Thursday, 19 June 2008

Is the world heating up? Or are the figures being cooked.

Prominent NASA scientists tell us the world is heating up, yet the figures they're using increasingly look cooked.

Given that their figures are used to support extensive government action to squelch private production, shouldn't they be examined a little more closely? And when we do, what do we find? As Steven Goddard explains at The Register, what we find is sobering. Some lowlights of NASA science described by Goddard:
    US temperatures: NASA's 1999 version
    US temperatures: NASA's 2007 version
  • "We observe that [NASA's] data has been consistently adjusted towards a bias of greater warming. The years prior to the 1970s have again been adjusted to lower temperatures, and recent years have been adjusted towards higher temperatures."
  • For the last twenty years, NASA's ground-based (adjusted) temperatures have diverged considerably from the two main sources of satellite derived temperatures. "The divergence is now quite striking. Looking closer at March 2008, NASA's data ( shows the month as the third warmest on record. In sharp contrast, UAH and RSS satellite data showed March as the second coldest on record in the southern hemisphere, and just barely above average for the whole planet. How could such a large discrepancy occur?"
  • "... NASA has essentially no data (gray areas) in most of Canada, most of Africa, the Greenland ice sheet, and most of Antarctica. This begs the question, how can one calculate an accurate 'global temperature' while lacking any data from large contiguous regions of three continents?
  • So what was NASA missing?


    NASA Temperatures March, 2008 - 250-mile smoothing radius - looks hot.


    UAH Satellite Temperatures March, 2008 - looks cool

    "UAH Satellite Temperatures March, 2008 - looks cool.

  • "Additionally, NASA reports their 'global temperature' measurements within one one-hundredth of a degree. This is a classic mathematics error, since they have no data from 20 per cent of the earth's land area. The reported precision is much greater than the error bar - a mistake which has caused many a high school student to fail their exams."
To this must be added Anthony Watts' extensive work on documenting the horrendous state of NASA's surface temperature recording network. Forget the urban heat island effect -- what Watts' team has uncovered so far is a network of contaminated data collection: nearly two-thirds of temperature stations surveyed have been built in close proximity to an artifical heating source, or are either on or next to a building, roof-top, parking lot, or concrete surface. The picture at right gives you some idea of what's considered to be 'good enough for government work.' [Watt's work is summarised here at SurfaceStations.Org, with regular updates at his blog].

So what does this all mean?

As Goddard says in his conclusion, "What is being examined is the quality and stability of the data being used by people making [sweeping] claims. [W]hen the data is calibrated in lockstep with a very high-profile and public political philosophy, we should at least be willing to ask some hard questions. Dr. James Hansen at GISS is the person in charge of the NASA temperature data. He is also the world's leading advocate of the idea of catastrophic global warming, and is Al Gore's primary climate advisor..."


If you think this is all just an academic debate, then understand that what is being questioned is the quality of the science on which calls to shut down industrial civilisation are based.

Does it stack up?

: Naturally, the Greens continue to applaud NASA's "famous" James Hansen, the Chicken-Little-in-Chief of warmist so-called science. They have to, don't they. It's difficult to admit your hero in chief is a complete fuck up.


  1. Just another nail in the coffin of these socialist global warming chaps.

    When will everyone realise Al Gore has taken them for fools?!?!

  2. the drunken watchman19 Jun 2008, 16:10:00

    have you been to (or maybe it's to see the temp recordings? Click on a map of the world to see the charts from the recording stations in that area. In half an hour of random clicking all over the world I couldn't find one which showed an increase since recordings began. Then again, maybe it is an Exxon hoax site.

  3. Collectivists always tell lies. They are fundamentally dishonest. It matters not whether you are dealing with an environmentalist, socialist, social democrat, Christian socialist, communist, national socialist, green etc. etc. etc., they all tell lies. It is a necessary attribute they have and it makes them easy to spot. Next time one of these vermin fibs to you, kick it and stomp it out.


  4. Ah, El Reg’s Mr. Goddard! Who is he, one may ask, as a “Steven Goddard” doesn’t even exist on the interweb before April 2008.

    Yet the Register chose him to continously enlighten us with his views on climate change without criticism. Is he perhaps having some connection to IT professional John Atkinson, who was allowed to post a similarly incoherent article on the Register? Is it just a coincidence that someone using the moniker “John A.” pops up regularly on the blog of Stephen McIntyre, who works in IT as well and is known for making powerful oil interests heard?


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