New Study Shows Half of USA Global Warming is Artificial

Meteorologist Anthony Watts, author of one of the best known and most widely read global warming skeptical blogs, Wattsupwiththat, has released a scientific discussion paper challenging the data used by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support its climate change claims.

Watts and the study's other authors concluded: "reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward." [Emphasis added]

Breitbart interviewed one of the paper's co-authors, Dr. John R. Christy, climate change expert of international fame, who said:

In 2010, the World Meteorological Organization adopted a new standard for temperature collection stations. This discussion paper is the first to apply that standard. The finding is that when the new class scheme was applied to weather stations, the stations considered compliant had cooler trends than non-compliant stations. [Empahsis added]

The first application of the recent WMO-approved standard, then, led to a correction of the temperatures downward.

The study's lead researcher Anthony Watts' decision to pre-release it as a discussion paper for public review, before peer-reviewed journal submission, is new in academic research. Climate change "converted skeptic" Richard Muller is the only researcher to have done this before.