Right-wing media forward conspiracy theory that NASA, NOAA manipulate climate data

Investor's Business Daily and American Thinker are forwarding claims made by meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo and computer programmer Michael Smith that the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have "cherry-picked" the locations of weather observation stations in order to bias their temperature records in favor of warmer temperatures and thus produce data that supports the existence of global climate change. But climate experts have stated that Smith and D'Aleo's claims are flawed and based on an inaccurate understanding of how global temperature data is calculated and compiled. D'Aleo and Smith reportedly accuse NASA and NOAA of "cherry-pick[ing]" the locations of weather observation stations to "creat[e] a strong bias toward warmer temperatures." On January 14, D'Aleo and Smith were featured in a KUSI News special report entitled "Global Warming: The Other Side." According to the special's host, they accused NASA and the NOAA of "creating a strong bias toward warmer temperatures through a system that dramatically trimmed the number and cherry-picked the locations of weather observation stations they use to produce the data set on which temperature record reports are based."