For a week or so a firestorm of greenhouse-skeptical blogging has made much of a recent adjustment in data by statisticians at NASA’s Goddard Inst. for Space Studies in Manhattan. 1934, it appears to them, noses out 1998 as hottest in US weather records. A blogger’s number scrutinizing prompted GISS to take a second look at the numbers. The institute is where climatologist James Hansen runs things, and from which he is emanating an increasingly gloomy, strident view of how climate change is rapidly becoming a global emergency. So some see this data rewrite a big embarassment to Hansen and like-thinkers.
Today in the Los Angeles Times Thomas H. Maugh II has a brief story on it. While some in the blogosphere may regard the change as a blow against global warming theory, Maugh’s sources tell him that regional records don’t mean much compared to global averages, and that this adjustment is therefore inconsequential. Worldwide, ’98 is still champ and 2005 was darned close. Which is to say, it’s called global warming for a reason.
Also see: One randomly-selected blog aggregation on the change. Many see an effort at GISS to keep this change quiet, and a liberal-media effort to play it down.
Plus: Goddard Inst. for Space Studies ;
-CP
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