The truth about the 120-year-old Global Warming Record.

Crucial data on the American climate, part of the basis for proposed trillion-dollar global warming legislation, is churned out by a 120-year-old weather system that has remained mostly unchanged since Benjamin Harrison was in the White House.

The network measures surface temperature by tallying paper reports sent in by snail mail from volunteers whose data, according to critics, often resembles a hodgepodge of guesswork, mathematical interpolation and simple human error.

"It's rather archaic," said Anthony Watts, a meteorologist who since 2007 has been cataloging problems in the 1,218 weather stations that make up the Historical Climatology Network.

"When the network was put together in 1892, it was mercury thermometers and paper forms. Today it's still much the same," he said.

The network relies on volunteers in the 48 contiguous states to take daily readings of high and low temperatures and precipitation measured by sensors they keep by their homes and offices. They deliver that information to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), which uses it to track changes in the climate.

Requirements aren't very strict for volunteers: They need a modicum of training and decent vision in at least one eye to qualify. And they're expected to take measurements seven days a week, 365 days a year.

That's a recipe for trouble, says Watts, who told FoxNews.com that less scrupulous members of the network often fail to collect the data when they go on vacation or are sick. He said one volunteer filled in missing data with local weather reports from the newspapers that stacked up while he was out of town.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Volunteers take their readings at different times of day, then round the temperatures to the nearest whole number and mark down their measurements on paper forms they mail in monthly to the NCDC headquarters in Ashville, N.C.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/02/archaic-weather-network-run-with-volunteers/?test=latestnews

Now whatta think of that "settled science" of 120 years of factual and exact temperature records?

They are pretty much exactly what I've been telling you they are. Good for tracking big variances in local temperatures and nothing more. But I guess they could be used by utility companies for calculating "degree days" for each month ...... like ya see printed on your monthly billing statement.

And you can also read about ….

Al's Latest Global-Warming Whopper
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/02/als-latest-global-warming-whopper/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+foxnews%252Fscitech+%2528Text+-+SciTech%2529

The article raises some great points. Some where in the article it talks about the margin for error is more than the temperature raise so called climate scientists have been claiming.

No wonder the global warming crowd spends so much time demonizing the skeptics.

Cato