Artificial adjustments like GISS’s will deviate from reality over time, even to the point of not taking advantage of temporary “favorable” (pro-warming) trends in the actual temperature. You have to take the bad with the good to avoid being overtly biased. Just keep your eyes on the prize, so to speak.

If you compare the raw data charts with homogenized temperature charts for many stations, you’ll find the number of sites with pro-warming (overall slope increased) GISS adjustments feels about the same as the number of sites adjusted to show less warming. There’s no obvious finagling. Not until you see the average adjustment for the whole system does the warming bias appear. It’s subtle, but it’s there.

Ooohh, not good Adam. How come Bob’s global trend for gisstemp is higher than the UAH trend. someone fudging the data?

Here’s a little thought

With all this talk of UHI wrecking the temperature record. Surely some actual temperatures recorded in cities must be included, with UHI effect intact.

——-
If you want an idea of how ambient temperatures in cities have changed over the years, you can keep on taking daily readings, rounding them, averaging them and then adjusting them. Then you’ll have something interesting.
If you get really carried away, you can toss in a random assortment of readings from rural sites and the bilge-water of ocean-going vessels, then you can convince yourself that you know just how warm the air is today, yesterday and in 50 years’ time. Furthermore, you will know exactly how it came to be that temperature and you’ll know just how to correct it to your preferred value.

You can find them here: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/csiro/csiro-cgrim.html

A rise is observed similarly everywhere. ESRL also provides global means here:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_gl.txt

There is lots one might question about AGW but this really isn’t one of them. And WTR to Beck:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html

Please say it ain’t so! I was afraid that might be the case – so all the AGW stuff is based on a single measuring point, partway down the side of an active volcano? It truly boggles the mind. Well… I assume that other locations being measured must be showing fairly similar values?

Thanks to both Gillian and h.oldeboom — I’m off to check out your recommendations.

London is 1580sq km the UK is 224820sq km i.e. London is 0.7% of the total land area of UK Birmingham 0.1%. This deserves to be included as it is part of the environment

Bill here’s a little counter thought

If you want to include urban areas like London and Birmingham, what about the upland areas in the Scottish Highlands, i.e. the area over 1500 feet? (This area is of course far greater in areal extent than all the cities and towns in the UK put together). To my knowledge, apart from Braemar there are no Met. Office stations above 1000 feet. In winter our temperatures (in Highland Perthshire in the Southern Highlands) are regularly 3 or 4C colder than the Met Office’s forecasts, and regularly 2 or 3 degrees colder than the minimum’s recorded by the nearest official stations at Tyndrum and Bridge of Allan. And I live next to the River Tay, at only 80m above sea level. Glen Lyon is usually 3C colder than here, and it is only 15 miles further west. And the temperatures above the tree line (1500 feet) and on the snow fields will typically be even colder. But as the Met Office network seems to be incapable of recording (and forecasting) these lower temperatures, maybe they are just my imagination. After all, their computer generated forecasts can’t be wrong.

How many times has the unit been hit? As many times as the rain gage?

With all this talk of UHI wrecking the temperature record. Surely some actual temperatures recorded in cities must be included, with UHI effect intact.

London is 1580sq km the UK is 224820sq km i.e. London is 0.7% of the total land area of UK Birmingham 0.1%. This deserves to be included as it is part of the environment

After all, people can do pretty elaborate crop circles over night. Something like this could be done by 3 or 4 people in about an hour. And who could complain? After all, UHI effects are “negligible”, right? So if the sensors suddenly started recording 1 degree F lower (or more) — who could legitimately complain? And since they don’t bother to actually CHECK all the sites – they couldn’t fiddle and make “adjustments” for quite a while — and wouldn’t be able to justify them anyway since the amount by which they applied “adjustments” would be the new defacto admission of UHI effect.

How right you are.

My old Grammar School physics teacher must be turning in his grave.

What did Prime Minister Blair say?

“Education. Education. Education.”

Meaning that was their first target, I presume.

What he failed to add was:

“If we can destroy that, they will all be stupid enough to put up with us forever.”

Maybe he only added that after the cameras had gone!