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Warmest October Ever!…Oh, Wait…Never Mind!
Posted by Bigfoot on November 17th, 2008
Last month was reported to be the warmest October ever recorded, according to Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Dr. James Hansen, an intellectual ally of former Vice President Al Gore. This anouncement came as a surprise, because:
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.
With China, Alpine Europe, New Zealand and the United States all experiencing low temperatures and early snowfall, there would have to be some other places enduring unseasonably warm weather in order to offset this cold weather, and produce a record-high worldwide average . The unusually warm weather was reported to have been in Russia.
GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal.
Wow, 10 degrees above normal! Considering the size of Russia, if a “large part” of it were experiencing such an unusual warming trend, it might be able to offset the colder temperatures reported elsewhere, and cause the worldwide average to be above normal. But is such an anomaly even possible, especially when temperatures elsewhere are unusually cold? As it turns out, however, it was all a mistake.
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.
The unusually warm Russian October was really a September. The Russian temperature anomaly was nothing more than incorrect data. What, then, did the GISS do when their error was discovered? Did they say, “Sorry, we were wrong”? Nope. Instead of admitting error, they suddenly found other data to back their claim, even though that evidence was also contrary thereto.
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.
As Homer Simpson would say, D’OH! The GISS also engaged in some good old buck-passing.
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 episode sadly shows a horrid lack of healty skepticism among the scientists who are supposed to be studying the climate on behalf of our government, and thus on behalf of us. It also shows how Global Warming, er, Climate Change Believers in high places are overly receptive to data that tends to support their opinions, and unwilling revise those opinions when the data is shown to be incorrect. I would offer the scientists at GISS one piece of advice: If the data appears so unusual as to be faulty, it probably is.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
More than a lack of skepticism here…a lack of professionalism as well. People base their lifestyles on this stuff; people believe the “science” of all this when there is very little fact checking, little scientific method being used. It’s all hype.
How much money does the Global Warming market stand to lose if all the facts were brought out to daylight???
November 17th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
November 17th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
OH I just figured out how to use the smilies. LOL By mistake! Just drag’em into the comment box.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
This is just so much scare tactics used by those who are realizing that the eco-chic they’ve been pushing in hopes of gaining control over us is losing any credibility it once had. So now they’re making crap up, er, making mistakes, that paint the picture that they want to portray, that man is changing his climate globally through CO2 emissions, etc. etc. When the evidence doesn’t follow their hypothesis, simply change the data. Why anyone still listens to these people amazes me…
November 17th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Unless this becomes a pattern, I am willing to accept that the Russia data error was unintentional. However, I agree with Raven that the failure to do a simple error checking of anomalous data (nothing subtle here that an eyeball exam wouldn’t have picked up) exposes a bias, which is the bane of science and the source of the major scientific hoaxes and embarrassments in the history of science. The attempt by GISS to data mine isn’t embarrassing, it’s scientific misconduct. All this gives increasing credence to the conclusion that much of this global warming movement is a secular religion (or in the case of Al Gore, a cult).