Has Global warming data purposely been skewed?

Question

In what ways could someone trying to convince us golbal warming is really happening tamper with or give the data the outcome they want?

Answer 1

Probably the best example of this is the temperature records for the last 50 odd years. There are problems with using land-based data because of the effects in changing surrounding land use (urban heat island effect), which exaggerates the actually amount of warming going on. People claim to have adjusted the raw data for this effect, but they refuse to reveal how, which is just plain bad scientific practice.

www.climateaudit.org goes into good detail about how the land-based temperature measurements are badly distorted. They have been surveying the sites of these temperature measurement stations, with some shocking finds, such as them being located right next to parking lots, on the top of buildings, 4 feet from an AC exhaust fan, etc. Take a look at the website.

If you use the satellite data instead of these faulty land measurements, you find that the warming in the second half of the 20th century is MUCH less, and it peaked in 1998. By falsely exaggerating the warming, people can claim that there is a gap between natural and actual temperature variation, and then they conclude that man must be responsible for that gap.

Answer 2

There is absolutely no doubt that the global warming data has not, in any way, been skewed. I find the idea, frankly, absurd. Granted, in graphs, the temperatures are measured in fractions of degrees, but that has a reason. During the Ice Age, which heralded catastrophic changes to Earth's climate, and passed humanity through a civilization "bottleneck" had global average temperature dfferentials in the single digits of degrees. This, therefore, is not scientifically misleading. Also, frequent references are made to scientists who disagree with global warming. Why? Because these are among the scientists paid by oil conglomerates to specifically deny global warming. This action shows the money they are paid thinking and speaking, not their own scientific opinions. Face it, global warming is scientific fact, any statement to the contrary is science fiction.

Answer 3

The thing is, the data hasn't been "tampered with." It's just that the bigger picture has been left out of it, and a narrow-minded focus has been placed on the parts certain people want us to notice.

When you look at climate charts from the last twenty years, it looks like the temperature is rising steeply- except then you notice that the y-axis is labeled in 0.1-degree increments. If you look through the climate change material on Wikipedia, you'll see climate charts from the past decade, the past century, and the past five hundred years. You'll also see projected climate charts from basically the beginning of time. Any of the above will put it into a little better perspective.

Answer 4

Global Warming aka Al Gore's Hoax data has been skewed through inappropriate data modeling. According to several scientists who wrote the IPCC the modeling that was used was exponential arithmetic math rather then logarthmic CO2.. Flawed methodology can make anything appears as doomsday.

Is the data skewed for a reason? I believe the "global warming" mythos is purely a political driven agenda and is an attempt to push a socialistic world view. Pure and simple.

Answer 5

For mainstream scientists who publish papers, it would be very hard. There are thousands of them looking over each others shoulders. If they skewed the data, the peer review process would catch them in an instant.

For deniers, who don't publish peer reviewed papers, but just make claims through the media, it's easy and done all the time.

Cherry picking data. "Mars is warming". But most of the solar system is not.

Simply lying. "Volcanoes produce more CO2 than Man."

The swindle video is loaded with skewed data.

"A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

"The science might be bunkum, the research discredited. But all that counts for Channel 4 is generating controversy."

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2032572,00.html

The "it's cosmic rays" deniers have been exposed as skewing the data.

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0405.html

So, someone trying to convince you global warming is NOT happening is likely to have skewed the data. There's no other way to deny the scientific reality.

Answer 6

No, papers are peer-reviewed to avoid that sort of thing. Even if it's not caught in the peer-review process, scientists check on eachother by replicating experiments. Global temperature measurements are taken both on the planet's surface and from satellite. Climate models are made by many different groups of scientists. There is no skewing of the data. If anyone purposefully skewed the data, they would immediately lose all credibility in the scientific community. They'd probably lose their jobs and nobody would want to hire them. Falsifying data is a death sentence in the scientific community.

Answer 7

The CO2 data is very wrong. CO2 is just a part of nature recycle plan. The plants take in the Co2 and give us the O2 and the plants make there food from the C. Granted we as the world produce a huge amount of CO2 , but the more CO2 that the plants get the faster they grow. I did work with lots of CO2 ,so as a safety precaution I wore it when I worked around CO2 . The first alarm point was 2 ppm,but the environmentalist want u to think that that level is more like 300 ppm. That was about 15 years ago.

Answer 8

Without a doubt. Dr. Michael Crichton has documented examples from the Goddard Institute. Look below for the link and the speech that he uses this picture.

Remember Goddard is headed by Dr. James Hansen, a person who took $250,000.00 from the John Kerry political campaign to back Kerry for is failed '04 presidential run, and collected money for working on Algores film. Tell me he doesn't have a reason to "select" the "right" data points.

Answer 9

Surly you don't think the powers that be would try to influence people to believe something they cant prove do you? Like perhaps, global cooling from the 70's the little ice age that wasn't. Or maybe the "thinning of the ozone" due to the evil Americans and their auto a/c's.. Anyone who would believe anything that gore says, is desperate for attention.

Answer 10

Not possible. Not with thousands of scientists and organizations all over the world using many different methods and all coming to the same conclusions.

Only two signifigant cases of misrepresnint dat have occured--both proven. One is the censorship of scientific reports by the Bush administration, the other is the issuing of fake findings by front organizations funded by Exxon/Mobil (see the Royal Society (UK) webside).

In other words--its only the so-called "deniers' who try to lie. Buteveryone already knows that.