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Comment by yread | Hacker News Reader

Oh, that's what you meant. I don't really see the problem with that, [1] explains that the biggest bias that needs to be corrected is change of time of measurement. The actual measurements are just one of the inputs of a model (that can also produce temperature estimates for the places where the measurements took place at e.g. 12:00). I thought someone was rewriting the observations!

[1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/thorough-not-thoroug...

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TOB is one of many justifications for making changes, and only applies in the first decades of the 20th century, yet they also have been adjusting temperatures recorded last year. And yes, they are rewriting the observations. The raw data sometimes isn't even available to the public, so the adjusted temperatures are what we get. It's those adjusted temperatures that get input into the models (that predict the future).

Regardless, there is a serious problem here. It doesn't actually matter if you agree with the rationales for editing the data or not - even if you are 100% on side climatology, the fact remains that they have radically changed their opinions about how the climate was changing in the past, and have done so multiple times (the long period of cooling that triggered the global cooling claims in the 60s and 70s is now no longer visible in the historical data either).

The existence of these changes are simply documented facts. By implication, despite studying climate for many decades they still don't have the ability to accurately measure current temperatures. Again this is not really controversial or up for debate, it's their own telling of the situation. To predict the future you have to be able to at least accurately measure the present.

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