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June 2, 2009

After further investigation


FROM-OC Register

Cooling down with global-warming data

If fighting global warming may cost the economy $9.6 trillion and more than 1 million lost jobs by 2035, as the Heritage Foundation forecasts, it’d be a good idea to be sure there’s a sound basis before making such a massive sacrifice.

We’ve noted before that climate change is occurring as it always has, but the claim that man-made greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic temperature increases is based on questionable science and projections. Man’s contribution to greenhouse gases is minuscule.

There are some theories but no convincing proof that increased emissions cause increased temperature.

Now another serious doubt has been raised concerning how much of the 1-degree centigrade increase over the past century allegedly caused by escalating emissions has even occurred.

“We can’t know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can’t trust the data,” said Anthony Watts, veteran broadcast meteorologist, who for three years organized an extensive review of official ground temperature monitoring stations, in conjunction with Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and professor emeritus of the Department of Atmospheric Science at the University of Colorado.

The study, recently published by the free-market Heartland Institute, inspected 860 of the 1,221 U.S. ground stations that gauge temperature changes. The findings were alarming.

They found 89 percent of stations “fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements” that say stations must be located at least 100 feet from artificial heat sources.

“We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering hot rooftops and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat,” Mr. Watts reported.

These influences produce readings higher than actual ambient temperatures, Mr. Watts said. Moreover, the research revealed “major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors.”

The Heartland study concluded, “The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. And 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.”


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