Watch this video by Peter, a sixth grader. Peter demonstrates the urban heat island effect using NASA data available on the internet. Urban areas have grown warmer over the past century as cities have grown and emitted more heat. Peter finds that in his sample of data rural areas in the vicinity of the urban heat islands have experienced no temperature increase over the past century.
Peter identified urban and rural temperature stations across the United States that are close enough to experience the same climate, but far enough apart so that urban heat should not affect the paired rural temperature station. With help from his father he analyzed the data and found that increasing temperatures over a century are associated with large urban areas, but not with similar rural areas.
Local warming is real in urban areas, but Peter’s data show no global warming. This does not disprove an overall warming trend over the past couple of centuries, but it demonstrates that serious scientist should try to separate various factors such as level of urbanization, regional climate phenomena, the radiance of the sun and levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rather than blindly attribute average changes across the globe to a single cause.
Climate change scientists have shown an unwillingness to present their findings to the public and, as Climategate has revealed, have tried to hide inconvenient results rather than try to explain them. They average temperatures across the globe and condemn anyone who attributes temperature changes to something other than increases in man-made carbon dioxide. When their conclusions are challenged, they get emotional and compare climate change skeptics to Holocaust deniers.
How refreshing to see a sixth grader present his analysis calmly and rationally! Maybe Peter should have a class for climate change scientists on objective analysis of data and keeping ideology and emotions out of science.
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Thank you for your comments. Peter and I are very happy that you have found our video to be interesting. We really appreciate it