And back to the original post. If you note in the anonymous NOAA memo you reference, Charles, NOAA says this: “surfacestations.org has examined about 70% of the 1221 stations in NOAA’s Historical
Climatology Network (USHCN) (Watts, 2009). According to their web site of early June 2009, they classified 70 USHCN version 2 stations as good or best (class 1 or 2). The criteria used to make that classification is based on NOAA’s Climate Reference Network Site Handbook so the criteria are clear. But, as many different individuals participated in the site evaluations, with varying levels of expertise, the degree of standardization and reproducibility of this process is
unknown. However, at the present time this is the only large scale site evaluation information available so we conducted a preliminary analysis. ” Again, Mr. Watts is being criticized for voluntarily doing what no one else has done. He is extremely transparent with methodology. Wish the AGW crowd was the same.