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ClimateGate, American Style

Matt Ross | January 26, 2010 | 1 Comment

…Where Did All the Weather Stations Go?

Just when the alarmists thought the story had blow over, more information continues to emerge. Apparently, our government has been deleting the data from some weather stations used to make climate observations and reports. But to what end?

Not only does the preliminary report [PDF] indict a broader network of conspirators, but it also challenges the very mechanism by which global temperatures are measured, published, and historically ranked.

NOAA stands accused by the two researchers of strategically deleting cherry-picked, cooler-reporting weather observation stations from the temperature data it provides the world through its National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). D’Aleo explained to show host and Weather Channel founder John Coleman that while the Hadley Center in the U.K. has been the subject of recent scrutiny, “[w]e think NOAA is complicit, if not the real ground zero for the issue.”

And their primary accomplices are the scientists at GISS, who put the altered data through an even more biased regimen of alterations, including intentionally replacing the dropped NOAA readings with those of stations located in much warmer locales.

So, the scientists removed readings from places that were high elevations, and low temperatures, and used a higher percentage of stations that are in warm areas. Wouldn’t that lead to the data trending towards warming? Why yes, yes it will.

Perhaps the key point discovered by Smith was that by 1990, NOAA had deleted from its datasets all but 1,500 of the 6,000 thermometers in service around the globe.

Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population, particularly considering that these stations provide the readings used to compile both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) datasets. These are the same datasets, incidentally, which serve as primary sources of temperature data not only for climate researchers and universities worldwide, but also for the many international agencies using the data to create analytical temperature anomaly maps and charts.

Yet as disturbing as the number of dropped stations was, it is the nature of NOAA’s “selection bias” that Smith found infinitely more troubling.

It seems that stations placed in historically cooler, rural areas of higher latitude and elevation were scrapped from the data series in favor of more urban locales at lower latitudes and elevations. Consequently, post-1990 readings have been biased to the warm side not only by selective geographic location, but also by the anthropogenic heating influence of a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI).

For example, Canada’s reporting stations dropped from 496 in 1989 to 44 in 1991, with the percentage of stations at lower elevations tripling while the numbers of those at higher elevations dropped to one. That’s right: As Smith wrote in his blog, they left “one thermometer for everything north of LAT 65.” And that one resides in a place called Eureka, which has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to its unusually moderate summers.

Smith also discovered that in California, only four stations remain – one in San Francisco and three in Southern L.A. near the beach

You know, the evidence just grows and grows, and still, the alarmists will continue to deny this.

That’s because the baseline temperatures to which current readings are compared were a true averaging of both warmer and cooler locations. And comparing these historic true averages to contemporary false averages – which have had the lower end of their numbers intentionally stripped out – will always yield a warming trend, even when temperatures have actually dropped.

I think that just might be the general idea.

So, what we see at every turn is data being manipulated, and intentionally so, to meet an end. The science is not settled; it is fraudulent.

Again, ever since the 60’s, the left has viewed the environment as a means to control the economy. Land, water, and energy use are all-important to restrict economic growth, create more dependency on government, restrict movement, and so on. The goal is control, the rationale is AGW, and “science” is being purchased to justify it.

Feel free to read the rest of the article I quoted, it is quite informative.

In other AGW news:

Redstate has a post about the Big Freeze in the UK. Apparently, “green technology” fails when it’s cold!

Apparently, AGW Covers England, Scotland, and Ireland in Snow and Ice!

Newsbusters has a post about the Himalayan Glacier story. Apparently, it was pushed to “nudge” politicians. More junk science!

A scientist responsible for a key 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warning Himalayan glaciers would be completely melted by 2035 has admitted that the claim was made to put political pressure on world leaders.

Such was revealed by the British Daily Mail Sunday in an article destined to further reduce the credibility of the world’s so-called leading authority on manmade global warming.

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, the IPCC acknowledged earlier this week that its claim concerning these glaciers was based on junk science.

According to the Mail, those involved were quite aware of the faulty nature of this assertion, and did so for reasons consistent with what skeptics have been saying for years is at the very heart of the global warming myth (h/t Marc Morano):

Is anyone surprised that the MSM has elected to not cover the AGW lies?