Almost every claim about a looming climate crisis rests on a single foundational assumption. We are told that scientists have a precise and reliable understanding of global temperature. We are told that we know what the planet’s temperature was in the past, that we know what it is today, and that the difference between those two numbers proves something unprecedented and dangerous is underway.
If that assumption is wrong, or even deeply uncertain, the entire structure built on top of it becomes unstable. Climate models lose their anchor. Policy prescriptions lose their urgency. Trillion-dollar decisions begin to look far less justified.
That is why the global temperature record matters so much, and why it deserves far more scrutiny than it receives. This is not an argument against measuring temperature, but an argument for understanding how much judgment and interpretation is embedded in the number we are told to trust.
In recent years, that scrutiny has begun to expose uncomfortable cracks. Historic heatwaves quietly disappearing from national records. Extreme modern temperatures recorded next to jet engines and asphalt. Adjustments that consistently cool the past while warming the present. Individually, each issue is brushed off as technical or trivial. Taken together, they point to something far more serious.
Before getting into the details, it is worth asking a basic question.
What exactly is this metric that everything depends on?
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