Posted on 08/09/2007 2:58:33 PM PDT by Neville72
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.
As McIntyre wrote Wednesday (emphasis added, h/t NBer dscott):
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.
Think this will be Newsweek's next cover-story?
No, I don't either.
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?
Yeah, I do, too.
*****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.
Quantifying the Hansen Y2K Error (Weblog Climate Audit Finds NASA GISS US Temp error--big one!)
1998 No Longer Hottest ear on Record
Did Media Or NASA Withhold Climate History Data Changes From The Public?
Similar threads today.
This, by the way, isn't the only thing in the pipe. If Climate Audit comes back up (I'm sure their server was flooded), look at the stuff with the IPCCs 4AR. Steve McIntyre was a reviewer for chapters in the IPCC. To get the writing to review, he had to go through an equivalent to Aurther Dent's efforts to see plans in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. McIntyre and McIntrick(sp?) and Pielke were all peer-reviewers, and when they posted issues, they got back responses that amounted to little more than "nu-uh!"
One particular thing that one of them pointed out was a Briffa 2006 study which the 4AR authors cited and included in a graph. The reason for the protests was that they included the part of the line where Briffa brought his data forward, but then clipped off the part where the data diverged heavily, going steeply down instead of up.
That sounds highly plausible to me. I work with engineers and others who have a science background. They have many strengths, but not in statistics.
“Most importantly, according to the GISS, 1998 is no longer the warmest year in American history. That honor once again belongs to 1934.”
Let me see if I can get this? 1934 was the warmest year. Then the story changed and 1998 was the warmest year. Then the story changed again and 1934 returned to being the coldest year. Is that right?
If so, is this a plausible explanation? 1934 was the warmest year. The data was normalized/altered to make 1998 the warmest year. This may have been done due to an AGW agenda. This was found out by an outsider. The record has been set straight and now 1934 is back to being the warmest year. Is this the gist (or at least one possible gist) of what is going on?
listen... warming, cooling, it was 50/50. so i took a shot!!!
That's what I was wondering it doesn't compute. That's not how legitimate science is done.
“... refused to provide his algorithms ...”
Maybe he thought they were Al Gore’s ithms.
What?
If he is a gov employee it may be next to impossible.
HOWEVER, if this story can be given some legs, it has the potential of undermining all of the Global Warming advocates.
I bet by the end of the day, so to speak, this Hansen is going to be thrown under the bus by algore or have an arkenside.
...or will she just disappear the way mediot embarrassments are wont to do? :-)
One of my research interests is radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres, especially interpreting remote sounding of the earth's atmosphere and surface from satellites. Such data, appropriately analyzed, may provide one of our most effective ways to monitor and study global change on the earth. The hardest part is trying to influence the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key information can be obtained.
Or is it the unconscious desire to come clean?
:-)
Let's get something straight, Denier. THERE IS NO OTHER SIDE TO THE DEBATE.
;-)
I'm unfamiliar with what you are speaking about. Is there a summary somewhere?
Or is it the unconscious desire to come clean?
Neither...IMO. The way I see it, he did exactly what he set out to do to prove his hypothesis (mankind is a rodent-plague destroying Planet Earth in its rapaciousness and needs to be culled/eradicated?)My words. And then he manipulated data to prove the hypothesis...
The hardest part is trying to influence the nature of the measurements obtained, so that the key information can be obtained.
IOW he 'knows' the information (bias) is in there somewhere, all he has to do is fiddle about a bit!
Hansen was to gore as an imam is to a jihadi. The Global Warming Fatwa is finally BUSTED!
Did somebody alter historical records, or did climate trends suddenly deviate from historical trends?
I hate reporting that fails to state things clearly.
What makes this sort of thing important is not so much the accuracy of any changes being made but the fact that changes are being made and the changes are the purview of the changers.
The question we should all be asking is whether the volume and frequency of these reports are going up because the situation for the climate is so dire and immediate or whether the pitchmen are losing their audience.
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