Global Warming: A Tale of Two Charts

I'm not a climatologist. Don't pretend to be. Don't even play one on TV. But, even to a lay person, something doesn't seem to pass the smell test on the following two temperature charts. From New Zealand's primary climate advisory unit NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research) the official adjusted chart:


And the raw data


And the government's explanation for the adjustment.

Seems to me, that if you're sampling temperatures from two different locations at two different altitudes and/or climate zones, there ought to at least be an asterisk somewhere on the chart to indicate what may be a legitimate adjustment or what might be monkey business.

Keep in mind too, the chart shows anomalies from average temperature, worst case scenario of a swing of scarcely more than two degrees over one hundred years. Add to that, my hunch that, perhaps with more crude instruments a hundred years ago,and a tendency to sample the weather at airports, or on top of buildings, those fractions of a degree might not be all that accurate. I'm just saying! I don't think that the matter of MMGW is settled science by any means.

H/T Gina Cobb
Watts Up With That

Cross posted at Say Anything