Recently, there was a letter to the editor, "Climate change a hoax," stating that the NCDC was falsifying temperature data to make the past 80 years appear cooler than it actually was. The writer argued that if the past was colder, then the current warming trend appears more dramatic, and scientists secure lucrative government contracts.
I may be able to shed some light on this, and it is actually a little funny. I was a graduate student in the mid-1990s, and a teaching assistant in earth systems science when the temperature record came into question.
In about 1994, climate change skeptics (we called it "climate change," common usage was "global warming") claimed that the temperature records being used by scientists made the 20th century appear warmer that it actually was. This is because many monitoring stations are located near urban areas, and cities tend to be warmer than rural areas.
Following this criticism, data from urban areas were removed to better reflect ambient temperature. It appears we have now come full circle on that issue. It's kind of funny, though.
There is a good conversation about this latest hoax claim on the Internet, but I think most of us stop reading as soon as we have our biases confirmed.
Denise Marion
Hot Springs
Editorial on 07/20/2014