Did Media Or NASA Withhold Climate History Data Changes From The Public?

A change in climate history data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently occurred which dramatically alters the debate over global warming. Yet, this transpired with no official announcement from GISS head James Hansen, and went unreported until Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit discovered it Wednesday.

For some background, one of the key tenets of the global warming myth being advanced by Hansen and soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore is that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995.

McIntyre has been crunching the numbers used to determine such things as published by GISS, and has identified that the data have recently changed such that four of the top ten warmest years in American history occurred in the 1930s, with the warmest now in 1934 instead of the much-publicized 1998.

There has been some turmoil yesterday on the leaderboard of the U.S. (Temperature) Open and there is a new leader.

Four of the top 10 are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900.

Most importantly, according to the GISS, 1998 is no longer the warmest year in American history. That honor once again belongs to 1934.

As global warming is such a key issue being debated all around this country and on Capitol Hill, wouldn't such a change by the agency responsible for calculating such things be important to disseminate? When this correction was made by Hansen's team at the GISS, shouldn't it have been reported?

In fact, it is quite disgraceful that it wasn't, as it suggests that a government agency is actually participating in a fraud against the American people by withholding information crucial to a major policy issue now facing the nation.

Post facto thought: If Hansen's team had made changes to the data which showed that ten of the ten warmest years in American history occurred since 1995, do you think that would have been reported?

*****Update: This appears to be necessary given some very silly e-mail messages that I've received. Gore's claim concerning warmest years in history pertains to data for the entire planet. The changes at GISS are only for American data.

However, as e-mail messages from various scientists around the world have pointed out, American climate data collection is the finest on the planet. It is expected that when these changes are made to numbers across the globe, the worldwide rankings might see some changes as well.

Yet, still more to the point is the fact that American data were changed without any announcement.

—Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters.

U.S temperature record:

Another comment on same site cited above asks ..."Also, as others have said, this was the low hanging fruit. The error noted by Steve M. was obvious, its source was obvious, and the fix was obvious. The keepers of the data could not argue against it and so they caved in and adjusted their data in less than a week. The fact that one error had such a profound impact on a key piece of hype that is used to push the need for drastic action should make everybody pause and wonder what the eventual outcome will be of the broader issues being looked at by Anthony Watts and his volunteer observers. What happens if there is another tenth of a degree (or more) taken out of the dataset by errors and biases uncovered there? Doesn’t that begin to call into question the whole theory of AGW? If the models can account for warming up to the 1950s with natural forcings, but not all of the warming since 1980, then what happens if that chunk of the post-1980s warming is found to be error or measurement artifacts? Will the experts admit that the models can account for all warming with natural forcings? Then what? The wheels fall off the Al Gore snake-oil-mobile."

See this comment:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/1934-and-all-that/#comment-46779

Last week, Bush signed a bill on “America COMPETES”. There is a relevant part on the open exchange of data and metadata:

“SEC. 1009. RELEASE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH RESULTS.

(a) Principles- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the heads of all Federal civilian agencies that conduct scientific research, shall develop and issue an overarching set of principles to ensure the communication and open exchange of data and results to other agencies, policymakers, and the public of research conducted by a scientist employed by a Federal civilian agency and to prevent the intentional or unintentional suppression or distortion of such research findings. The principles shall encourage the open exchange of data and results of research undertaken by a scientist employed by such an agency and shall be consistent with existing Federal laws, including chapter 18 of title 35, United States Code (commonly known as the `Bayh-Dole Act’). The principles shall also take into consideration the policies of peer-reviewed scientific journals in which Federal scientists may currently publish results.”

As a climate researcher, I wholeheartedly support the above principles. In my opinion research scientists (and particularly government research scientists) should not be given any “choice” in this matter if they wish to receive government research funding, publish their research in the peer reviewed journals of the major professional societies, and have their data used in assessment reports.

Yes all this adds to the cost of doing research, and even the COMPETE bill is apparently an unfunded mandate. But it’s a cost we need to accommodate in some way. I have seen too many examples in the climate field where scientists do not want to make their data and metadata available to skeptics such as Steve McIntyre since they don’t want to see their research attacked (and this has even been condoned by a funding agency). Well, in the world of science, if you want your hypotheses and theories to be accepted, they must be able to survive attacks by skeptics. Because of its policy importance, climate research at times seems like “blood sport.” But in the long run, the credibility of climate research will suffer if climate researchers don’t “take the high ground” in engaging skeptics.

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