Bogus Gold

Anthony Watts has been performing a long running survey of the surface stations monitoring temperature in the United States. With 70% of his survey completed, he posted his updated report, entitled: Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?

From the executive summary (all emphases mine):

Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise in temperature during the past century was “unprecedented” and proof that immediate action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin. Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made.

The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can’t know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can’t trust the data.

The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations.

The obvious truth of the first statement I bolded above renders the final sentence nearly scandalous.

As anyone who works with data in the private sector knows, challenges to the integrity of data happen routinely - especially when the data seems to point to unexpected or alarming issues. If your project produces a report that suggests a multi-million dollar strategic initiative is failing, you'd better be damned certain that your numbers will hold up under the kind of intense scrutiny such a conclusion will inevitably bring. That's how it works in the private sector anyway.

And yet, here we are, how many years into a full blown "climate change crisis", and the government agency responsible for collecting a great deal of the data upon which the alarm is based hasn't bothered to check to see if there might be a data quality problem at the data collection points. This isn't just a minor matter. The current administration has announced plans to "transform" the entire energy sector of the economy based to a large extent on this very data.

Of course, if this survey was performed and only a few minor problems were discovered it wouldn't be much on an issue. Unfortunately for the NOAA, that is not what is being found:

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.

In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

A failure rate of 20% should be considered appalling in this case. But a failure rate of 90%? Words fail.

Garbage in, garbage out - that's one of the essential aphorisms in the world of computing, and it applies especially to situations where one is relying on predictive modeling. It is only owing to such predictive models that a "climate crisis" has been declared. And yet for some reason no government agency has bothered to check the input for the kind of "garbage" Mr. Watts has uncovered on his own initiative.

There is very good reason for skeptics to question the honesty of those who grow shrill about the impending catastrophe coming from human induced climate change when the most basic of tests for data integrity seem to have escaped their attention.

Watt's conclusion is inevitable and yet still remarkable:

The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable.

The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7º C (about 1.2º F) during the twentieth century. Consequently, this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century. Since the U.S. record is thought to be “the best in the world,” it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.

That statement about the global database is remarkable for two reasons. The first is that it would beg for an explanation of why and how the notion of U. S. temperature record gained such a lofty reputation. Obviously something other than actual evidence was involved here, and it certainly wasn't any track record of rigorous attention to detail.

Secondly, with all the money being thrown around by governments of the world toward "combatting global warming," shouldn't there be some spare funds to pay for a similar surface station survey outside the U. S.? Let's find out where the data truly may be reliable, and weed out where it isn't.

Read the full report (pdf link) for a far more detailed picture of the situation. The extent to which Watt's survey is ignored by the very government agencies responsible will tell us a lot about their dedication to science and integrity.