What would it take?

Half of global warming happened since 1990 yet less than half of the temperature stations are available since 1990?

Why?

A Full Open, well funded, quality analysis of temperature stations IS with no doubt warranted yet where are the money hungry researchers?

If we are to spend trillions of dollars on fixing warming, don’t you think we should be able to work out how to read ONLY 7000 thermometers regularly!!

One of my beliefs is that the IPCC is a money hungry political organization with no concerns about correcting any scientific details like not melting glaciers, which might get in the way of it’s growth and funding. So if I’m right, where are the demands for funding better and more complete thermometer data?

So I set out to make a rough estimate of what it would take to document, quality control, keep current and make public all of the temperature stations in the last 150 years. The goal was to find out if it is impossibly difficult, such that only computers are up to the task?

Let’s say 7000 stations, one station per eight hour day. Nope it’s govt, let’s say 1 station per 7 eight hour days, seven work days to stare at a single temperature dataset. A total of 49,000 person-days to document all the 7000 stations examine the data closely and make them public. Let’s say 150 government work days per year, including vacation, sick days, mental disability pay whatever. That’s 326 man years to look through each and every temperature station in detail, record its individual nuances and manually recommend and document temperature step or trend corrections.

So lets say that every govt. employee on this difficult job has a menial 80,000USD salary plus 60,000 USD in benifits. You know, a mid-level government employee. So assume 140,000 per year *326 = 46 million USD. Now these people will need management, since it’s govt, management should at least double the cost of the workers. 100 million dollars.

So for 100 million dollars, less than 1 percent of the 30 billion committed to the copenhagen each year by the US, we can pay US government employees to spend their efforts on 21 stations per year to catalog and make public all of the global temperature data in a single database for the public to see. Add 50% for equipment, data storage and other crap.

Say I miscalculated and didn’t factor in inflation, earthquakes or the extra sweat induced by global climate change. Let’s say TWO HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION for a full open accounting of temperature stations in one year.

I finally found a new tax I would be happy to pay. A one time expenditure which is:

Less than 0.8 percent of the money than the UN distributes every year for global warming research.

Less than 0.3 percent of what the United States will spend for economic recovery in 2010 — on climate research alone.

Less than 0.03 percent of the total 2009 Obama economic recovery bill.

Yes the US Obama “stimulus” will spend 4-5 times Nasa’s budget on climate research in 2010. One tenth of our at war military budget on climate – to invigorate the economy. Potentially a disingenuous statement from our good democratic leaders???

Consensus of datasets by government funded scientists, is not an acceptable answer and it’s damned well time the scientists started making sense on this. Complete, open data, open explanations, open code, open results.. then if everything falls in line, we can begin negotiations for a cause, a consensus and an appropriate response.

If we are in such huge danger as a planet, this should be an easy sale. In fact, a blogger shouldn’t have to write it.

I suppose they already have the curve they want though don’t they.