It started with a simple graph…

A sudden jump in climate/temperature data that didn’t make sense. Was it that they had airconditioning units nearby, or was it something else?

Steve McIntyre, of Toronto operates www.climateaudit.org and began to investigate the data and the methods used to arrive at the results that were graphed by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)…

And what did he figure out? That the problem started in January 2000…and there is suspicion it might be a result of an undetected Y2K bug.

And there were more problems. Just like the original site, near two airconditioner vents (that of course release hot air nearby) a research group found that other private weather stations whose data was being used were also in unsuitable sites…

Not only did sites fail to meet the NCDC’s requirements, but encroaching development had put many in ridiculously unsuitable locations — on hot black asphalt, next to trash burn barrels, beside heat exhaust vents, even attached to hot chimneys and above outdoor grills.

And when the bureaucrats in charge of the program were notified that some of their data sites might not meet the specifications, the response was swift:

Soon thereafter, a Seattle radio station interviewed the head of the NCDC, Dr. Thomas Peterson, informed him of the effort and quizzed him about the problems. Three days later, the NCDC removed all website access to station site locations, citing “privacy concerns.” Without this data (which had been public for years), the validation effort was blocked. No more stations could be located.

However, the good news is that in response to the question about a Y2K glitch, NASA did indeed release corrected data..

Table link HERE. Just go down and notice 1934…yup. it was 1.25, higher than the mean temperature. and just go down the graph and find all the other years with a number over 1.0…1917, 1921, 1931, 1998 and 2006. In fact, five of the ten years with the highest temperatures occurred before World War II.
Yup. that’s right. A lot of the “high temperatures” are similar to those 80 years ago. And alas we will probably see all the other nice things of the 1920s and 1930s like forest fires, dust storms, hurricanes etc…

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Nancy Reyes is a retired physician living in the rural Philippines. Her website is Finest Kind Clinic and Fishmarket. 

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