“Smart” people fall into two categories. There are “smart” people who find answers to problems, find creative solutions and can navigate through the challenges and nuances of everyday life; these people are know to have “Common Sense.” There are also “smart” people who are able to recite text books verbatim but don’t have enough sense to wear a heavy coat when it’s 50 degrees below outside; these people are known as “Book Smart.” The latter of the two are running the National Climatic Data Center.
I heard about the Surface Stations website this morning. The guy who started this site was originally looking to see if the change from oil based paint on the little chicken coop looking weather stations, to latex paint, could cause a change in the temperature readings; pretty nuanced stuff! He felt this was worth a look as these stations are what the NCDC uses to officially measure the temperatures. It’s these measurements that have contributed to create the faux alarm known as Gorebal warming. As he began his research he thought it wise to go out and get a feel for how many of these stations had been repainted. As he reviewed the first three stations he noticed that there were irregularities between the standards for the set up of these stations and the actual set up. Amongst other things, the standards require that the station needs to be at least 100′ away from any heat generating source i.e. asphalt, air-conditioner, building etc.
While the research is not yet complete (they’ve surveyed 502 and have 719 to go) the preliminary information is very interesting. Based on this study, 86% of the surveyed stations are set up in a way that they would have an error in temperature readings of between 1 and 5 degrees Celsius!
When the nutcakes invested in Gorebal warming are worried about a 3/4 degree Celsius change over the past 100 years, don’t you think it might have been a good idea to make sure their instruments didn’t have bias first?
I’m not sure the folks at the NCDC even qualify as Book Smart!
[…] if you wanted to push a particular agenda could you overlook such a basic issue. Take a look at my previous post that lays out work being done to document this issue. Note the large potential variances in […]