More Junk Science From Global Warming Hysterics

Posted By: 'Okie' | 11:26 am — 11/16/2008 | View Comments See comments below:

[H/t: Glenn - Mustang, OK]

Some of you might have caught last month’s announcement by Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) that October was the hottest October on record and wondered to yourself — what are these guys smokin’ cause were freezin’ our keisters here? There is an explanation for this madness, and it’s once again bad data from our main Global Warming hysteric, and good ol’ buddy to Al Gore, Dr. James Hanson. Christopher Booker at the Telegraph.co.uk has the skinny:

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore’s chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its “worst snowstorm ever”. In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. 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.

Innocent error, or intentional manipulation of the data sets because the reality of the situation just doesn’t fit into the Anthropogenic Climate Change catechism? Shoot, I don’t know. But, the Global Warming proponents have been willing to use funny numbers before. At the very least it’s sloppy work that went unnoticed by GISS because the information was exactly what they wanted to see. Booker continues:

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs – run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious “hockey stick” graph – GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, 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.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen’s institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

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.

That little whoops by Hanson was covered in Aug. of last year. He sure has a way with numbers don’t he?

So, here we find ourselves with a new President-elect who has totally bought into the Global Warming hysteria of Al Gore and Co. along with what is looking like a iron-fist-Nancy Pelosi controlled House and a near, or even an actual, filibuster-proof Democrat-controlled Senate, both of which scream constantly that we MUST SAVE THE PLANET FROM GLOBAL WARMING!

I don’t drop the “F” bomb lightly — Folks, “We’re F___ed!” Booker explains why:

But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world’s governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Our new leaders aren’t pausing for much thinking — this is just too ripe an opportunity to do what they have wanted to do for decades — tax, Tax, TAX! and spend, Spend, SPEND!!!!! And, cripple the U.S. business community along the way. And, take ever more control over our personal lives along the way.

When, make that IF, we ever wake up from this Democrat-controlled nightmare, this Progressive-drunken bacchanal of Liberal Fascism — the hangover is gonna be a doozy!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 11:26 am and is filed under Democrat Nightmare, Global Warming B.S., Tax! TAx! TAX!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  |  Print This Post Print This Post  |  Email This Post Email This Post

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  • Glenn Speck
    James Hansen is past retirement age. Perhaps he should retire
    since these snafus keep happening on his watch. I'm sure the Heinz Foundation, a $250,000 donor to him, will send him a nice big "seeya" check.
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