Why would that place a thermometer here?

Alex.

The picture was taken by Steve Tiemier as part of the Surface Stations project. This project was a voluntary one and was headed by Anthony Watts.

Watts contention was the badly sited weather stations, such as those in built up locations were showing a warming bias caused by their surroundings. He enlisted the help of a team of volunteers from across the US and together they set out to survey all 1,221 weather stations in the US network.

Watts broke down the stations according to how well sited they were. Ones out in the middle of nowhere received a good rating whereas others, such as in the picture, were given a low rating.

He was confident that the urban stations would show a warming bias. They didn’t. That’s because global warming isn’t based on temperatures but temperature anomalies. It doesn’t matter how hot or cold it is, what’s important is the amount of warming or cooling that’s occurred.

A station such as the one you pictured will show high readings because of all the concrete around it. But this will have been the case from the time it was installed.

The only time it makes a difference is when the surrounding environment has changed. If a station was originally sited in a field, and the field was subsequently turned into a car park, this will make a difference. If the station has always been in a field, or always in a car park, it won’t matter.

This was Anthony Watts undoing. He failed to grasp that it’s irrelevant where the stations are sited.

From the work that Watts and his volunteers undertook, they identified 70 stations as being well positioned. The blue line on the graph below shows the temperature record from those 70 stations, the red line is the record from all 1,221 stations.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/trevorandclaire/1451...

He was warned many times that this is what would happen, he ignored those that knew best. He even went so far as to attempt to ban the use of his own data, he failed in this respect as well.

The US does have a network of stations that are sited well away from anything that could influence them, it’s called the Climate Reference Network. To add further embarrassment to the unfortunate Mr Watts, these show exactly the same level of warming as well.

Those are great places to put temperature sensors if you wanted to get higher temperatures. Just look at the air conditioner which will spew heat in that area. Just look at the refrigeration which would raise the ambient temperature. Look at the cement pad. This is a great heat sink. But you see, higher temperatures are what James Hansen wanted.

The only scientist who would do such would be an obviously ignorant scientist or a crooked one.

The question is, why is Trevor defending such practices?

They probably moved the thermometer and denialists are mad that they corrected for the spurious cooling trend that moving the thermometer caused.

Who knows why they would do that?

The temperature outside would be several degrees cooler than it would be if it were placed at the same height approximately 20 feet from that building.