"Al Gore likes to say that the science of climate change is “settled.”
But of course, science, almost by definition, is never settled.
And climate science has always suffered from the problem of shaky and missing data. Seventy percent of the globe is covered by ocean, where data is hard to collect.
Reliable weather records only go back to about 1850 and, in many parts of the world, are far more recent.
Modern recording weather stations date only to the early 20th century.
And many of those stations have a big problem.
While they haven’t changed appreciably over the years, the land around them has changed, often profoundly, with the great growth in urban and suburban areas.
The weather station that was put, say, in the middle of a Nassau County, Long Island, potato field in 1923 is still in the same spot.
But the potatoes are long gone, and now it’s behind a strip mall, twenty feet from the kitchen exhaust fan of a Chinese take-out joint.
A study by meteorologist Anthony Watts found that almost 90 percent of the 1221 weather stations in the U.S. did not meet the National Weather Service’s setting standards, which requires that they be at least 100 feet from any artificial heat source or radiating surface. You can see some of the most egregious violators here..."
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