IMO, for routine temperature measurements, the siting was not such a great issue. However, the entire environment of management of this program was not set up to have a uniform and consistent approach over long periods of time. There is the simple question of calibration standards and over time, how do you insure that a simple mercury thermometer in California maintains just as a reliable reading as one in Indiana manned by a volunteer?
Again, this would be almost inconsequential. Who cares if the high today is 81 or 82 degrees? Nobody involved in the design and running of this system over the past decades and even generations had the slightest idea that in the early part of the 21st century people would be trying to reinterpret data that is really plus or minus a few whole degrees for trends that are measured in tenths of degree.
It is just silly and that is exactly why, for example, Jon Daly’s web site (http://www.john-daly.com/) just drives advocates of Global Lukewarming nuts.
If warming is “global”, the effect should be visible in just about any dataset you pick. Yet, it is not.
On his “What Stations Say” page, he has some pairs of stations. In some cases, one station is subject to creeping urbanization, or as we now see, downright compromising erosion of its value as a site because of very local environmental factors, such as turning on a nearby air conditioner.
Daly passed away and that is the reason some charts stop too early.
And example of a city-pair:
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/cherokee.gif
from the What Stations Say page at:
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm
Now that Mark Steyn has written about the NOAA/NASA Thermometer-Gate scandal (the coverup is always worse than the original crime), I hope, but do not expect, all the MSM that echoed these alarms will acknowledge this gross error.
it would be interesting to lay thermometers in a uniform pattern every two feet from the thermometer to show the variations of the temperature just in the 100 yard radius.
