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New Scandal Erupts over NOAA Climate Data
Daily Tech ^ | August 7, 2007 1:07 PM | Michael Asher

Posted on 08/11/2007 1:27:55 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach

Weather station data hidden from public; scientists allege government cover-up


Roger Pielke (right) claims NCDC removed weather station data to dodge public scrutiny. (Source: University of Colorado)

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The theory of global warming began to explain one simple set of factsm-- surface temperature monitoring stations have shown a roughly one degree rise over the past century. But just where does these temperature readings come from? Most are reported by volunteer stations, usually no more than a thermometer inside a small wooden hut or below a roof overhang. In the US, 1,221 such stations exist, all administered by the National Climatic Data Center, a branch of the NOAA.

Two months ago, I reported on an effort to validate this network. A volunteer group headed by meteorologist Anthony Watts had found serious problems. Not only did sites fail to meet the NCDC's  requirements, but encroaching development had put many in ridiculously unsuitable locations -- on hot black asphalt, next to trash burn barrels, beside heat exhaust vents, even attached to hot chimneys and above outdoor grills.

Soon thereafter, a Seattle radio station interviewed the head of the NCDC, Dr. Thomas Peterson, informed him of the effort and quizzed him about the problems. Three days later, the NCDC removed all website access to station site locations, citing "privacy concerns." Without this data (which had been public for years), the validation effort was blocked. No more stations could be located.

Scientists were quick to respond. Climatologist Roger Pielke from the University of Colorado called the act a "coverup" and said it was designed to prevent public scrutiny. More shockingly, he revealed that researchers had been for years pressuring the government to validate the network themselves, and that the NCDC had begun to do j so, but cancelled the project and refused to make the data public, presumably to avoid this sort of scandal.  Joined by Watts and others, Pielke called upon the government to recant.

The resulting furor forced the NCDC to again made site locations public. But so far, they've failed to address to root of the problem, which is the wholly unsatisfactory locations of many of their recording sites, loations which make the resulting data unreliable, and compromise a dataset upon which much of US energy and environmental policy is based.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Government; Technical
KEYWORDS: agw; climatechange; fraud; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; junkscience; ncdc; noaa
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To: capt. norm
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They build an airport in the wide open space outside a city and a weather station is invariably placed at the airport.
<<

Or they locate the measurement equipment housing on the grass in the corner of where two large black asphalt tarmac ramp areas come together, so when the wind is from the west through the south the reading is not compromised, but when it is from any other direction (and especially from the NE through the SE), the wind passes over hundreds of yards of tarmac before it hits the gages.

This was the case at the Columbia, Missouri Regional Airport (COU) until just a few years ago when the station was moved a few hundred yards to the south. So, for about 20 years we had really bad readings or not so bad readings from this station depending on the wind.

A concerted effort must now be made to peer-review the location history of each station and to only use data from stations that are determined to be accurate. All other data must be disregarded.

41 posted on 08/11/2007 2:19:17 PM PDT by theBuckwheat
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To: gcruse
Don’t you love paying the government to lie to you? For the life of me, I can’t figure why there aren’t a lot more libertarians.

Let's not dump a smelly red herring into this discussion. This type of arrogance should arouse outrage from ordinary Amrericans of all political bents.

I would love to follow up on this. Specifically:
What were the "privacy" concerns cited?
Who made the decision to remove the data from public access?
Who's in charge there? Who does He/She work for?

I have heard of these absurd "weather" stations for years (as I recall, one was never even installed, but the "volunteer" simply guessed the data and forwarded it, which was then massaged to ten decimal places.)

In short, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

42 posted on 08/11/2007 2:21:56 PM PDT by Publius6961 (MSM: Israelis are killed by rockets; Lebanese are killed by Israelis.)
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To: gcruse
>For the life of me, I can’t figure why there aren’t a lot more libertarians

"First of all, someone
keeps dropping houses on us.
But that won't matter--

My flying monkeys
will storm the Emerald City
and then we'll rule Oz!"

43 posted on 08/11/2007 2:23:51 PM PDT by theFIRMbss
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To: jrooney

I wrote ‘libertarian’, not ‘Libertarian.” I believe fed govt should defend the country and otherwise leave us alone. If that defense is proactive, so be it. As for the horror of letting people get high, if that’s the only reason you can think of that justifies concentrating power into a national government, you have to wonder how the Republic survived until 1930.


44 posted on 08/11/2007 2:25:02 PM PDT by gcruse (Let's strike Iran while it's hot.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
You couldn't make this up! What a boondoggle!

The scary truth behind all Leftist endeavors is that they are so amateur. Only the corrupted media and educational establishments give them any life at all (that along with rampant vote fraud).

45 posted on 08/11/2007 2:25:35 PM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham (Elections have consequences.)
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To: theFIRMbss

LOL


46 posted on 08/11/2007 2:28:13 PM PDT by gcruse (Let's strike Iran while it's hot.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Neptune is warming up as well as the earth....

Jeeez, it's worse than we thought!

I've always thought it interesting hoe the GW crowd got away with ignoring THE SUN! in all of their hyperventilated expose's.

47 posted on 08/11/2007 2:29:04 PM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham (Elections have consequences.)
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To: Mad_Tom_Rackham; Ernest_at_the_Beach
Neptune is warming up as well as the earth....

Jeeez, it's worse than we thought!

But, it's not critical till Uranus starts to burn...

48 posted on 08/11/2007 2:32:48 PM PDT by tarheelswamprat
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To: tarheelswamprat

At least that will get rid of those pesky Klingons.


49 posted on 08/11/2007 2:34:37 PM PDT by Mad_Tom_Rackham (Elections have consequences.)
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To: Mad_Tom_Rackham
Did you have the time to listen to the audio stream I linked at post #12....it is quite good,.
50 posted on 08/11/2007 2:38:43 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Granddaughters!!!)
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To: sourcery

Thanks....


51 posted on 08/11/2007 2:42:10 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Granddaughters!!!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

As usually happens with the secondary moonbats who quote primary sources forever, they will never correct the erroneous data, and it will live forever for the ignorant and the militant, just as the "second-hand smoke" debate demonstrated.

No, Dorothy, 1998 was not the hottest year of record.

52 posted on 08/11/2007 2:46:15 PM PDT by Publius6961 (MSM: Israelis are killed by rockets; Lebanese are killed by Israelis.)
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To: Publius6961; SunkenCiv; blam; Grampa Dave; NormsRevenge; sourcery; Mad_Tom_Rackham; gcruse; ...
Looking thru the commentary on Anthony Watts site,...someone pointed to this as Propaganda....Wi9kipedia no less:

Instrumental temperature record
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

***************EXCERPT****************************


53 posted on 08/11/2007 3:11:08 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Granddaughters!!!)
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To: Publius6961; SunkenCiv

Wikipedia now has a problem....


54 posted on 08/11/2007 3:32:36 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach (No Burkas for my Granddaughters!!!)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Wikipedia now has a problem....

It would appear that way...

What's new?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

55 posted on 08/11/2007 3:37:47 PM PDT by Publius6961 (MSM: Israelis are killed by rockets; Lebanese are killed by Israelis.)
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To: mewzilla
re: These guys ought to be hauled up on the Hill.

That’s not likely to happen. Congress is too busy listening to the expert testimony of actors such as Rob Lowe who have seen algore’s movie and consequently are now authorities on the subject of global warming. See Reuter’s photo & blurb on webpage with Debra Saunder’s column today: http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/DebraJSaunders/2007/08/11/paralyzing_fog_of_uncertainty_on_climate

56 posted on 08/11/2007 3:38:53 PM PDT by Nevadan (nevadan)
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To: gcruse
I can’t figure why there aren’t a lot more libertarians

Read my experience at a RP event on another thread. I like RP, he grew up near me. but his stand on Iraq and the WOT turn me off. So too the liberetarian stand on drugs.

prisoner6

57 posted on 08/11/2007 3:45:26 PM PDT by prisoner6 (Right Wing Nuts hold the country together as the loose screws of the Left fall out.)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

I’m beginning to think “scientists” are morons.


58 posted on 08/11/2007 3:46:04 PM PDT by cookcounty (Famous Quotes: "I have not yet begun to fight!! ...and I'm so exhausted!" --Huffin' Harry Reid)
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To: gcruse
For the life of me, I can’t figure why there aren’t a lot more libertarians.

Hopefully it's because people realize the political philidophy Libert. hold is totally irresponsible.

59 posted on 08/11/2007 3:50:26 PM PDT by sirchtruth (No one has the RIGHT not to be offended...)
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach

The funny thing is the media complains that the global warming skeptics get too much publicity. Let’s forget that 99.99% of articles in the MSM are rabidly pro-global warming and never admit there is any doubt in the theory. These lying SOB’s have no shame on the lies they tell. These lying SOB’s really piss me off.


60 posted on 08/11/2007 4:03:31 PM PDT by Always Right
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