The winter games at Copenhagen
By Dennis T. Avery
web posted December 21, 2009
Copenhagen was two weeks of uninterrupted game-playing:
- CFACT conned their way aboard a Greenpeace vessel with donuts—then unfurled a banner overside reading "Ship of Lies."
- China told the world it really wants to cut its carbon emissions, if the West will just pay them a trillion or so dollars to offset the higher costs of wind and solar.
- President Obama warned the poor countries to volunteer fossil fuel cutbacks—in exchange for $100 billion per year that nobody has agreed to pay.
Our "con of the week" goes, however, to the British climate "scientists" who have been keeping the world's "official" temperature records. Moscow's Institute of Economic Analysis have charged that the "British Team," led by the Met Office's Hadley Centre and the now-infamous Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, cherry-picked Russian climate stations. They chose stations that supported the theory of recent man-made global warming, and ignored valid stations that did not. This "trick," Russians say, over-estimated Russia's warming by more than half a degree Celsius. That's no small thing; global warming since 1900 has totaled only about 0.6 degree C—and Russia has 12.5 percent of the earth's land area.
Suddenly, the pieces of a massive "trick" against the human race may be falling into place: The Hadley Centre, East Anglia's Climate Research Unit—and perhaps U.S. record-keepers too—have apparently manipulated the official temperature records to show far more warming than we've actually had. If you think it's been hard to frighten us with just 0.6 degree of warming since 1900, how much harder with of half that?
Down in New Zealand, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research shows a strong warming trend since 1900. But the Climate Science Coalition of New Zealand has examined the still-available raw data from the same temperature stations, which shows far less cooling from 1853–1909, and far less warming in recent years. The Coalition says the data was manipulated by James Salinger, a former NIWA employee—who earlier worked for East Anglia's Climate Research Unit!
Years ago, Jim Goodrich, then California State Climatologist, randomly selected three groups of Golden State temperature stations—one-third each from cities, suburbs, and rural areas. He found a strong warming trend in the cities, moderate warming in the suburban stations—and no warming at all in the countryside. The IPCC has assured us they've "adjusted" the temperature records for the urban heat island effect—but have never revealed the size of the adjustments. Now that lack of transparency takes on a sinister tone.
Eugenia Kalnay used the satellite and balloon temperature records in 2001 to model what U.S. temperatures would have been over the past 50 years—without any land use changes. She found U.S. warming since 1900 would have been little more than half as high: 0.25 degree C instead of 0.45 degree C.
Willis Eschenbach has a post at Anthony Watts' blog: "The Smoking Gun at Darwin Zero." He examined five temperature records in the Darwin region; all five tracked each other closely. So why did the temperature station at Darwin Zero show massive "adjustment"? Because it showed the 1880s were warmer than today?
We should, of course, go back to the CRU's original thermometer data—but the Climate Research Unit says they've lost it! All they've kept is their "value-added product"—already adjusted in ways they can't explain.
Remember this global con game scenario four years from now as you pay your quadrupled electric bill. 
Dennis T. Avery is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421 or email to cgfi@hughes.net.