Global Warming Stats Found In Error

August 10, 2007

 

With the recent heat wave over much of the country you can't avoid the inevitable blame of global warming. Humans have notoriously short memories. August and hot usually go hand-in-hand but every year people seemed so surprised that their thermometers are hitting triple digits.

 

Ironically, in the midst of the annual blame of typical summer weather on global warming, a remarkable story broke that was absolutely ignored by the mainstream media. A little web site called DailyTech.com broke the news that an error was found in NASA's famous global warming computer model; the same one Al Gore keeps telling us is irrefutable evidence that he's right and common sense is wrong.

 

It's quite interesting how this little mistake was uncovered. First, you need to know that James Hansen of NASA is the godfather of global warming. This is the guy who was one of the first and the loudest to begin sounding the global warming alarm. He's also the same James Hansen who claimed the Bush administration tried to muzzle him despite the fact that he's been allowed to do hundreds of interviews on the subject.

 

Anyway, DailyTech had done a report a few months ago that exposed the way the National Climatic Data Center, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had been gathering temperature data. NCDC had been relying upon more than a thousand volunteers (read: amateurs) whose thermometers were located in odd places like small huts with light bulbs burning, on poles adjacent to the warm exhaust vents of commercial air conditioning units and just a foot or so above hot, black asphalt. Once an official from NCDC was interviewed on the radio about the questionable data, website access for the temperature station site information was removed. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Steve McIntyre from ClimateAudit.org was examining historical temperature graphs when he noticed something a little odd. There were strange jumps in temperature, all occurring before January 2000. These graphs were created by Reto Ruedy and our old pal, James Hansen, over at NASA. McIntyre contacted Hansen asking to see his data. Hansen refused to provide McIntyre with the algorithm (of course, everyone knows Al Gore has no rhythm) so McIntyre reverse-engineered the data. Now, keep in mind that James Hansen has been telling us that the warmest year on record was 1998. Every media outlet on the planet has been regurgitating that for years. What McIntyre found was a Y2K bug in Hansen's and Ruedy's data. The warmest year on record was not 1998 but, instead, 1934.

 

Whoops.

 

McIntyre let the NASA pair know about the mistake. Ruedy responded and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight.” NASA quietly revised their data. You're probably hearing about this for the first time unless you heard me talking about it on the radio. A quick Google check showed that not one major news outlet had reported this story; a development that destroys a major linchpin of Gore's argument. A total of only seven outlets had reported the story. I found one site that actually attempted to cover for NASA by saying that “none of these differences are [sic] statistically significant.” It was apparently darn significant when 1998 was the warmest year. Now that 1934 beats 1998 by a wider margin than the previous data showed it's not “statistically significant.”

 

Another interesting fact is now half of the top ten warmest years occurred before World War II. How can that be? Figures don't lie but liars figure and these just got caught red-handed. Too bad those controlling your information don't want you to know.