The Fake Climate Record

Tony Heller became a catastrophic man-made global warming opponent soon after he started looking at the US temperature records back in 2006.  His Real Climate Science blog has revealed many aspects of the fraudulent manipulation of data.  He recently recorded a video which provides an excellent overview on the fake temperature records used to change a slowly cooling US temperature trend into a rather strong warming trend.  I will summarize a few key observations he makes and add some discussion.

There is actual measured data at various times going back to 1895 from various subsets of the 1,218 weather stations in the US Historical Climatology Network and then there is the data reported to the public, which has been highly manipulated.  The manipulated data is reported for 1,218 stations, whether those stations existed or were active at the time or not!  First, consider the 1895 to 2023 average daily high temperature for the months June through August for those stations which actually measured the temperature:

The actual reported temperature measurements show a decrease in this summer maximum temperature of about 0.5 degree Fahrenheit from 1895 to 2023 using a least squares linear fit to the data.

Now, here is the data reported to the public based on both those stations that actually reported data and those that did not, but who have been phantom members of the US Historical Climatology Network over varying periods of time, often many decades.  Actual reported data has been manipulated and the data for non-reporting stations has been generated by computer models that assume that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes a 2 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase per century.  Also, the computer model actually propagates urban heat island temperature increases onto the non-reporting stations.

The final result of this massive temperature data manipulation is a least-squares linear temperature increase from 1895 to 2023 of 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit.  A temperature decrease of 0.5 degree F to an increase of 1.2 degree F has been created to fuel the catastrophic man-made global warming fraud.

Tony Heller provides us with a graph showing the manipulated data minus the actual measured data in this graph:

The blue line shows that before about 2010, the temperature record was lowered relative to the actual measurements by as much as 1.5 degree F.  Through about half the total period, the temperature was lowered by 1 degree F or more.  Scientifically, if the actual measurements are so bad that adjustments of this scale are needed, then all of the data is meaningless and useless as far as the issue of whether there is or is not significant man-made global warming. If manipulations of this scale are needed, then the game is over and we have no historical record at all.  The clock is at time zero and a reliable and comprehensive climate station network needs to be constructed and maintained for a century to create the data to see if there actually is any trendline on US and on global temperatures.

At this point in time, a slowly falling temperature seems more believable than a temperature increase rate which is 2.2 times greater than the measured decrease.  I say this based on my belief in actual measurements, but also because I believe that carbon dioxide atmospheric concentrations at anywhere near present levels do not cause significant temperature increases as the CO2 concentration increases.  Indeed, additional CO2 in the atmosphere may actually be causing a very slight temperature decrease at present levels.  The warming as a result of CO2 is mostly caused by the first few 10s of ppm.  I wrote about my concern about these cooling effects of carbon dioxide back in 2010.

As Tony Heller points out, the reporting of data for 1,218 stations when many fewer stations have commonly reported measured data is one of the most important degrees of freedom that the manipulators have to recreate a biased temperature record.  Here are the number of stations that reported June to August data historically:

From 1895 to about 1920, the number of stations increased very rapidly, allowing the manipulators to create much station temperature data that existed only in their fervent imaginations. The rate of increase in stations until 1989 was pretty substantial also.  Then after 1989, there has been a very rapid decrease in stations to about 805 stations.  The measured data that is presently going into the data manipulation mill operated by the US federal government is 66% of the stations assigned maximum daily temperatures for June to August.  34% of the stations are "reporting" completely fraudulent data from computer programs with a strong warming bias.  The data from the 66% of stations actually making measurements is also manipulated, though with smaller deviations from reality than that assigned to the non-reporting stations.

The federal government has invested hundreds of billions of dollars into what it calls Climate Science or efforts to mitigate a global crisis of its own invention.  Its funding of research into climate science has set real climate science knowledge back decades.  Its bias for a catastrophic man-made global warming crisis has corrupted the scientific method within this field of study.  Tens of thousands of research papers have been written which are laced with total nonsense.  Many of those papers have valuable results soiled by surrounding nonsense, which will mean that it will be very difficult to believe the valid results.  

But science has not been the only casualty.  The federal government has created a gigantic special interest group (industries, academics, media, environmental groups, and government agencies) seeking money and attention from federal, state, and local governments, not to mention frightened Americans.  Company after company, probably tens of thousands of them, have been created to address the fraudulent problems resulting from the falsified hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming.  The amount of mal-invested human effort is staggering.  The damage to our nation's productivity is a horrible tragedy.  And much of the cost of this will fall on Americans of lower income, many of whom have put too much trust in the leaders of American governments.

Should Joe Biden win a second term, this fraud will continue without abatement.  This grievous con game is strongly supported by the Democratic Party.  If Donald Trump wins a second term, this calumny will at least be constrained.  Trump did not do as good a job of this in his first term as he ought to have.  I sure hope he will do better in his second term, should he get one. At least he states clearly that he does not believe in catastrophic man-made global warming.

My Critique of the Washington Post Pulitzer Prize Winning Global Warming Lead Article

The article in the Washington Post, whose arguments I tear to shreds in this post, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2020 for:

Explanatory Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.

Complete nonsense is Pulitzer Prize worthy in the minds of the elitist collectivist left who make these awards.

The August 14, 2019 Washington Post had a front page, above the fold article which continues to fill the entirety of pages A10 and A11:

This article is also posted on-line here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/?noredirect=on

There is a salient bias exhibited here.  The temperature change is measured from 1895 to 2018.  Why is 1895 the starting time for that measurement?  Because 1895 was a very cold year.  Let us examine the average US temperature plot below by Statistica:

The average temperature in 1895 was 50.34⁰F and in 2018 it was 53.53⁰F, so the temperature difference was 3.19⁰F or 1.77⁰C.  Had the Washington Post chosen to start the comparison in 1900 when the average US temperature was 52.77⁰F, then the increase in average temperature from then to 2018 would be 0.76⁰F or 0.42⁰C.  Now no one seriously believes that man-made global warming caused 1900 to be 2.43⁰F or 1.35⁰C warmer than 1895.  So, a change of weather, not a change of climate was the likely cause of this substantial difference in temperature over a 5 year period.  But this 5-year change is 67.5% of the 2⁰C temperature change that the Washington Post, on the authority of the UN, is claiming is a critically disastrous temperature increase.  The choice of a particularly cold starting point for a comparison of temperatures is a common trick of the alarmist game-plan.

The warmest spots on the map from the Washington Post article are about 3⁰C warmer relative to 1895.  Subtract the 1.35⁰C difference in the average temperatures to shift to a 1900 starting point in time and there are no spots in the U.S. with a 2⁰C increase relative to 1900.

There is a second interesting problem which is revealed by the map itself.  Carbon dioxide is always said to be a well-mixed atmospheric gas by the catastrophic man-made global warming crowd.  While it actually is not as well-mixed as they represent it to be, its variations are nonetheless gradual and spread over large areas.  Yet, the hot spots in the Washington Post U.S. map are in very much smaller sized areas.  If the warmer areas are warmer due to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, then those areas should be of much larger dimensions than those of the map.  The strong temperature differences in the map are much too localized and suggest that they are due to chaotic weather differences, not real climate differences.

Further examination of the U.S. temperature change map shows a large area in the Southeastern U.S. where the temperature has actually cooled since 1895 as shown in the light green color.  If one maintains that the warming of 3⁰C in some small areas is due to an increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere since 1895, then isn't the near 1⁰C cooling in the Southeastern U.S. also due to that same increase in carbon dioxide?  The larger area and more gradual changes in the cooled area is a better match for the somewhat well-mixed carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere.  There actually are cooling effects due to carbon dioxide as I have many times pointed out in prior articles.  Those who have greatly exaggerated the warming effect of CO₂, claim the cooling effects are insignificant.  Remove the exaggeration of the warming effect and the several cooling effects are not so trivial and many of them are not saturating or saturating as rapidly with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide as is the warming effect.  I am not actually claiming that the cooling in the Southeast is due to carbon dioxide.  It is unlikely that it is.  However, if you are in the business of assuming that the temperature change since 1895 is due to carbon dioxide, then you ought to consider its cooling effects also.

Some of the hottest areas are near our two largest metropolitan areas, New York City and Los Angeles.  Perhaps these areas have warmed due to the urban heat island effect since 1895?  Virtually all the growth of population in southern California and in Arizona around Phoenix has occurred since 1895, undoubtedly contributing to that major hot spot in the Washington Post temperature map.  The article is full of stories about the warming of the state of New Jersey.  Averaging the population of that state from the 1890 and 1900 U.S. Census results to estimate the 1895 population, the 1895 population was about 1,660,000 people.  With the advent of automobiles, it became possible for people working in New York City and in Philadelphia to live in New Jersey, so those metropolitan areas expanded far into New Jersey.  The population of New Jersey in the 2015 estimate is 8,958,000, which is a increase by a factor of about 5.4 times compared to the 1895 population.  There are extensive urban heat island effects in New Jersey as a result.  The article bewails the fact that the only state in the contiguous 48 states with an average temperature increase above 2⁰C is little Rhode Island.  Its population in 1895 was about 387,000 people, which by 2015 has increased to about 1,056,300.  This factor of 2.7 increase in population in this high population density state has most likely also been accompanied by a significant urban heat island effect.  The warmer area around Miami is another area affected by a very large population increase since 1895.

Many of the areas showing the larger increases in temperature are also low population areas such as that on the California - Oregon border and southeastern Oregon, the area on the Utah - Colorado border, most of Maine, and the stretch across northern Michigan, northern Minnesota, most of North Dakota, and northern Montana.  An examination of the number and quality of weather stations in these areas used to generate this data might turn up interesting results.  Could it be the case that these high temperature areas are largely projections of temperatures outside these areas, which projections predominantly produce warming in rural areas?  In any case, since the population density is low in these areas, any affects on humans is also likely to be low.  These are not particularly warm areas in the first place, so any warming that does occur is quite likely to be very welcome.

Outside of the warmer areas of the Southwest and a small area around Miami, most of the areas showing the most warming since 1895 are rather cool parts of the U.S.  Given that Americans are much inclined to take vacations in warmer climes during the winters from such areas as the Northeast whose warmer winters since 1895 are much decried in the Washington Post article, it is hard to see the warming of such cooler parts of the U.S. as a general disaster.  People upon retirement still move to much warmer parts of the U.S. such as Florida and Arizona.  Apparently, they rather like warmth, however the Washington Post may pretend that warmth is a catastrophe.

Yes, it may be true, as lamented in the article, that ice cannot be cut from northern New Jersey lakes as it used to be for ice boxes, but then again we now have refrigerators. If we did not have refrigerators, the disappearance of that northern New Jersey ice might be a disaster.  Perhaps the Washington Post wants us to lose the use of electricity and to force us to return to the use of ice boxes as a result. In that context, it is a disaster that this return to primitivism in the name of radical environmentalism may be harder to accomplish.  This is not one of my goals and I do not believe it is a goal of most Americans either.

I have carried out the above discussion generally accepting the temperature record data provided by the Washington Post article.  However, the thermometer temperature data of 1895 and of 1900 has been heavily adjusted downward and recent data has been heavily adjusted upward by NASA GISS.  The U.S. temperature data given below is based on the USHCN2 historical network, which adjusts recent thermometer readings upwards by a substantial amount before releasing the data to the public.  Here is a comparison of the high and low daily temperature results for the measured or unadjusted data compared to the adjusted data comparing the 1895 cold year with 2010, as discovered by Tony Heller in a 2010 post on Real Science:

The fact that this data cuts off about a decade earlier than 2018, makes little difference, since the temperature has changed very little in the last decade.  The daily maximum temperatures in the unadjusted data shows smaller areas warming and larger areas cooling.  The unadjusted warming areas are usually areas of high population growth (Los Angelos, San Diego, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami, and the metropolitan areas of the Northeast) or areas of very low population density in the western US and northern Great Plains states.  The unadjusted cooling areas are mostly areas significantly affected by weather from the Gulf of Mexico.

The minimum temperature data (night time lows) is interesting in the unadjusted temperature hottest spots are actually more common in the western US than in the adjusted data.  There are many more areas of substantial cooling in the unadjusted data also.  Most of this cooling is in areas of the Southeast and the southern Great Plains.  There are larger areas of gray, the temperature unchanged areas, in the night time unadjusted temperature record.  Where warming has occurred it is often in the higher elevation areas of the US, where the day-night temperature variations tend to be larger than in lower elevation areas.  A slight reduction in these day-night temperature swings is more likely to be beneficial than harmful.  The night-time warming just south of the Canadian border is very unlikely to have anything but benefits for the people who live there also.

The land area sum of the unchanged and the cooled areas in both the maximum and minimum temperature unadjusted records, suggests that the average affects of temperature changes are actually rather small.  I expect the overall cooling of the Southeast brings more benefits to the USA than does the warming of the Southwestern and Rocky Mountain states of the USA where few people live.  As mentioned, the warming of those rather large areas just south of the Canadian border surely brings advantages to the people living there.

This Washington Post article by four of their radical Climate Change writers, is an excellent lesson in the massive dishonesty of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmist faction.  There is no attempt to distinguish the general warming of the post Little Ice Age period from any real effects that might be caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  There is nothing but assumption that the official data warming since the particularly cold year of 1895 has been due to man's use of organic fuels causing greenhouse gas emissions.  They are most insistent that mankind should feel a strong, collective sense of guilt that it is destroying the Earth and the future of mankind.  This is baloney.  It is moldy, rotten baloney.

It is a very sad observation that so many Americans actually believe in this irrational nonsense.  It is even sadder that every scientist in the nation is not working hard to reveal this con game.  Quite a few of them are on the take and many of them are intimidated by the lockstep socialism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism of our academic institutions and most of our information media.

Hiding the Warm Past to Build Climate Alarmism

Tony Heller at Real Climate Science has provided another interesting post on how NASA GISS makes a practice of hiding the warm past to build the case for climate alarmism.  Here is how NASA GISS has massaged the data over time to leave out earlier, warmer parts of the climate record, cool the more distant past data with adjustments (fudges), and warm the recent past (despite increased urban heat island effects):

It is not the measurements that count, it is the result you want that counts at NASA.  This adulteration of governmental records should land these people in prison, as a reader, Tom Anderson, has pointed out in his comments from time to time.

Some might argue that the temperature data has not been accurate and it needs various corrections.  If corrections of this size are actually needed, then the data is simply not useful for the purpose of making decisions about the spending of hundreds of billions of dollars or tens of trillions of dollars and for the purposes of deciding which industries will be murdered and which will be subsidized.  I would argue that the corrections made are more likely to be of the opposite sign than the reality  of man-made effects on the local temperatures around weather stations justifies.

The Washington Post Again Falsely Trumpets Global Warming Alarm

Update:  The article in the Washington Post, whose arguments I tear to shreds in this post, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2020 for:

Explanatory Reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

For a groundbreaking series that showed with scientific clarity the dire effects of extreme temperatures on the planet.

Complete nonsense is Pulitzer Prize worthy in the minds of the elitist collectivist left who make these awards.

Now my post of 18 August 2019 describing the intellectual fraud begins:

The August 14, 2019 Washington Post had a front page, above the fold article which continues to fill the entirety of pages A10 and A11:

This article is also posted on-line here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/?noredirect=on

There is a salient bias exhibited here.  The temperature change is measured from 1895 to 2018.  Why is 1895 the starting time for that measurement?  Because 1895 was a very cold year.  Let us examine the average US temperature plot below by Statistica:

The average temperature in 1895 was 50.34⁰F and in 2018 it was 53.53⁰F, so the temperature difference was 3.19⁰F or 1.77⁰C.  Had the Washington Post chosen to start the comparison in 1900 when the average US temperature was 52.77⁰F, then the increase in average temperature from then to 2018 would be 0.76⁰F or 0.42⁰C.  Now no one seriously believes that man-made global warming caused 1900 to be 2.43⁰F or 1.35⁰C warmer than 1895.  So, a change of weather, not a change of climate was the likely cause of this substantial difference in temperature over a 5 year period.  But this 5-year change is 67.5% of the 2⁰C temperature change that the Washington Post, on the authority of the UN, is claiming is a critically disastrous temperature increase.  The choice of a particularly cold starting point for a comparison of temperatures is a common trick of the alarmist game-plan.

The warmest spots on the map from the Washington Post article are about 3⁰C warmer relative to 1895.  Subtract the 1.35⁰C difference in the average temperatures to shift to a 1900 starting point in time and there are no spots in the U.S. with a 2⁰C increase relative to 1900.

There is a second interesting problem which is revealed by the map itself.  Carbon dioxide is always said to be a well-mixed atmospheric gas by the catastrophic man-made global warming crowd.  While it actually is not as well-mixed as they represent it to be, its variations are nonetheless gradual and spread over large areas.  Yet, the hot spots in the Washington Post U.S. map are in very much smaller sized areas.  If the warmer areas are warmer due to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, then those areas should be of much larger dimensions than those of the map.  The strong temperature differences in the map are much too localized and suggest that they are due to chaotic weather differences, not real climate differences.

Further examination of the U.S. temperature change map shows a large area in the Southeastern U.S. where the temperature has actually cooled since 1895 as shown in the light green color.  If one maintains that the warming of 3⁰C in some small areas is due to an increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere since 1895, then isn't the near 1⁰C cooling in the Southeastern U.S. also due to that same increase in carbon dioxide?  The larger area and more gradual changes in the cooled area is a better match for the somewhat well-mixed carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere.  There actually are cooling effects due to carbon dioxide as I have many times pointed out in prior articles.  Those who have greatly exaggerated the warming effect of CO₂, claim the cooling effects are insignificant.  Remove the exaggeration of the warming effect and the several cooling effects are not so trivial and many of them are not saturating or saturating as rapidly with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide as is the warming effect.  I am not actually claiming that the cooling in the Southeast is due to carbon dioxide.  It is unlikely that it is.  However, if you are in the business of assuming that the temperature change since 1895 is due to carbon dioxide, then you ought to consider its cooling effects also.

Some of the hottest areas are near our two largest metropolitan areas, New York City and Los Angeles.  Perhaps these areas have warmed due to the urban heat island effect since 1895?  Virtually all the growth of population in southern California and in Arizona around Phoenix has occurred since 1895, undoubtedly contributing to that major hot spot in the Washington Post temperature map.  The article is full of stories about the warming of the state of New Jersey.  Averaging the population of that state from the 1890 and 1900 U.S. Census results to estimate the 1895 population, the 1895 population was about 1,660,000 people.  With the advent of automobiles, it became possible for people working in New York City and in Philadelphia to live in New Jersey, so those metropolitan areas expanded far into New Jersey.  The population of New Jersey in the 2015 estimate is 8,958,000, which is a increase by a factor of about 5.4 times compared to the 1895 population.  There are extensive urban heat island effects in New Jersey as a result.  The article bewails the fact that the only state in the contiguous 48 states with an average temperature increase above 2⁰C is little Rhode Island.  Its population in 1895 was about 387,000 people, which by 2015 has increased to about 1,056,300.  This factor of 2.7 increase in population in this high population density state has most likely also been accompanied by a significant urban heat island effect.  The warmer area around Miami is another area affected by a very large population increase since 1895.

Many of the areas showing the larger increases in temperature are also low population areas such as that on the California - Oregon border and southeastern Oregon, the area on the Utah - Colorado border, most of Maine, and the stretch across northern Michigan, northern Minnesota, most of North Dakota, and northern Montana.  An examination of the number and quality of weather stations in these areas used to generate this data might turn up interesting results.  Could it be the case that these high temperature areas are largely projections of temperatures outside these areas?  In any case, since the population density is low in these areas, any affects on humans is also likely to be low.  These are not particularly warm areas in the first place, so any warming that does occur is quite likely to be welcome.

Outside of the warmer areas of the Southwest and a small area around Miami, most of the areas showing the most warming since 1895 are rather cool parts of the U.S.  Given that Americans are much inclined to take vacations in warmer climes during the winters from such areas as the Northeast whose warmer winters since 1895 are much decried in the Washington Post article, it is hard to see the warming of such cooler parts of the U.S. as a general disaster.  People upon retirement still move to much warmer parts of the U.S. such as Florida and Arizona.  Apparently, they rather like warmth, however the Washington Post may pretend that warmth is a catastrophe.

Yes, it may be true, as lamented in the article, that ice cannot be cut from northern New Jersey lakes as it used to be for ice boxes, but then again we now have refrigerators. If we did not have refrigerators, the disappearance of that northern New Jersey ice might be a disaster.  Perhaps the Washington Post wants us to lose the use of electricity and to force us to return to the use of ice boxes as a result. In that context, it is a disaster that this return to primitivism in the name of radical environmentalism may be harder to accomplish.  This is not one of my goals and I do not believe it is a goal of most Americans either.

I have carried out the above discussion generally accepting the temperature record data provided by the Washington Post article.  However, the thermometer temperature data of 1895 and of 1900 has been heavily adjusted downward and recent data has been heavily adjusted upward by NASA GISS.  The U.S. temperature data given below is based on the USHCN2 historical network, which adjusts recent thermometer readings upwards by a substantial amount before releasing the data to the public.  Here is a comparison of the high and low daily temperature results for the measured or unadjusted data compared to the adjusted data, as discovered by Tony Heller in a 2010 post on Real Science:

The fact that this data cuts off about a decade earlier than 2018, makes little difference, since the temperature has changed very little in the last decade.  More of the country has cooled both at night and during the day since 1895 than has warmed according to the unadjusted measurement data. Parts of the Northeast have still warmed, as has much of the Southwest, including southern California.  There is some warming along the Utah - Colorado border, parts of northern Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana.  But most of the Southeast, the Midwest, and the Central and Southern Plains states have cooled.  Nighttime temperatures have cooled less and warmed more than daytime temperatures, which is generally a good thing in that the daily temperature differential is slightly decreased.

This Washington Post article by four of their radical Climate Change writers, is an excellent lesson in the massive dishonesty of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmist faction.  There is no attempt to distinguish the general warming of the post Little Ice Age period from any real effects that might be caused by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  There is nothing but assumption that the official data warming since the particularly cold year of 1895 has been due to man's use of organic fuels.  They are most insistent that mankind should feel a strong, collective sense of guilt that it is destroying the Earth and the future of mankind.  This is baloney.  It is moldy, rotten baloney.

It is a very sad observation that so many Americans actually believe in this irrational nonsense.  It is even sadder that every scientist in the nation is not working hard to reveal this con game.  Quite a few of them are on the take and many of them are intimidated by the lockstep socialism, political correctness, and radical environmentalism of our academic institutions and most of our information media.

NASA and NOAA Continue to Fudge the Surface Temperature Data

Tony Heller at The Deplorable Climate Science Blog shows how NASA and NOAA have altered the surface temperature data once again to greatly exaggerate global warming.  The maintenance of an appearance of catastrophic man-made global warming requires a continuous program of outright fraud and data fudging.  Here is the comparison of three sets of claimed unaltered temperatures as recorded:

Keep cooling the older temperature readings and keep warming the more recent temperature readings and one can create the appearance of catastrophic man-made global warming.  It is even worse than this comparison graph shows because even the 2000 temperature record had been tampered with in a most unscientific way to exaggerate a warming trend.

For further discussion of the surface temperature data fraud see Paul Matthews' article on climate scientists fiddling the data.

The federal government swamp continues to function in NOAA and much of NASA even two years into the Trump administration.

NOAA Fudges Temperatures in My Backyard to Bolster Failed Man-Made Warming Hypothesis

Tony Heller at Real Science has once again shown how our federal government through NOAA has provided a faked data plausibility for the failed catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  This example of NOAA data fudging is from my own backyard.  It is amazing what can be done to take advantage of very local urban heat island (UHI) effects.  Having taken advantage of UHI, NOAA then adds further corrections to temperature measurements to lower those of the past, when population densities were generally lower, instead of lowering recent measurements to compensate for increasing UHI contributions to present temperatures.  I wrote a post long ago showing that rural temperature measurements showed no significant temperature increase for a long time.

Of course, since the "settled", "consensus" physics said to cause carbon dioxide to warm the surface of the Earth is wrong, it is hardly surprising that the many special interests dependent upon the catastrophic man-made global warming fraud are manufacturing data to hide the lack of warming in the last 18 years.  It is disgusting that many scientists are active participants in this fraud.

The Evidence Settled State of the "Settled" Science of Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming

In many posts on this blog, I have torn apart the supposed physics of climate that supposedly backs the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.  The alarmists backing that hypothesis say it is settled science and those of us who do not agree are both unknowing and dangerous to mankind's very survival.  Since my arguments against their physical explanations require the reader to know a significant measure of physics, the alarmists hope to win the hearts of most of the people with the stridency and supposed authority of their claims.

Fortunately, one does not actually have to understand much physics to see that the alarmist claim that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is causing a warming similar to that which their complex models are predicting is clearly and obviously wrong.  John Christy, in support of the state of Alabama's appeal to the Obama and rabid environmentalist-dominated EPA to prevent the closing of coal-fired power plants in that state, provided this plot:

Now anyone can see that the actual temperature data measured by satellite and that measured by balloons at the middle altitudes of the troposphere, our lower atmosphere, are in pretty close agreement.  The actual temperature increase according to these measurements since 1980 is much lower than that predicted by any of the computer model results based on the alarmist view of the physics of the atmosphere and the climate.  This is definitive proof that the alarmists do not know what they are doing.  They clearly do not understand the physics.

In fact, these scientists clearly do not even agree on the "settled" science very well themselves, given the great divergence in their own predictions.  Their models predict a rate of increase that varies from twice that observed to about 8 times that observed.  By any measure of reason, this is indication that even the alarmist community cannot claim the science is agreed upon among themselves.  They are highly biased toward exaggerated warming predictions, but each model has its own individual misconception of the actual physics of the climate.

Such a failed prediction history should cause any rational person to reject the claims of the catastrophic man-made global warming alarmists.  In fact, anyone rational would find their continued persistence in advancing this hypothesis to be hilarious.  That is, were it not for the US government spending $20 billion a year in support of this and the EPA shutting down coal-fired power plants and denying construction of pipelines on the basis of this nonsense.

In order to perpetuate this massive fraud on the American People and indeed upon people worldwide, our government is also massively fabricating the temperature record at the weather stations it operates.  Tony Heller at Real Science has shown that these surface temperature measurements show no temperature increase since 1990 if only the actually measured data is examined.  A massive 7.3 F/century temperature increase is provided in the fabricated data, however.  All of the claimed increase in temperatures in the US since 1990 is faked.

When you get the physics wrong and yet you insist on continuing to promote a political agenda to strangle economies, to rob the private sector of its wealth and productivity, and to destroy businesses and whole industries, you just have to tell some really big and strident lies.  As I have pointed out innumerable times on many, many issues, socialists and Progressive Elitists are very willing to lie.  Nay, they are compelled to lie.  The Big Lie is all they have.  They never allow reality to get in the way of a "good" lie.

Hiding the Decline - Not Since 1997, Since 1921

I have concentrated on revealing the mistakes in the physics that is used to explain the so-called greenhouse effect of infra-red active gases in recent times, because Tony Heller at the blog Real Science has done an excellent job revealing the massive data manipulations in the temperature data.  His plot of the raw thermometer data since 1921 and the highly manipulated and published data since then is shown here:

The raw temperature data over this time shows a decline in the average temperature, while the manipulated data shows a large increase, especially since 1977.  Most of the discussion of a "Pause in the Temperature Increase" is simply addressing the highly manipulated data of the last 17 years, during which time the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased, but the temperature has not.

The thermometer readings come from the USHCN stations across the USA shown on the map below:

The temperature data manipulators claim that much of the earlier 20th Century data has to be shifted downward because the stations reported the same high temperature two days in a row.  Now this assumes that the station managers were incredibly dumb and failed to notice that there was an unbelievable incidence of daily high temperatures that were the same due to the time of day at which they reset the temperature recorders to report the high temperature of that daily time period.  Assuming such overwhelming stupidity of Americans lies at the core to the Progressive Elitist ideology and justifies strong and intrusive rule by politicians and bureaucrats of elevated intelligence and who have been well-indoctrinated in our Progressive education system.

Tony Heller has also revealed that increasing portions of the temperature data record have no actual thermometer temperature reading behind them at all.  More and more often, it is said that the stations do not report the data and so a program runs an algorithm to generate a replacement temperature.  The reason for the failure to report the temperature data is unknown, as is the nature of the algorithm that replaces the missing data with some calculated number.  Tony Heller has provided the following horrifying plot of the rapidly increasing percentage of missing temperature data replaced by the algorithm of our most untrustworthy bureaucrats.

Tony Heller also says that almost all of the temperature increase claimed since 1990 is the result of the temperature data added to the record to replace the missing raw data.  Frankly, I would not be surprised if there was not a concerted effort on the part of the catastrophic man-made warming alarmists to throw out station data that does not fit their agenda of rising temperatures.  In addition, it would not be surprising to find out that the algorithm to replace the missing data is biased to generate hotter temperatures.  In fact, the fact that almost all of the temperature increase since 1990 is due to the algorithm-produced data is proof that the algorithm does have such a bias.

The physics of the catastrophic man-made warming alarmists is dishonest.  The temperature data they publish is dishonest.  Honest temperature data would provide the experimental proof that the theory of catastrophic greenhouse warming was wrong.  The physics knowledge needed to understand why their explanations for the physical basis of catastrophic man-made global warming are wrong is beyond most scientists, let alone the general public.  That fact keeps the alarmist somewhat protected on the theory side of this equation.  But, without the massive fraudulent manipulation of the temperature data on the experimental side of the equation, the massive fraud would be immediately exposed to a much larger fraction of the People.

Obama and much of his Democrat Socialist Party base are still very determined to use this fraud to provide a basis for a massive invasion against individual rights, especially economic rights.  It allows them a reason for further expansion of the control of the People and a rich mother lode for extortion and pilfering of businesses.  Similar special interests are found in countries around the world and the latest Synthesizing Report of the latest IPCC report of the UN shows how committed they are to continuing the fraud.  That fraud is unraveling rapidly now.

One of the many things the new Republican majority in the Senate should make possible is a renewed effort to push along and promote the unraveling of the catastrophic man-made global warming fraud.  I hope the newly re-elected Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma will continue to promote reason and science with respect to man-made global warming, energy, and environmental policies as he has and that he will have many more active allies in the Senate and the House of Representatives.  It is critical to keep the US from signing international treaties on these issues and to maintain our sovereignty and our constitutional management of our internal affairs.  We must not be sucked into UN claims that we must aim toward zero carbon dioxide emissions or the planet is doomed!