Back in the Blogging Dark Ages, when I was still a Junior Blogger, my first online argument came with Steve Appell (I think) from none other than Scientific American magazine.
I blogged that the data underlying the climate scare was suspect, whereupon he came after me and asked whether I had a degree in climatology. I replied in the negative, of course, but added that while lacking in that august qualification that my argument was not against the weather, but the data collected thereof — and when it came to predictive modeling, I very much knew what I was talking about, having been a statistician and data analyst pretty much all my working life, and that some of the models I’d been involved in were fantastically accurate — up to 95% accuracy.
Of course, the weather models then (and now) extant were completely hopeless — not one had ever come close to predicting any kind of reality — and the principle reason was because the data collection methodology was clearly flawed, as the weather / climate measurement station locations had become unrepresentative.
So here we come to today, and nothing has changed — in fact, things have got worse:
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (July 27, 2022) – A new study, Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed, finds approximately 96 percent of U.S. temperature stations used to measure climate change fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be “acceptable” and uncorrupted placement by its own published standards.
The research shows that 96% of these stations are corrupted by localized effects of urbanization – producing heat-bias because of their close proximity to asphalt, machinery, and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards (see section 3.1 at this link), and strongly undermines the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States.
“With a 96 percent warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.” said Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts, the director of the study. “Data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations.”
It’s like putting a thermometer in your home to measure the ambient temperature, and then when you buy a wood stove and install it right next to the thermometer, not moving the measuring device to another part of the room.
I’d suggest incompetence, but when the flaws are so obviously designed to support a political theory (which is what modern-day climate “science” has become), we can only call it malfeasance. As with all things of this nature, the solution is self-evident:
Of course, that doesn’t count the (mis)programming of the computer analyzing the data. I’ve read that when the program was fed random data to test the biases of the program, the computer outputted the hockey stick graph. Or stated another way, no matter what data was inputted, you’d get the hockey stick out. That’s why they tried so hard to suppress the leak of the climate data & programs. They couldn’t allow people to see that the hockey stick graph was deliberate, to support the narrative.
Anthony Watts has been all over this for decades. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/20/warming-temperature-measurements-polluted-by-bad-data-research-confirms/
So have I.
Kim your analysis is correct but too kind. It is not just the data that is bias, (almost) the whole thing is a house of cards. You cannot get more temperature rise than is driven by the change in energy balance, more CO2 changes the emissivity and does make it hotter, but the most you can get from that is a rise of a couple degrees – and everyone knows that. So all of the high heat models are built on the assumption that there is some other “co-factor” that produces positive feedback and increases the temperature even more. Hey, that is fine (all science starts with postulated ideas) – but after all these years no one has found a plausible co-factor and all the models built using one diverge from reality very quickly. So guess what- there isn’t one, but they are hanging on to it because the whole thing collapses without it.
I deal with models all the time (engineering) and the first check I normally do is a hand calculation to see if the output is plausible based on the inputs – the climate models fail that basic test. I think most of them know that, but the gravy train goes away if they start admitting that there is nothing to worry about.
The best test for any predictive model is ALL recorded history minus yesterday. If the model does not predict yesterday, it’s a failure.
So far, not a single climate model, EVER, has been able to do that.
They are relatively clever in that they use a variety of factors that make them work backwards to pass that test but by assuming those factors go away still bias towards getting hotter over time. That is how the get away with constantly saying the models fit the data but then having them rapidly diverge from observed data going forward. It is a scam.
There is one model that has been doing a good predictive job and has not been adjusted, nut it is a Russian one and assumes no global warming beyond observable effects of CO2.
More .gov bastardy. These are nothing more than authoritarian attempts to gain control of every individuals personal liberty or property, the non-elite individuals that is. Ran into this decades ago with the Billy Clinton’s Sec of the Interior Bruce Babbit. “We are going to use the Wetlands act to bring more land under govt control, even areas that are arguably not so wet”
They can’t accurately predict the weather more than a day or two in advance, yet we are supposed to believe that they can predict what the climate will be many years from now.
Heh, good old GIGO continues unabated. I would have to dig deep into film archives but have photos of official NOAA reporting stations built next to blacktop parking lots, in small patches of grass between metal buildings and in some cases, with nearby windows that blast afternoon sun directly at the official white painted wood slatted thermometer housing. Dutifully opened and recorded at designated time of day. Often wondered if there was a standard for these placements. As in center of one acre, grassy lawn, cut to exactly 3 inches depth with no trees, buildings or other heat sinks nearby.
I am not surprised at all. whoever was the first knucklehead on this global cooling, warming change non sense found the new government teat to latch on to. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others founded industries to provide products that people didn’t know they wanted until they brought their products to market. They created millions of jobs in the computer technology industry to design and manufacture this stuff. Climate change is the same way except their product sucks. If Jobs or Gates made a shitting product and there were truly marketplace competition, the crappy products would get discontinued and the business may cease to exist. Not true at all with government funded “research” into climate cooling, no warming, no change.
JQ
Replace all of the data gathering stations with a bureaucrat with a thermometer (and any other necessary instrument), and a cell-phone, card table, and chair – he/she can provide their own hat and coat.
The greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind.
Spurious data, collected by corrupt organizations, calculated and refined for a predetermined outcome.
When the data does not support the supposition, suppress the data.
Sorry that is incorrect
Communism and socialism are much bigger hoaxes.