In many cases, they were in fine locations, which then were overtaken by progress. In other cases, they were in fine locations but were moved to less intrusive nearby places, which almost always are near heat sources.
Exactly.
And what they are really measuring is urban expansion, not climate change.
The common counter-argument by the alarmists is that the United States is only 3% of the land area on Earth. The counter-counter-point is that the United States is supposed to have the best temperature measurement record and is thus used as a correction factor for the rest of the world’s lousy record of measurements. But if the correction factor is wrong, then so is the global trend.