Is it appropriate for one of the "climate change" temperature sights to be located next to a grill, a chimney,

Question

an air conditioner, a large shrub, and a building made of brick?

How can an unbiased measurement of temperature be taken at one of these "microsites" when all of these objects can create a local variation in the temperature?

Are scientists so smart the can properly account for things like this?

What other problems are found at the actual sights of temperature measurement?

How does this constitute objectivity?

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1657#comments

@crabby-calling me a conspiracy theorist won't change the fact that the sights used to measure temperature changes have bias that isn't documented or properly accounted for.

Answer 1

Very similar to the Heisenberg uncertainly principle, which can be interpreted as something like, "you cannot measure a system without affecting the measurement." In science, then, you try and limit the amount of uncertainty "injected" into a measurement. It appears that at least in some stations, this is not the case.

I wonder with the observations suggesting that the Southern hemisphere may be cooling, that direct measurements in the heavily populated Northern hemisphere outnumber those in the more sparsely populated S. hemisphere, and just how far those stations are from human activity.

But worse than any of that is the mixture of direct sampling to indirect sampling, the assumption being that ice core samples, tree rings, etc can be just as valid as direct temperature readings, enough to be utilized in computer projections of watming trends.

Answer 2

Scientists have explored the siting of the temperature sensors and its' effect on the data extensively. It's not skewing the results.

Parker, D.E., Large-Scale Warming is not Urban, Nature 432, 290, doi:10.1038/432290a, 2004.

Peterson, T.C., Assessment of urban versus rural in situ surface temperatures in the contiguous United States: No difference found, Journal of Climate, 16, 2941-2959, 2003.

Summarized at:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/the-surface-temperature-record-and-the-urban-heat-island/

Also see:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/suppl/docs/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch03-SM.pdf

for an exhaustive discussion of data quality.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10/26/224634/48

has a couple of interesting pictures and some good text about this.

There are hundreds of scientists doing this work, and looking over each others shoulders. The work is routinely and extensively peer reviewed. They're not about to miss this as an issue.

Answer 3

Positioning instruments as shown isn't proper procedure, of course. And if it were a real measuring station, I'd agree its sloppy. Simply because some nutcase posts a staged fake image doesn't make it a valid complaint. You conspiracy theorists must be getting really desparate if thats the best you can do.

Answer 4

everything but the building made of brick will affect the "cilmate change" temperture sights, my suggestion, go to home depot and you can find a thermometer holder for like $10

Answer 5

Many scientist take all kinds of biased measurements . The one that comes to mind is on methane . They have published all kinds of methane info. but methane is very light so they didn't measure it . They calculated what they wanted it to be.

Answer 6

Im pretty sure but i dont know