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.