Anthony Watts’ website, Watts Up With That? is one of my favorite sites. Watts has been diligently documenting how poorly temperature is measured in the United States with his How Not to Measure Temperature series. In March Watts published a paper entitled, Is The U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable? Watts’ report confirmed that many surface stations are placed in bad areas that give false temperatures. These stations are used to calculate temperature in the United States. If a nation as prosperous as the United States can’t even get temperature right, what does that say about the rest of the world’s data? The National Climate Data Center (NCDC) has addressed Watts’ report with some tenuous talking points. Climatologist Roger A. Pielke Sr. fires back quite strongly in Watts’ defense and concludes with the following…
NCDC would be a much more valuable resource in the climate community if they worked to be inclusive in presenting all peer reviewed perspectives in climate science. Currently, they are only reporting on information that supports their agenda and not communicating real world observational data that conflicts with that agenda. The fault for this failure in leadership is with Tom Karl who is Director of NCDC.
The most annoying thing about the response of the NCDC is that the warmists are so heavily invested in the theory of global warming this kind of careless dismissal of Watts’ report is sufficient. I can hear it now… “Oh, Watts’ theory was debunked by the NCDC!” This kind of blind herd mentality is very common and almost impossible to stop.
Our temperature data is unreliable. We can decipher trends, but we don’t know exact numbers. It’s shocking that there is so much nonsense being advanced on an unproven theory that’s partly based on data that’s unreliable. Who said faith is dying? It’s alive and well if you’re an alarmist.
[...] the temperature in cities is often much warmer than the surrounding countryside. Anthony Watts has covered this issue effectively for years, but his observations have always been shot down with the blood curdling [...]