A new study found adjustments made to global surface temperature readings by scientists in recent years âare totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.â
âThus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published [global average surface temperature (GAST)]Â data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever â despite current claims of record setting warming,â according to a study published June 27Â by two scientists and a veteran statistician.
The peer-reviewed study tried to validate current surface temperature datasets managed by NASA, NOAA and the UKâs Met Office, all of which make adjustments to raw thermometer readings. Skeptics of man-made global warming have criticized the adjustments.
Climate scientists often apply adjustments to surface temperature thermometers to account for âbiasesâ in the data. The new study doesnât question the adjustments themselves but notes nearly all of them increase the warming trend.
Basically, âcyclical pattern in the earlier reported data has very nearly been âadjustedâ outâ of temperature readings taken from weather stations, buoys, ships and other sources.
In fact, almost all the surface temperature warming adjustments cool past temperatures and warm more current records, increasing the warming trend, according to the studyâs authors.
âNearly all of the warming they are now showing are in the adjustments,â Meteorologist Joe DâAleo, a study co-author, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. âEach dataset pushed down the 1940s warming and pushed up the current warming.â
âYou would think that when you make adjustments youâd sometimes get warming and sometimes get cooling. Thatâs almost never happened,â said DâAleo, who co-authored the study with statistician James Wallace and Cato Institute climate scientist Craig Idso.
Their study found measurements ânearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history,â which was ânearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern.â
âThe conclusive findings of this research are that the three [global average surface temperature]Â data sets are not a valid representation of reality,â the study found. âIn fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.â
Based on these results, the studyâs authors claim the science underpinning the Environmental Protection Agencyâs (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gases âis invalidated.â
The new study will be included in petitions by conservative groups to the EPA to reconsider the 2009 endangerment finding, which gave the agency its legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Sam Kazman, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), said the study added an âimportant new piece of evidence to this debateâ over whether to reopen the endangerment finding. CEI petitioned EPA to reopen the endangerment finding in February.
âI think this adds a very strong new element to it,â Kazman told TheDCNF. âItâs enough reason to open things formally and open public comment on the charges we make.â
Since President Donald Trump ordered EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to review the Clean Power Plan, thereâs been speculation the administration would reopen the endangerment finding to new scrutiny.
The Obama-era document used three lines of evidence to claim such emissions from vehicles âendanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.â
DâAleo and Wallace filed a petition with EPA on behalf of their group, the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC). They relied on past their past research, which found one of EPAâs lines of evidence âsimply does not exist in the real world.â
Their 2016 study âfailed to find that the steadily rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 critically important temperature time series data analyzed.â
âIn sum, all three of the lines of evidence relied upon by EPA to attribute warming to human GHG emissions are invalid,â reads CHCCâs petition. âThe Endangerment Finding itself is therefore invalid and should be reconsidered.
Pruittâs largely been silent on whether or not he would reopen the endangerment finding, but the administrator did say he was spearheading a red team exercise to tackle climate science.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry also came out in favor of red-blue team exercises, which are used by the military and intelligence agencies to expose any vulnerabilities to systems or strategies.