Earlier this evening I happened to catch the dishonest – OK, I’ll say confused – climate-changers on the Weather Channel claiming that 2015 was on track to be the warmest year on record. Seriously?
 

I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend that what they really meant to tell us was the truth; that faulty data is indicating the warmest year on record. As the Daily Caller reported yesterday, NOAA Relies On ‘Compromised’ Thermometers That Inflate US Warming Trend.
 
Essentially, the temperature readings are “compromised” because of their erroneous placement in warmer-than-average locations ~

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s reliance on poorly-sited weather stations to calculate surface temperatures is inflating the warming trend of the U.S. and maybe even the rest of the world, according to a landmark study looking at three decades of data.

Oops!

“The majority of weather stations used by NOAA to detect climate change temperature signal have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioner exhausts,” Anthony Watts, a seasoned meteorologist and lead author of the study, said in a statement Thursday.
 
These “compromised” weather stations run hotter than stations that are well-sited, and are used by NOAA as a benchmark to make upward adjustments for other weather stations that are part of the agency’s official temperature record.
 
Watts and his fellow researchers found only 410 “unperturbed” weather stations out of the 1,218 stations used by NOAA to determine U.S. climate trends. These “unperturbed” stations don’t need to be adjusted by NOAA because they had not been moved, had any equipment changes, or change in the time temperatures were observed.

Anthony Watts runs the excellent Watts Up With That (WUWT) website which regularly debunks the climate alarmist propaganda. The article of his that the Daily Caller is referencing includes charts, graphs, all kinds of statistics to back up his assertion that the temperature data is seriously flawed.
 
As the Daily Caller piece continues ~

Watts’ new paper casts more doubt on NOAA’s temperature adjustments — which always seem to increase the warming trend. Correcting for these poorly-sited stations could also bring surface warming trends more in line with observations from satellites, which show no statistically significant warming for about two decades.

 
Before they focused on this bogus heat wave of 2015 tonight, the Weather Channel folks mentioned how heating costs would be significantly lower for most Americans this year. This will primarily be the result of an increased supply of natural gas. But also – yes – because the 2015-16 winter thus far has been warmer.
Here’s the fact-based good news from CNN Money ~

… some consumers are expected to pay as much as 14% less for natural gas this year and 20% less for heating oil.
The increase in fracking resulted in record U.S. natural gas production this summer and near record supplies of natural gas. So just as a record oil production has been driving down gasoline and heating oil prices, the record amount natural gas is pushing down those prices as well.
 
Add to that there are forecasts of a much milder winter in most of the country. The number of days Americans will need to heat their homes is expected to fall by 10% this winter, with every region other than West catching a break on the weather.

 
So maybe a little warming isn’t all bad eh?