“Settled Science” – if it isn’t a term of ridicule, it should be. Anyone who claims that with regards to Anthropogenic Global Warming or more broadly, climate change is a fool and likely failed high school level science.
Stay with me here as we walk through the “science” from those favoring human-caused climate change. We all agree – on both sides of this argument – that the Earth’s climate is a complex system. So some have argued that models show what will happen to the Earth. And as they learn more about the system the models get updated and new results are computed. Fine. No issue there*.
But what NOAA and others supporting human-caused climate change haven’t told you is that they have also changed the data. Really. And it’s all publicly available for you to verify that they did as much. I could understand some data changing in the far past when we didn’t have accurate temperature readings but the type of data I’m talking about is for specific weather stations with modern temperature sensors.
Here is a case in point:
A station in Siberia (Zyrjanaka) had the following temperature data for the year 1940 reported by NOAA in 2012:
And here is the same station for the same year (1940) reported by NOAA in 2015:
So for some reason between 2012 and 2015, NOAA decided that it was actually 1.4 degrees C cooler in 1940 at that station. Maybe the device wasn’t that accurate so let’s look at a more modern difference. Let’s take the year 2010. Either there should be no change between 2012 and 2015 (because modern temperature sensors are pretty darn good and probably haven’t improved that it would change more than a tenth of a degree in accuracy since 2010) or we should see the same adjustment applied for some unknown reason that NOAA hasn’t explained.
Same station’s data for the year 2010 as reported by NOAA in 2012:
And here is the same station for the same year (1997) report by NOAA in 2015:
Hmm, now it’s only 0.9 degrees C colder. In fact, if you look at the adjustments made, it is almost a year-by-year specific change that is non-linear and has no coherent reasoning on their page that describes any changes (i.e. stations being moved, etc.). The differences, if you plot them, look like this:
How “data” can change like this baffles me. And this is only one station. Keep in mind, that we only have temperature readings for about 50% of the land mass of the Earth. Which means we only have temperature readings (with some adjustments that NOAA deems) for about 14.5% of the Earth’s surface. And the distribution of temperature sensor coverage is not uniform – there are pockets in various climate regions that are largely missing. Keep in mind, we do have satellite coverage of a greater surface area – this is the data referenced when you hear skeptics refer to the “pause” in warming.
Maybe I can adjust the data on some of my income….I don’t think it was measured accurately.