Pirate's Cove

Anthony Watts, Evan Jones, Steve McIntyre, and Dr. John Christy have a new study up that highlights what most who are interested in science thought: that the temperature record for the United States is artificially inflated, releasing it for crowd sourcing the day before the supposed BEST study was supposed to be released

New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments. (big snip)

These factors, combined with station siting issues, have led to a spurious doubling of U.S. mean temperature trends in the 30 year data period covered by the study from 1979 – 2008.

As Anthony was constantly telling people in the comments, read the paper. (I’m working my way through it)

What they essentially did was take a look at the surface measuring stations, something Watts has been doing since 2007, and looking at the raw data for those stations. One thing they found was data was skewed sharply upward, especially at properly cited stations.

Jo Nova boils it down: “This is one of those blockbuster moments when the pieces come together. For Anthony it’s five years work, and overturns so many studies all at once. This graph rather sums it all up. Raw well placed thermometers recorded 0.15C per decade. Badly sited thermometers recorded 0.25C, and adjusted ones recorded 0.3C!  Fully twice the warming trend.”

James Delingpole writes

What it means, in a nutshell, is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – the US government body in charge of America’s temperature record, has systematically exaggerated the extent of late 20th century global warming. In fact, it has doubled it.

And

So, in the spirit of magnanimity in total crushing victory I would urge readers of this blog not to crow too much about the devastating blow Watts’s findings will have on the Guardian’s battalion of environment correspondents, on the New York Times, on NOAA, on Al Gore, on the Prince of Wales, on the Royal Society, on Professor Muller, or on any of the other rent-seekers, grant-grubbers, eco-loons, crony capitalists, junk scientists, UN apparatchiks, EU technocrats, hideous porcine blobsters, demented squawking parrots, life-free loser trolls, paid CACC-amites and True Believers in the Great Global Warming Religion.

Well, crowing wouldn’t do anything, because Warmists are not interested in science, they are interested in politics, social engineering, social/climate justice, anything but science. The whole point of pushing “climate change” is to put more money and power in the hands of The Government, giving them control over the private sector and individuals.