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Cooking Up
Global Warming
by
Christopher C. Horner
Mr. Horner is author of "The
Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism."
Posted: 09/07/2007
I
have placed this report here as an example of what I believe is a major scam
that is being perpetuated around the western world about global warming.
I personally do
not believe in it but I do believe it is being used by unscrupulous
politicians and green activists in their quests to tell the rest of us what
to do and to justify their increasing taxes which they then, in the main,
waste on frivolous projects. Please read with an open mind and form
your own opinion. If, of course you have already been "taken in " by
the publicity of such people as Al Gore and the others who are happy to jump
on the band-wagon because it inflates their public figures and incomes, or
because you believe anything you see on TV and in the Press, then I do
not expect you to believe the article below immediately.
But at least I hope it makes you think about it, and search further for the
truth.
However, the
quest for lower C02 emissions from especially car exhausts is a
good idea as long as it is not taken to technically impossible extremes with
the available current technology. But purely for health reasons
and saving foreign exchange on oil, it is beneficial. For
aircraft though, forget it. In Europe, 0, 2% of CO2???
A very
embarrassing chapter in the history of our nation's scientific establishment
has been unfolding thanks to a creative new website
www.SurfaceStations.org set up and run by Anthony Watts. This site is
providing unwelcome scrutiny to the United States’ surface temperature
measurement network, supposedly the most reliable in the world. The
reputation has been built over the years in part because of our government’s
purported insistence on uniformity of technology as well as siting (putting
the gauges where they will gather the most accurate data) and maintenance
standards.
But if you place your measuring equipment in the wrong place you could
help start a global warming panic, which is apparently just what government
bureaucrats are doing.
Recently, evidence increasingly made its way to people who pay attention to
such things that that our network’s reliability was not all that it was
cracked up to be, that there just might be misplacement of measurement
instruments enhancing a mild warming trend begun in the late 1970s that
otherwise seems to have stopped. Now, a full-blown scandal is erupting,
exposing the expensive U.S. surface measurements as quite possibly not much
more than yet another tool in the global warming alarmists’ kit to frighten
taxpayers into accepting a radical eco-lifestyle agenda.
 The
importance of network standards and accuracy emerged as a concern after
economics professor Ross McKitrick charted a dramatic, worldwide closure of
fully one-half of the planet’s surface temperature measurement stations from
1989-91. Those closures -- and the limitation of data that resulted --
resulted in a statistical artifact -- the “hottest decade ever!” according
to agenda-driven alarmists -- of an apparent jump in global surface
temperatures in the 1990s. Not a warming trend, mind you, but a sudden shift
upward. As it turns out this in all likelihood is simply a product of having
closed thousands of cold-weather latitude stations, at a time when for
example the Soviets/Russians found themselves with bigger things to worry
about than maintaining Siberian thermometers, such as a collapsing empire.
So the enterprising Mr. Watts, a TV and radio meteorologist, began taking a
closer look here at home. Watts put out a call for individuals to photograph
each of America’s 1221 surface stations. As the first snaps came in Watts
noticed a preponderance of ridiculously sited temperature apparatuses
which common sense would dictate factored in a warming bias among the
U.S. network (which, remember, is the world’s least unreliable).
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It seems fair to conclude that siting thermometers in
Arizona parking lots, overhanging black asphalt pads, near cell towers
and hot-air blowing air conditioner exhausts or next to
trash burn barrels has to result from either a complete breakdown of
scientific discipline or an intent to skew the data to produce evidence of
global warming.
But what can you say about
setting one just away from a chimney directly above a Weber barbecue
grill?
That’s just what they did in Hopkinsville, KY. These practices would be
hilarious if they didn’t result in large amounts of
corrupted data upon which our policymakers desperately seek to base an
energy scarcity regime.
This embarrassment came amid NASA also having to
correct its data since the year 2000, which has been used to support
many of the global warming alarmists’ “money claims”, such as Al Gore’s line
that 9 of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the past decade.
Well, no. We now know that this is false and that NASA has corrected the
record to reflect that the warmest year in the U.S. was 1934, 4 of the 10
warmest here occurred in the 1930s, 3 during the 1990s, and one each in the
1920s, 1950s and this decade.
That this claim has now been
debunked, like
most every other statement of substance in Mr. Gore’s movie, will no
doubt be disregarded by activist educators using the propagandistic movie in
school curricula.
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Regardless, as a result of
all of the controversy a clearly not amused National Climatic Data Center
suddenly pulled the actual locations of the temperature measuring stations
from publicly available resources! Mr. Watts
took them to task. As of this writing, the locations are again
publicly available.
This brazen act nonetheless prompted me to file a request under the Freedom
of Information Act seeking the internal deliberations behind such apparent
trickery. NCDC has yet to respond, but watch this space, for I also sought
internal discussion of a related, potential scandal picked up by
climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. That is NCDC’s continuing decision to
not make photos of particular Historical Climate Network sites, that are in
their possession, publicly available (see Pielke’s
blog post, “NOAA Cover Up Of US Historical Climate Network Surface
Station Photographs”).
Remember, even though they may not want us to look, these are your tax
dollars at work. Not for you, but for those who are aiming to saddle you
with a greater tax burden and their idea of a green lifestyle.
As Kermit the Frog used to say, “It’s not easy being green.”
For Americans, it won’t
be easy. It’ll be enormously expensive.
And for Europeans as well.
(Correction: An earlier version of this article
referred to Mr. Watts as Dr. Watts. We regret the error.)
18
September 2007
From: http://www.newsbalance.com/index.php#art17826
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