Errors in GISS classification of urban and rural stations, study

11/15/12, "Errors In GISS Classification Of Urban and Rural Stations," Paul Homewood, Not a lot of people know that

"Peter O’Neill left a comment on my post about GISS UHI adjustments a couple of days ago. I thought it worth posting it up with the table he had included.

It appears from the work Peter has done that many stations that GISS classify as rural are, in fact, urban. The errors are arising because of incorrect latitude/longitude data held within the GHCN metadata.

Peter has taken a sample, which suggests as many as 20% of stations could be wrongly classified.

If true, this would present two problems:-

1) These stations would not be being adjusted for UHI.

2) Other stations, correctly classified as urban, are adjusted for UHI by comparing with nearby rural stations. If some of these “rural” stations are in fact “urban” after all, then the first station may not be being adjusted correctly (or indeed might be adjusted the wrong way,which,  as we have already seen, has been happening a lot). This was Peter’s comment in full :"...via Tom Nelson

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GISS and NASA data are no longer legitimate due to an ongoing epidemic of security breaches at NASA. Recently an unencrypted laptop of a high level NASA official was stolen out of a car parked at NASA HQ. At least 48 computing devices were lost or stolen from NASA between April 2009 and April 2011. NASA's computer system was hacked at least 13 times in 2011:

11/14/12, “NASA Suffers “Large” Data Breach Affecting Employees, Contractors, and Others,“ spectrum.ieee.org, R. Charette

"Why it has taken so long for NASA to finally decide to fully encrypt its laptops remains a mystery, given its long-time poor record on IT security. As noted at NASA Watch, NASA has a history of laptops with personally identifiable information being stolen, one as recently as March.

Maybe NASA decided to act this time because it involved a NASA Headquarters’ person who in all likelihood is very senior and should have known better than to possess a laptop with no data encryption.”

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The BBC headline should be that Americans are in grave danger from within and without and no one cares. 48 devices lost or stolen between 4/2009 and 4/2011. Obama appointee Bolden  promised in March 2012 to "issue a directive" to have laptops encrypted and it wasn’t done.

11/15/12, “NASA to encrypt data after its latest laptop loss,” BBC

“US space agency NASA has ordered that the data on all its laptops must be encrypted, after losing another one of its portable computers. Until the process is complete, it has forbidden staff from removing Nasa-issued laptops containing sensitive information from its facilities.

The order follows the loss of a device containing “sensitive personally identifiable information”.  
 
There have been several similar incidents over recent years. ...


The Nasa Watch blog, which comments on affairs at the agency, had previously criticised it for a series of other data losses.

It noted that the organisation had been warned in 2009 that it was not taking enough steps to sufficiently protect information and had reported the loss or theft of 48 of its mobile computing devices between April 2009 and April 2011.

This is not the first time Nasa has promised action to address the problem.

In March, Nasa administrator Charles Bolden told the House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce that that he was going to sign a directive ordering all portable devices to use encryption, after acknowledging the agency was “woefully deficient” when compared to other government departments.”


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3/2/12, “NASA says it was hacked 13 times last year,” Reuters

“NASA said hackers broke into its computer systems 13 times last year, stealing employee credentials and gaining access to mission-critical projects in breaches that could compromise U.S. national security.”…

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2/16/10, “NASA plans more outreach to Muslim countries,” Orlando Sentinel, M. Matthews




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