Global Warming: Garbage In, Garbage Out

With So Much Tainted Data ...

Doubt has been raised about essentially all the data used by CRU and NASA in their claims of AGW.  Due to the opaque operations, ill-kept data, and unsupported manipulation of data, it is probably impossible to duplicate the research and results that are claimed to be settled science.  The inability to reproduce a scientific study is grounds for its repudiation.

There is a fundamental reason for this:  CRU and NASA have done what every 8^th grade science fair participant is tempted to do, cherry picked and massaged the data to make it fit the hypothesis.  The integrity of their research has been shattered by the continuously unfolding story of manipulation and selection bias of the inputs, the process, and the conclusions.  Whenever a researcher independently looks at the underlying data, a different picture emerges from that of  the warmists. 

Within the last few months, the data used by CRU and NASA has been challenged in Russia, China, Canada, Australia, and the United States.   In each of these challenges, selection bias is demonstrated, and large error margins demonstrated.  In some cases, temperature measuring stations with favorable readings are included, and those which show less or no warming excluded.  Some stations are included during the periods they support warming and then mysteriously disappear for years when their inputs would be inconvenient.  Some station data were completely made up from non-existent stations.

Additionally, the process of “normalization” or "homogenization" of the data have consistently meant upward revision of readings.  For stations where urbanization has clearly caused an increase in temperatures, and normalization means lowering the measured temperature some, the result somehow is still always an upward trend, even thought there is no scientific basis for knowing what the appropriate adjustment should actually be.  Further, while NASA maintains that urbanization has little overall affect on the data, other research clearly shows evidence to the contrary. 

Even with the best research methodology (for example using station data that actually exists), trying to prove something about temperature trends with the available data is next to impossible.  It all comes back to the measuring stations.  Few have complete known histories, many have been moved multiple times, been subject to urban sprawl,  discontinuous service, or perhaps unknown  temperature affecting phenomena.  Even in the US, most of the recording is done by volunteers taking manual readings, so imagine what it is like in the rest of the world.  Here is a great report on the absurdity of some of the stations and how their measurements are used.  This is only thirty miles from where I live so I found it particularly interesting. And remember, if measurements can be so messed up in the US, what is the rest of the world like?