate models. One model covers the -1° to 1° range which contains 75% of all stations. The second model covers the 1° to 4° range which contains 17% of the stations. The last model covers the -1° to -2.5° range which contains the last 8% of the stations.

As before, I tested the data models against actual station data with model selection based upon the temperature delta parameter. Again, the models failed to accurately reflect all the data. Quantifying that failure was easy as all failures occurred in Australia. Separating Australia as a separate data set and performing the same analysis as above, I created two additional models. The number of models is now three for the northern hemisphere and two for Australia. A total of 5 models.

These five models, based upon two selection parameters, are accurate within ± 1° for over 75% of the individual stations and within ±1.5° for the remainder. This is an acceptable degree of error in my opinion.

Refining and Utilizing the Model

One of the primary reasons for creating a model, beyond defining what has gone before, is to act as a predictive tool. Having defined models which describe what is known to have happened it now becomes necessary to try and define and quantify those factors which affected what happened. Therefore, it is helpful to have five different models and a wide range of results. These five models can be further reduced into three essential models based upon the over all results: Temperatures rose, temperatures fell, or temperatures did not change appreciably. Those are distinctly different outcomes.

Each station in this data set has been affected by certain factors. I will define those factors as local, regional, or global. Local factors contribute to unique site results. Regional factors contribute to site results over a certain area. The scope of regional factors may vary quite a bit. Global factors would contribute to outcomes all over the world.

The process going forward is defining and quantifying local factors, regional factors, and then global factors. In the process of doing so the various models become refined to include those parameters. Ideally, they will be combined into one or two models. The process of model redefinition would as always include testing the models for descriptive and predictive accuracy.

The Example of Australia

Australia is an interesting case study for this method. There are only 10 stations with usable data. However, this data extends back to 1895. Australia not only has a distinctive regional difference, there are distinctive local differences. Australia is also a mostly sparsely populated place. One factor which became apparent immediately was population density. Given the time frame involved, it is reasonable to assume the initial population density is essentially zero. Predicting which model applies to a site by current population density proved 100% accurate. There are sites which are geographically close but far apart by population totals. The magnitude of temperature increase over the period 1950 to 2005 between these proximate sites was as much as 3.5° higher for the more heavily populated site.

When you consider the generally accepted figure for temperature rise over the past century due to CO2 is 1.5°, a 3.5° temperature increase differential over 55 years due to a population increase differential would be significant. Accepting those numbers as reasonably accurate and assuming 1.5° as the result of Global factors, and assuming linearity, the inference is the localized factor of population growth has a greater influence on local temperatures than global factors by several orders of magnitude.

Moving Forward

Understand, this process is far from complete. I am presenting this information on what I am working on essentially in real time as the process progresses. I am letting the data lead me and not the other way around. I may end up somewhere totally unexpected. Even so, I think it is worthwhile to make these posts. I would certainly welcome constructive input.

 

Next post: The five models.

Climate Change According to the Global Historic Climate Network: Part 2 - the Results

In my previous post I presented some background information on the GHCN and the data available from it. I won't go over that information in detail again here. What is important to know is I am looking at the GHCN data covering the years 1900 through 2011 using only stations with complete records for all those years. That is 493 stations. For this post I am using the highest recorded daily temperatures.

So without further ado and editorial comments, here are the fairly self explanatory charts. Note: I have added trend lines consisting of 5 year running averages to each chart shown in red.

 

 

 

 

 

What you see here is nothing more than what we really should know from our history. The hottest weather seen since 1900 occurred in the 1930's. This corresponds with a significant drop in the number of days where the daily high failed to get above freezing. This also corresponds to a period of severe weather related incidents all over the world. In fact, 1936 was the worst year for heat, floods, and storms in the modern record.

 

Don't just take my word for that. Steve Goddard (aka Tony Heller)  has done an excellent job of documenting the extremes of the past on his blog. There you will see newspaper articles, magazine articles, government reports, and supporting data showing extreme events all over the world. A good starting point would be to simply search for 1936 on his blog. You will get plenty of reading material from that year alone.

 

https://realclimatescience.com/

 

If you look carefully you will notice a couple of other things. For temperatures over 90° F there are actually five individual spikes of varying magnitudes. These appear to occur at fairly regular intervals. The latest of these appears to have started in the late 1990's. You will also notice the number of days where the temperature did not exceed freezing began to go down about 1980 and reached its lowest point in the early 2000's.

 

As I explained in my previous post, the data I am presenting is heavily weighted towards North America and Europe. It does include data from all over the world, but that data is sparse in comparison. There is however nothing I can do about that. Lacking similar data from Africa means I am unable to create an extensive long term temperature record from Africa. Lacking similar data from South America means I am unable to do so for South America either. The records exist where they exist, they just do not exist elsewhere.

 

However, the data does cover significant portions of the inhabitable land mass of the world. If global warming were truly happening as rapidly and as incontrovertibly over all the world as claimed would it not be apparent in North America, Europe, and significant portions of Asia? Of course it would.

 

The simple fact is the UN, NASA, the NOAA, and others are trying to reconstruct a history of the global average temperature from woefully incomplete data. Yet, those reconstructions in no way match the actual temperature records from anywhere in the world with long term temperature records. Why then should we believe them, much less commit billions upon billions of dollars and place the very bases of our economies into their hands? Can we really justify condemning billions of people to poverty, disease, and no hope to ever better their lives based upon flimsy reconstructions?

 

Coming soon: Climate Change According to the Global Historic Climate Network: Part 3.

 

 

Climate Change According to the Global Historic Climate Network: Part 1

Before I get going on part 1 of today's post I would like to cover a bit of background information. The information I am working with comes from the Global Historic Climate Network (GHCN) which I pulled from a link on the Berkeley Earth website. The GHCN files in this data set run from the 1700's up to 2011. However, I am focusing on the years 1900 to 2011. This data set consists primarily of two files. One file contains daily maximum temperatures while the other contains daily minimum temperatures.

The vast majority of these daily measurements were made with a device which has been around for over 200 years known as a Six's Thermometer. These are actually very accurate and in many cases very precise devices. Six's Thermometers little different from those used back in the late 1800's are still in use today for precise and accurate temperature measurements. A Six's Thermometer will faithfully record the maximum and minimum temperatures encounter between settings. Typically, station person would record the max and min temperatures from the previous 24 hours and reset the thermometer every day at the same time.

The era of precision thermometry began in the early 1700's. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was the German physicist who invented the alcohol thermometer in 1709, and the mercury thermometer in 1714. He also established the Fahrenheit scale which of course is still in use.

The point of this background information is don't make the mistake of assuming old data equates to inaccurate data. The basis of the science has not changed. Much of the equipment we use today has not changed substantially. The methods for establishing base point temperatures such as the freezing point of water have not changed appreciably. Every system for measuring temperature owes its accuracy to the same basic principles. In that regard nothing has really changed.

Below is a close up of a Six's Thermometer.

 

Below is a Six's Thermometer circa 1897 from the Museo Galileo.

 

 

Now it is time to begin to dive into the GHCN data. The data set is massive. During the period of 1900 through 2011 alone the data set contains measurements from 27, 721 stations. I condensed the individual daily maximum measurements into 927, 961 individual annual averages. Really gives you an appreciation for modern computers doesn't it?

As massive as the shear size of the data set, the next question is what to do with it. Is it all good, usable data? The answer, unfortunately is no. Most of the data is not usable for my look at the 1900 to 2011 time frame because comparatively few stations were in operation for the entire time span. It clearly makes no sense to compare the temperatures of Atlanta Georgia in the 1930's to the average temperatures of Atlanta and Anchorage Alaska in the 2000's.

I can attempt to use all the data and I have done so in a number of different ways. I could emulate NASA and the NOAA and try to fill in the blanks using statistical models. There is a major problem with that. As I show below, 70% of the data would have to be estimated. In other words, as massive as the data set is it only contains 30% of the data necessary to look at all temperature trends associate with the locations of all 27,721 stations. Yet, that is exactly what Berkeley Earth, NASA, and the NOAA are doing. Much of what they present is based upon reconstructed data.

 

For my study I am using the 493 stations with complete records for every year in my study. This is actually a very high number when compared to other data sets. As far as I have seen this is by far the most complete individual data set out there. It is also an entirely sufficient amount of data for trend analysis. The difference between what I am doing and what NASA, NOAA, and Berkeley are doing is I am making no attempt to construct a global average temperature out of incomplete data. I am looking trends based upon continuous records for a very large number of locations and assuming those trends will be indicative of trends in most similar places.

 

What I am not doing is assuming those trends will match what has happened in every location on the planet. I do not expect what has occurred in San Francisco, Beijing, Anchorage, and the middle of the south pole would all be the same. I am quite sure they would not be the same as conditions on the ground, development, and a host of other factors would not be the same.

 

It is also important to understand what inhabited areas of the planet are represented by this data and to what degree. Most of the data comes from North America and Europe. Africa, and South America are mostly unrepresented. Data from Asia, the Pacific, and Australia is sparse. That is really unavoidable because we just do not have enough long term data from those areas. We have no idea what temperatures were on average in modern day Sudan back in the 1930's.

 

Is it not obvious it is impossible to determine trends in areas for which there is no data? No data is just no data. Any method of filling in the blanks would just be a fancy way of making a guess.

 

I am not guessing. At least I am being up front about this. I am telling you these various governmental agencies are not being up front. Besides, if climate change - i.e. global warming caused by CO2 emissions - is truly a global problem it should show up in any subset of the data I care to use. So long as I am faithfully and truthfully showing you what the data really says. That is something I promise you I am doing.

 

Next post: The Results.

 

Stay tuned.

Is the Mueller Probe the Real Cover Up?

In today's blog post I am going to be a conspiracy theorist. I am not talking vague references to the Illuminati or the Elders of Zion type stuff. I am talking nothing more than looking at current events and past tidbits, lumping in a healthy does of cynicism, and conjecturing a way to connect the dots that assumes something approaching the worst. Honestly, when you consider the incomprehensible amount of money and power floating around assuming the worst might be a healthy habit. I don't trust "them" and I don't care what letter they have after their names.

So, to lay the ground work for this theory, which is really all it is, let me make a brief list of things which have happened or probably happened which really make no sense. I am talking about actions which were or would be potentially very damaging to those who took those actions.

Comey, by his own admission, leaked government information which would obviously be considered classified or at least confidential to the media for the stated purpose of initiating the Mueller probe. Why would the top law enforcement officer in the land engage in such behavior? He would have you believe his reasons were altruistic.

According to the Nunes memo, the FBI presented unverified material to the FISA court, purposely hiding any information as to its origin. The memo says this was their primary evidence. Some dispute that. However, no other evidence sufficient to show probable cause has been made known. No one is disputing this happened. Regardless of any other evidence which might have been produced, this is still misleading the court which could lead to contempt or perjury charges if not worse. Why would people who are part of the premier law enforcement agency in the world committed to a man to the principles of truth, justice, and the American way do this?

There are more instances but this is sufficient to make the point. Now I will lay out a time line of events to substantiate the inference, the theory, which I will present shortly there after.

June 2016: The first warrant to allow surveillance of members of the Trump campaign was submitted to the FISA court and rejected.

September 2016: Hillary Clinton collapses on a mild day at the 9/11 memorial. The Clinton team proceeds to obfuscate the reasons behind this collapse for several weeks until finally stating Hillary had had pneumonia.

September - October 2016: According to subsequent interviews and her tell all book, Donna Brazile, former interim head of the DNC, considers replacing Hillary Clinton with Joe Biden.

October 2016: The second FISA warrant request, purportedly using the Steele dossier, is approved.

October - November 2016: The Steele dossier or portions thereof are made available to the media just prior to the election. Apparently few chose to use it. The only known article is one from Yahoo news, which reportedly was used as evidence to the FISA court.

November 2016: Hillary Clinton loses the election.

November - December 2016: The Hillary campaign team purportedly brain storms for some period of time to come up with the strategy of blaming Russian collusion and interference for her loss.

May 2016: Mueller is named head of the probe into Russian collusion and interference after months of wrangling and hearings.

One thing is obvious. Hillary's 9/11 collapse resulted in panic among the DNC and Hillary supporters. That would no doubt include Hillary supporters and anti Trumpers in the FBI, the DOJ, and in Congress. The timing of the second FISA request is interesting when viewed in this context. The inclusion of the Steele dossier is the only known difference between the request submitted in June, which was denied, and the October request. It is reasonable to infer the Steele dossier represented the key evidence which resulted in FISA approval.

The timing of the attempted leak or release of the Steele dossier is telling. It was, after all, timed to happen just prior to the election when it would create maximum damage with no time for rebuttal. That tactic has certainly worked quite well many times over. This was not a desperation move. A leak is a leak. As we have seen over and over, leaks can be quite untraceable. There is little to no doubt it happened. That has been fairly well documented. This is probably the very purpose the Steele dossier was created for. I conjecture it was never meant to be used as evidence before a FISA court.

The incredible thing to me is the Steele dossier failed in its original intended purpose. This probably came as quite a surprise to the players behind the Steele memo. Considering the absolutely awful reporting the media has engaged in and frequently had to retract since the election, their not using at least some of the Steele dossier is hard to believe. It is almost inconceivable. The fact is the dossier's contents were not believable and would be obviously irresponsible to make public even in the context of unsubstantiated leaks. Does this not make you wonder if the people holding an using the dossier were not aware it was that bad? I think they were. Using it in a FISA request could be one of two things in my opinion. Supreme arrogance or desperation and panic. Either explanation works.

Unfortunately, Hillary did lose. At that point all the unethical, perhaps illegal, and potentially damaging actions I have listed had already happened.

So what does this have to do with the Mueller probe? Nothing, except that the fact of the Mueller probe existence provides a legal means of denying access to pertinent information and allows the players to legally refuse to answer questions, even in the face of constitutional Congressional oversight and FOIA requests. Meaning, assuming illegal and unethical behavior, the Mueller probe provides cover. Perfectly legal and perfectly reasonable cover.

Understand, despite her 9/11 collapse, Hillary actually losing the election to Donald Trump of all people was still the shock of the century. Had Hillary won we would not be discussing any of this. It would have been business as usual. There would have been no Mueller probe. There would have been no Nunes memo. Everything that occurred afterwards hinges upon the simple fact Hillary lost. In the end, that is perhaps all you need to consider.

I have a sad and sorry suspicion everything I have detailed above is in actuality nothing more than business as usual.

Thank you for reading this far. Please share if you are so inclined.

Book Revisit: The Amityville Horror

I first read the Amityville Horror back in 1976 or 1977. At the time I was in middle school. I have no idea how the book came to me, it just appeared in the house. It was probably a gift from someone to my mother. She was a big reader and a long time lover of murder mystery novels and the like. Especially true stories.

What caught my eye were the flies on the cover. That and the big Satan's tail. The Satan's tail part was a pretty slick bit of marketing for a post Manson America. In the 70's much of America still very much obsessed with the idea of evil Satanic cults running around either corrupting or sacrificing impressionable teens. Much of that fear was of Satan crazed, hippie like young people enacting Manson like mayhem, but that was not all people feared. Much of America, then and now, believed in a very literal, very real Satan who, although incorporeal, is able to interact with and act upon the corporal world. To many people Manson represented the end product of such an interaction.

For me, it was the flies. They were huge, nasty, and pretty real looking. They seemed to be saying "Don't read this, it is evil!" which pretty much made it irresistible. So yeah, I read it. And it was pretty frightening.

The original book I read had photos. They showed the actual house, members of the Defeo family, newspaper clippings about the murders, and crime scene photos. All of which gave it a "this is real" vibe. I was not unaffected by the times either. On a cultural, social level, not quite on the level of conscious recognition, I was primed to believe from numerous sources. After finishing the book I literally had to move it out of my bedroom so I could sleep. That too was ultimately really all about the flies. They just looked so real, as if they might come off the page and fly around in my room in the middle of the night while I slept. Looking back I realize while I knew that was impossible and just wasn't going to happen in that part of my world where rational and logical thought holds sway, subconsciously it was not nearly so improbable and in fact maybe fairly likely.

I have also since come to understand, when it comes to matters of fear and extreme emotion, the logical, rational mind really isn't always the primary origination point of human thought.

It is now 2017 and after 40 years and maybe six different movie versions later I have read the book a second time. There is no denying the cultural power and influence of this book over those 40 years. There is also no denying that power and influence 40 years later is somewhat diminished. The times are different. Today's fears are not the same as those of 1976. Satanic cults have not spawned hordes of demonically possessed, drugged crazed hippies despoiling graveyards, killing cats, and murdering pregnant women in the dead of night. We are far less worried about Satan as a Judeo Christian boogey man. That aspect of the culture which provided fuel for the cultural phenomenon and near hysterical theater experience which was the movie the Exorcist has changed. Possession movies and stories are still pretty good but they don't really grab you by the gut as they did back then.

I also found the writing to be a bit juvenile, something that I just didn't notice back then. I was still reading Hardy Boys books after all. Don't get me wrong. The book is mainly written as a reporter duly recounting a story second hand. That was and is still a part of the book's power. Yet, the writing is just a tad bit unpolished. I will explain by example. How polished would my blog writing be is I finished every paragraph with an exclamation point!

Otherwise, how would you know something exciting had just happened, right?

Still, 40 years later, despite six or so movies and a complete shift in culture, despite its writing flaws, I found it an enjoyable read. The story is a good story and it is written in a clean, matter of fact manner. It doesn't really affirm or deny, it is this is what I was told. The basic facts of the story are absolutely true. The Defeos did live and all but one die in that house. The Lutz family did move in and move out shortly thereafter, leaving all behind. To that degree at least, this is a true story.

As to the rest, the supernatural component? Much of the corroboration of the details Jay Anson, who died in 1980, cited have since supposedly been debunked or at least discounted somewhat. However, much has not. The basic question did something happen or did nothing happen has not been definitively answered to this day.

If you are interested, the last time I looked, which was just a few years ago, there were still articles and information about the actual events on the web, including examinations of the supernatural aspects of the story.

And yes, I do have a certain level of nostalgia for the 70's, for that less incredulous if not actually more innocent time when the Exorcist could scare the holy BeJesus out of anyone and everyone. I am still primed to believe at least a little. I kind of really want to stay that way.

Woodstock, Georgia
December 2017

A Hallowe'en Encounter - A Bubba Jr Tale

Halloween is come. Yet I am thinking not so much of candy and plastic or rubber masks. Rather, I am thinking of older times. Perhaps some racial or genetic memory calls down the centuries flown. My pagan ancestors, speaking in faint whispers, some ancient humming along the usually insensitive antennae of my DNA.  Suddenly the word Halloween doesn’t fit on my tongue. Nor Hallowe’en. Not even All Hallows Eve. No, the right word is…. Samhain. The coming of the dark half. It is not a celebration, not a fall festival. It is a wake. It is the death of the old year, the end of light and warmth, and the beginning of the long dead of winter. I imagine hearing the words of the shaman, a druid priest, speaking beneath bushy brows and fierce eyes, to beware. For this night, after darkness falls, as midnight waxes, the wall which separates this world from that other becomes thin. So that others may pass. Others….and the dead. Not only to pass, but to speak, and to be heard. If you dare.

Feeling that call, I make my way. As the shadows of encroaching night gather beneath old oaks, their bare branches questing for the darkening sky even as their roots grasp the cold ground, I find myself standing. Standing before tomb stones. My familial plot. Why here? I ask myself. Do I really think to hear some dear voice, long silent, speak as dry leaves skitter over my feet? It all begins to seem so, irrational. Even so, I seem to be possessed with a sense of abandon. My decision made, I set upon the old marble border which marks the extent of the ground where relatives lay, unseeing and unknowing.

Presently I see a figure marching along an approaching path. It has become quite dim now, so he moves as a shadow within shadows. Yet, I can see it is a man with grey hair, wearing a hat.

“They’re coming to get you Barbara” I whisper, chuckling.

Still he comes, marching to some unheard cadence. Soon he is close enough I can see it is a military uniform he wears. But what kind? Everything about him seems strangely colorless. He is all grey. His face a blur of lighter grey floating within darker grey borders.

I suddenly realize I should be frightened, yet I am not. Again, there is a sense of abandoning…something. Fear perhaps? It is, after all, Samhain.

Before too long he stands before me. I see he is indeed an old man. His greyish face is pulled tight against his closed mouth, like a man clinching his jaws against a long remembered bitter taste. His uniform is now distinct and clearly old. Civil war I guess. Once again, the thought passes briefly, I should be scared, but I am not. I am now feeling and acting as a dreamer in a dream, one I am strangely aware has no power to touch me in any corporal sense.

The words slip out of my mouth, almost of their own volition. “Whose color’s do you wear?”

His bright moonlit grey ghost marble eyes turn to me. His lips part like someone who has forgotten speech, forgotten speech even existed. I wait in quiet anticipation. Until he finally speaks in a faint whisper.

“Whose colors…..I had forgotten. Color.”

His voice becomes stronger.

“I wore the colors of the cause, son.”

“The cause….”

His eyes, now becoming less distinct in the gather dark, lift to peer at some unseen horizon. His shoulders straighten with some new vigor as he speaks, as it turns out, one last time.

“There comes a time when your colors don’t seem to matter so much. When all you see is red. Red everywhere. Rivers of red, flowing like tears. Futile, bitter tears. Then everything turns black and finally, finally everything fades to grey. Nothing but grey. And before long no one even remembers your name, least wise no one comes to speak it. Everything you ever worried or fought about, it just don’t matter no more. Then all you want is rest. You gotta let it go and……rest. That’s where I’m heading. Gonna find that place.”

I really didn’t know what to say, he seemed so sad and yet, there was a certain gallantry and calm to his resignation. I couldn’t meet his eyes, so instead I looked to the ground at my feet. Finally I looked up to face his gaunt determination and…..

He was gone.

And soon so was I. Back to the warmth and light of home.

Gun Control: Facts on Guns

Today I am going to tackle the current debate on gun control. Well kind of. I am not going to try and persuade one way or the other. For this blog entry I am going to do nothing more than give facts. Much of what you hear about the topic from both sides is inaccurate and down right misleading. I will be neither of those things. I will also link some Youtube videos so you can take those facts and place them into real world context. I will also include appropriate excerpts from Wikipedia at the end so you can understand what exactly an "assault rifle" really is.

It may not be obvious to those who are completely unfamiliar with guns but the term “assault weapon” is essentially meaningless. It is not a term the military uses. In the modern world the vast majority of semi-automatic weapons use a detachable magazine. What differentiates an “assault weapon” from any other weapon using a detachable magazine as defined by the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban is the addition of features which essentially do nothing to make it a “military” weapon. As you will see, detachable magazines have been around and in common civilian use for 112 years. By the way, a grenade launcher is really a fanciful term when you can’t buy grenades. Call it a flare gun, which is what it really is.

Now for a bit of history.

Benjamin Tyler Henry invented the Henry repeating rifle in 1862. Not a true semi-auto, it still had to be cocked between each shot. The original Henry rifle used in limited numbers in the Civil War held 15 .44 caliber cartridges in a tubular magazine. These were 200 grain loads with a muzzle velocity of 1200 feet per second. The 1873 Henry rifle, often chambered for the more powerful .44-40 cartridge, is basically the famous cowboy rifle.

Today’s modern semi-auto rifle was essentially born with the introduction of the 1905 Winchester “self loading” rifle. These came chambered as either .32 or .35 calibers with 5 or 10 round capacity magazines. While there have been improvements in loading mechanisms and magazine design the basic concept has not changed.

The submachine gun was developed in World War I (1914 - 1918). The term was coined by John T. Thompson, the inventor of the Thompson Machine Gun. Submachine guns as essentially machine guns chambered to fire pistol cartridges.

The first assault rifle is generally recognized to be the Sturmgewehr 44, introduced by Germany in World War II. Supposedly named by Adolf Hitler, the word Sturmgewehr literally means storm. Same as elements of the German army were known as Storm Troopers. Or as we would call them assault troops. The weapon was designed based upon the idea most firefights occur with opposing forces being within 300 yards of each other. See the linked video below for a very cool demonstration of this weapon.

The M1 Garand was introduced at the end of World War II. The basic difference between the M1 and the Winchester 1905 is the magazine is not detachable. Rapid loading is achieved by using a clip. This allows the gun to be fully reloaded and cocked for firing in one smooth motion.

I own and have used semi-automatic weapons with magazines in all three configurations above. Ranging from a .22 tubular fed long rifle (which holds 17 rounds by the way) up to an M1 style .308 high powered deer rifle. All of which are very much lethal weapons. Weapons similar to each one have been used as military weapons. Calibers from .22 and up have been used as military weapons.

Below are Youtube links so you can see exactly how these types of guns operate. They are every bit as lethal and in the case of a high powered rifle more lethal than an AR 15.

Firing a lever action with tubular magazine

Loading and Shooting the M1 Garand

Loading and Shooting the Winchester 1907 Self Loading Rifle

Firing the Sturmgewehr 44

Firing a Thomson Machine Gun

The following information comes from Wikipedia.

The U.S. Army defines assault rifles as "short, compact, selective-fire weapons that fire a cartridge intermediate in power between submachine gun and rifle cartridges." In a strict definition, a firearm must have at least the following characteristics to be considered an assault rifle:

• It must be capable of selective fire.
• It must have an intermediate power cartridge: more power than a pistol but less than a standard rifle or battle rifle.
• Its ammunition must be supplied from a detachable box magazine.
• It must have an effective range of at least 300 meters (330 yards).

Rifles that meet most of these criteria, but not all, are technically not assault rifles, despite frequently being called such.

For example:

• Select-fire M2 carbine are not assault rifles; their effective range is only 200 yards.^[17]
• Select-fire rifles such as the FN FAL battle rifle are not assault rifles; they fire full-powered rifle cartridges.
• Semi-automatic-only rifles like variants of the Colt AR 15 are not assault rifles; they do not have select-fire capabilities.
• Semi-auto rifles with fixed magazines are not assault rifles; they do not have detachable box magazines and are not capable of automatic fire.

The term assault rifle, when used in its proper context, militarily or by its specific functionality, has a generally accepted definition with the firearm manufacturing community. In more casual usage, the term assault weapon is sometimes confused with the term assault rifle. In the United States "assault weapons" are usually defined in legislation as semi-automatic firearms that have certain features generally associated with military firearms, including assault rifles. The 1994 Federal Assault Weapons ban, which expired on September 13, 2004, codified a definition of an assault weapon. It defined the rifle type of assault weapon as a semiautomatic firearm with the ability to accept a detachable magazine and two or more of the following:

• a folding or telescoping stock
• a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon
• a bayonet mount
• a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor
• a grenade launcher

End Wikipedia