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Is the Climate Science Debate Over? No, It’s Just Getting Very, Very Interesting (with welcome news for mankind)
How many times have you been told that the debate on the science of climate change is “over”? Probably almost as many times as Al Gore has traveled in private jets and limousines to urge audiences to repent of their fuelish ways.

Although tirelessly intoned by politicians, major media, advocacy groups, academics, and even some Kyoto critics, the “debate is over” mantra is just plain false. The core issues of climate-change attribution, climate sensitivity, and even anthropogenic detection remain very much in play....

...Watts and a team of more than 650 volunteers have visually inspected and photographically documented 1003, or 82%, of the 1,221 climate monitoring stations overseen by the U.S. Weather Service. In a report summarizing an earlier phase of the team’s investigation (a survey of 860+ stations), Watts says, “We were shocked by what we found.” He continues:

We found stations located next to exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations–nearly 9 of every 10–fail to meet the National Weather Services’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. In other words, 9 or every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

“It gets worse,” Watts continues:

We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also have caused them to report a false warming trend. We found gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher....

...Satellite observations are not influenced by heat islands or subject to the quality control problems detailed by Watts, and satellite records tally well with weather balloon observations–an independent database. However, the “debate is over” crowd is unlikely to embrace this solution. The satellite record shows a relatively slow rate of warming–about 0.13ºC per decade–hence a relatively insensitive climate....