What Warming?

Item -- According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

For 2008, the average [U.S.] temperature of 53.0 degrees F was 0.2 degree above the 20th Century average.

Item -- As Steve McIntyre of RealClimate Climate Audit [corrected 2/2] shows:

Since 1940, NOAA's US [temperature data] has increased [i.e., via adjustments to the measured temperatures] relative to NASA's US at a rate of 0.39 deg C/century, thus 0.27 deg C since 1940.

Item -- As Planet Gore's Chris Horner observes, these changes are,

purportedly in the name of removing the (upward) urban warming bias mind you, yet managing somehow to make half of those adjustments upward.

Conclusion: The government's adjustments to the U.S. raw temperature data are biased. And the warming in the U.S. since 1940 is below NOAAs alteration of the data. Is the supposed "consensus" supporting global warming simply the product of Federal fiddling? Perhaps that's why global warming is last on the public's list of priorities in a recent Pew study.

(via Watts Up With That?)