Another Dagger in the Heart of Global Warming Advocacy
Published Nov 16, 2008, by ■ Barbara Sowell
Last week NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) announced that this past October was the hottest October on record. Now it has been discovered that they were wrong. It turned out to be yet another glaring data error.
When GISS made the announcement last week it was shocking. All over the world were reports of unseasonal cold temperatures and record snowfalls. Even the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month of October.
What caused this major blunder? According to the UK's Telegraph, a detailed analysis of the GISS data found that the reason for the "freak figures" was that "scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all."
Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
When the errors were discovered by meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the GISS began to revise their figures. To compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, and not wanting to admit that they were wrong, the GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic. The only problem was that satellite images of the Arctic were telling quite a different story.
GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
Finally a GISS spokesperson tried to explain the error by claiming that the GISS does not have the resources to "exercise proper quality control over the data they receive." The figures published by the GISS are "one of four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rely on to promote the case for global warming . . ."
GISS is run by Al Gore's "chief scientific ally, Dr. James Hanson". The Telegraph accused Dr. Hansen and GISS of making extreme claims and creating several global warming scares over the years.
Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
As more and more scientists reject the "fact" of global warming, it becomes obvious that something needs to be done to insure accurate data. Science based upon advocacy isn't really science.
Here's a quote from Hot Air's Ed Morrissey:
The admission from GISS that they can't verify their source data when reaching to conclusions should embarrass scientists throughout the profession, as verification of data is absolutely necessary before reaching any conclusions. Without that, GISS may as well be studying the entrails of goats to make predictions about the future climate.
Hold on folks, there's more! (My previous thoughts followed by a little science.)
This global warming thing is getting old and me with it. Sometime ago, maybe I should say, a long time ago, when I was yet a child somewhere between the age of eight and ten, I first learned of this potential threat. I don’t remember the exact date, but I do know that President Harry Truman was in the White House. Yes, we had alarmist back then, but they did not play politics with Mother Nature and carbon footprints were never mentioned.
Although I cannot remember the precise date nor the exact source I can boil it down to either the Fall River Herald News or some popular magazine of the era; Time, Look, Life, etc. My friend Frankie also read the piece as we talked about it afterwards.
The article proclaimed that the sun was going to explode and during the years leading up to such a catastrophe the earth would experience higher temperatures. Based on the scientific calculations at the time, this event was to take place several million years in the future. With that said, I clearly remember Frankie stating, "Well if President Truman is not worried about it why should we."
So there you have it. The global warming buck did not stop at Harry Truman's desk!
Al Gore, "Get over it!" - You to Pacheco!
Now I was around nine or ten years of age when I figured out this global warming issue and that over time it became obvious that the issue was no issue at all; just a political bump in the road put out there by people who had no idea what they were doing. Today the issue is global warming. Why? Because I said so! And my name is Al Gore! And because my name is Al Gore, you must believe me! After all, I have the backing of the most corrupt organization in the world…the United Nations! If the corrupt people of the world honor me with the Nobel Peace Prize, everything I say must be taken as fact! And don’t you forget it!
So there you have it. (Here we go again.) Now we have Al Gore confessing he was wrong about global warming. What he meant to say was, “global cooling”. Or at least that’s what we’re hearing from people in the know; that can be found here: Gore Renounces Global Warming. (partial quote:"Two cheers for Al Gore on his about-face on man-made Global Warming, says SOLO Principal, Lindsay Perigo.") (Does this all sound familiar? I voted for it before I voted against it.)
Then we have another headline from someone obviously not a politician that may have been more ‘noble’ (pun intended) in his research than Al Gore was with his ‘prize’.
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.
Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.
Update 2/27: The graph for HadCRUT (above), as well as the linked graphs for RSS and UAH are generated month-to-month; the temperature declines span a full 12 months of data. The linked GISS graph was graphed for the months of January only, due to a limitation in the plotting program. Anthony Watts, who kindly provided the graphics, otherwise has no connection with the column. The views and comments are those of the author only.
*Pacheco - A very inexperienced weatherman who sometimes calls himself a state senator (from Massachusetts)
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