Errors In Measurements
I tried to find information, though I'd imagine they don't put the sensors right on the tarmac, the Sydney Airport is considered an urban heat island (UHI) to some extent. Here's a discussion called "A tale of two Sydneys". While this can throw into question what the temperature would have been there without the airport, it should still be the highest temperature in 35 years, etc. All the historical data was gathered there as well, so it should be similarly skewed. What about airport expansion, one might ask, but they built the new runways into the Botany Bay. Also, the mere fact that it is near a large body of water should also limit the UHI effect, unlike at Phoenix Sky Harbor.
Another interesting fact about Sky Harbor, there is no terminal 1. They have 2, 3, and 4, but no 1. That just goes to show you how ***-backward we are here.
That's normal for growing airports to have a missing terminal. You build 2, 3, and 4 and tear down 1. It would be silly to rename them all. JFK Airport is always missing a number ... right now there's no terminal 3, but there's the rest of 1 through 8.
Well there is some talk about bringing back Terminal 1 in the far, far future. Terminal 4, was named after Sen. Barry Goldwater. You actually see it in "Jerry Maguire" before the terminal opened. If they were to bring Terminal 1 back it would be named after Sen. McCain - like a lot of things. The guy isn't even dead yet and they are planning on putting his name on a number of things.
I would be interested to see if the Navy names a ship after him. The current USS McCain Destroyer is actually named after his father, the same father that would have gotten him out of Hotel Hanoi. When he goes, my guess is they will shutdown the city.
As for the UHI, I know personally several researchers that have published journal articles cherry picking high growth areas where the official station is in a bad location to support their Global Warming theories. They were completely non-apologetic about it and even bragged about it.
I'd be curious to see some of those; it strikes me as the sort of sensational rumor that spreads quickly regardless of whether or not it's true (which I would suspect to be behind that recently reported study saying that fake news spreads faster than real news: fake news is likely to be more sensational). I can, for that matter, imagine situations where it would be legitimate to look at skewed data points like that, as well as, obviously, situations where it would be cheating.
I'll see what I can dig up. Since I am no longer an ASU student, or at least for now since I am doing a masters program in fall, so I don't have access to all the journal sites. You're likely referring to the Penn State email scandal which shows the complexity of science.
What I have found is researchers and technical people in general are poor ambassadors of their fields. Like writing a news article, it is radically different from scholarly journal writing. My training in statistics has always made me aware of sampling in all studies. Assume you have accurate data going back to year 0 AD - that is 2018 years of data which seems like a lot, yet in terms of global history it is just a flash. I've also been a bit skeptical on the ice core samples. I would like to see a study researching the actual process and if it could be influenced by non-human interference. Don't know if it exists, but it would be interesting to see what could come up with.
As for the fake news, totally agree with your conclusions and my guess is everyone likes a good plot that is why it spread's so fast. Fundamental human behavior.