Weeks after a climate research facility in Britain was shown to have manipulated or concealed data in an effort to prove catastrophic “global warming,” it and another British research site face new questions about misuse of climate figures.
A think tank in Russia says temperature measures from that country that did not fit in with global warming predictions were downplayed or ignored by British researchers, while data hinting at global warming were played up. The claims involve Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the already compromised Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
The think tank, the Institute of Economic Analysis, examined data which, under pressure, Hadley and the Climate Research Unit finally made public. It found that the Russian measures came from only 25 percent of the meteorological stations in the country, Investor’s Business Daily reported. The problem is, those particular stations were often closer than others to heavily populated areas, and densely populated areas tend to be warmer. Data from stations not showing warming were less apt to be used. That apparently resulted in an exaggeration of any actual warming in Russia.
“Russian meteorological-station data in the last 130 years did not substantiate the rate of warming on Russian territory suggested by” British researchers, the head of the think tank noted on the Web site of the free-market Cato Institute.
Unfortunately, the U.N. relies on numbers from the Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Unit in pushing for costly, restrictive environmental policies worldwide. How can we trust those recommendations if they are rooted in temperature readings that may not be accurate?
It seems there is more and more reason for skepticism about alarmist predictions of dangerous global warming.