Now we have a new oddity in temperature reporting. Those that follow such things have noticed the ‘past’ getting colder… How is that possible? The answer is the historic data is being adjusted. In the past the adjustments are mostly downward. In the present adjustments are mostly upward. But, with limited information it is hard to prove that. Thus this project.
There could be good scientific reasons for such adjustment trends for the past and present. But, try and get that information. Ask yourself why such information would not be released or widely published? Why is it so hard to get even with Freedom of Information requests being the law of the various countries refusing? It is not like daily historical temperature reading are some national security issue. Also, notice who is doing the adjustments: government agencies and government funded universities.
History
Remember, it is to all governments’ financial advantage for warming to be true. We have to decide if we are being foolish and destroying our planet (penny-wise) or being gullible and getting fleeced (pound foolish).
Since governments have a financial and authoritarian-power incentive for warming to be true, and have been known to lie (You can keep your policy. Period.) almost perpetually it is important to keep those working for the government honest, because politicians won’t. Climategate I, II, & III and the subsequent confirmations of the exposed violating Freedom of Information laws shows how deep the problems run. (Reference, Reference)
You may not have noticed that governments and the UN in particular only fund studies on man-made warming. There is almost no funding for the study of natural climate change unrelated to man-made causes.
There is a nuance here that warmers continually spin when talking about funding. Governments do good things, oil companies do bad things – I suppose meaning good or bad for the general public. It is seemingly forgotten that both groups are run by people and some of the most evil people in history were heads of government. The oil companies cannot use a gun to take your money. They have to compete in the free market. But, the amounts of money you will personally have to pay governments will only be acceptable if you think you are saving your life or your childrens’ lives.
Before making a decision, we need the truth. Collecting the data sets and making them public removes anyone’s ability to lie about what is being reported.
“Collecting the data sets and making them public removes anyone’s ability to lie about what is being reported.” Well, except for the bias’ and honesty of the people providing the data sets.
I also suspect that private data sets of longer than 20 years are not common. Anything less than that is pretty much meaningless since local variability overwhelms the long term trend.
The data sets extend back into the 1800’s and are commonly available in various formats from paper to electronic. The only challenge is getting access to them. Governments really do keep tons of information forever.
Those that have the raw data sets wanted are people that have access to the original records. These are usually lower level people not caught up on the political propaganda battle. For instance the Park rangers in Death Valley that dug out the original paper records on the all time high temp for DV. People like Fred are used to validating the data for spoofs and hoaxes. Numerous discrepancies were noted in the DV paper records and resolved. All of that work was published along with the reasoning for decisions and naming of sources. So, getting the data out and vetting is not the worry. Citizens can do this. That doesn’t mean their won’t be people that try to fake things. But, a rational person can sort things out and there are those that will stand up for the truth.