How about measurements in Phoenix at the same time spanning 9 F ? There’s your science buddy.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=phoenix+az

Sunnyslope (KAZSCOTT10) for yesterday:
Min
44.8 F 85% y ~7 PM
Max
73.2 F 34% ~ 3 PM
Mean:
59 F

Woopdeedo. What’s that tell us?

Personal Weather Stations in Arizona.
http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/ListStations.asp?selectedState=AZ&selectedCountry=United+States

Even if you compare the “best” temperature stations with the most contaminated ones you’ll get very small differences in averages. And also note this:

“Since NASA uses satellite photos to remove stations that are near bright lights I will try and figure out which of these stations (if any) are a part of NASA’s official temperature record.”

NASA DOESN’T COUNT THE CONTAMINATED STATIONS IN ITS OFFICIAL TEMPERATURE RECORD!

The lack of ability of most people commenting here to understand the difference between the statements ‘urban heat islands do not exist’ and ‘urban heat islands do not bias the temperature record’ makes them all look ridiculous. And with your infantile talk of ‘sides’ I think you look rather ridiculous as well. Do you define your views according to which ‘side’ you see yourself as belonging to? Which ‘side’ do you think I am on? What are the ‘sides’? How many ‘sides’ are there?

BillBodell – I can see that you are aware of the difference between the existence of urban heat islands and their effect on the surface temperature record. I think you can see that an experiment which shows that they exist says absolutely nothing about their effect on the temperature record. But the ‘climate skeptic’ cannot see that; how can you think that he can if you read what he says? For example: The IPCC claims that the urban heat island effect has a negligible impact, even on surface temperature stations located within urban areas. After seeing our data, this claim will be very hard to believe.

I just Googled UHI and Parker together and found this story on Real Climate -

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=43

“There are quite a few reasons to believe that the surface temperature record – which shows a warming of approximately 0.6°-0.8°C over the last century (depending on precisely how the warming trend is defined) – is essentially uncontaminated by the effects of urban growth and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.”

Seems like the RC scientists don’t think it exists, yet here we have a student who can measure it. Maybe they never leave the office up there at RC.

Funny how stuff works out sometimes. No need to spread foul language, just give the kid an atta-boy and move along there TCO person.

TCO? What does that mean? Talking Completely Obtusely maybe?

And I think TCO has a good idea, basically, but his approach is acidic and therefore renders the effort useless. TCO, if you want people to listen to you, be polite and reasonable, and offer constructive criticism, rather than swearing wildly and making sullen comments about other people’s uselessness.

The only use of acidity is to make somebody angry, which can on occasion be a useful approach – angry people tend to abandon facades of rationality, but only if they were only pretending at rationality to begin with; switching to rational modes of argument will then completely throw them off. (RW is a good case in point, as I utilized exactly that technique on him.) When arguing with rational people, it accomplishes little except to make you look bad.

Please ban “TCO” and its morphs for foul language. We want children to read this stuff.

The answer is C.

Hansen at NASA (GISS) is responsible for putting out one of the two primary versions of the Surface Temperature record (the other is HADCru). He most definitely believes that there is such a thing as Urban Heat Islands. He adjusts the historical temperature to account for UHIs. What’s his method? He describes it in several places. Is this method accurate? Could it be better? What does his program actually do? These are all good questions. Hansen is not cooperating with efforts to address these questions. He was forced in September 2007 into releasing his code. There is a major effort underway at ClimateAudit to dig into this matter. If you want to know more, give it a visit.

Scientist

It is the policy of this blog’s author not to respond in the comment threads. I’m not sure that’s a good policy, but that’s what it is. How do I know? I read it on the blog. The difference between non-existent and negligible is significant. Non-existent means it DOESN”T EXIST. Negligible means that IT DOES EXIST, but has little effect. If you want to argue about how much effect UHIs have on the surface temp record or argue that the IPCC believes the effect of UHIs are more than negligible, then we’ll have something to discuss.