More climate-gate

On the heels of the recent damaging emails about falsified climate data, we have another study that shows that NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) started taking climate measuring stations off-line in areas that showed cooler temperatures.

Joseph D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology and co-founder of the Weather Channel, and Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and founder of SurfaceStations.org just released a report titled: SURFACE TEMPERATURE RECORDS: POLICY DRIVEN DECEPTION?

In that January 29 report, they find that starting in 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began systematically eliminating climate measuring stations in cooler locations around the world. Yes, that’s right. They began eliminating stations that tended to record cooler temperatures and drove up the average measured temperature. The eliminated stations had been in higher latitudes and altitudes, inland areas away from the sea, as well as more rural locations. The drop in the number of weather stations was dramatic, declining from more than 6,000 stations to fewer than 1,500.

The first take-away message for policy makers is this: Instrumental temperature data for the pre-satellite era (1850-1980) have been so widely, systematically, and unidirectionally tampered with that it cannot be credibly asserted there has been any significant “global warming” in the 20th century.

Several other points they make:
*All of the problems have skewed the data so as greatly to overstate observed warming both regionally and globally.
*Global terrestrial temperature data are gravely compromised because more than three-quarters of the 6,000 stations that once existed are no longer reporting.
*There has been a severe bias towards removing higher-altitude, higher-latitude, and rural stations, leading to a further serious overstatement of warming.

Their report provides examples of how the systematic elimination of stations and unexplained adjustments in temperature data caused measured temperatures to rise for Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. Many adjustments change what would have been a drop in temperatures into an increase. Take New Zealand, where D’Aleo and Watts note: “About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming.”

Talk about crazy-making. In the face of so much falsified data, the climate change proponents loud cries for policies like cap and trade are falling more and more on deaf ears.

Just last week, Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed an executive order stating that Arizona will no longer participate in the Western Climate Initiative. Utah Representative Mike Noel is also introducing a resolution requesting that Utah withdraw from the WCI.  Representative Kerry Gibson has introduced a resolution requesting that the EPA back off  and  immediately halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs  until a full and independent investigation of  climate data and global warming science can be substantiated.  This new report will only aid in its passage.

And to think Congressman Jason Chaffetz was skeptical of global climate change before it was cool to be skeptical. Two years ago at convention, he  emphatically stated  “Global warming is a FARCE”.   Now, close to half of the general public do not believe that the climate change is human caused – and the number is growing.

http://le.utah.gov/~2010/bills/hbillamd/hjr012.htm