Global Warming Alarm Sparks Controversy After Scientific Blunder

[MeJennifer]

All we can do is cry if we see this:

" A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record. "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

 

[fluidistic]

Well at least they know they made a mistake!
By the way I live in Córdoba, Argentina and 2 days ago (Thursday, 27th of november) we had the hottest day in the last 50 years (more than 40°C) and summer hasn't started yet. That's what I've heard on TV.

 

[Andre]

The other day Art did a similar observation in another thread here:

This whole debate on climate change is degenerating into farce.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

These people were either deliberately lying or were grossly incompetent. One now wonders how many other 'errors' there are in the GISS historical database which were insuffuciently large to attract investigation?

Either way, whether the error was malicious or accidental, it shows the management to be fools. Fools if they thought a lie of such magnitude would get by the rest of the scientific community and fools for not questioning their conclusions when common sense should have sent alarm bells ringing. What it does show is they need a management clearout and some real independent scientists given the job of record keeping at NASA.

I think that such an error is perfectly explainable given the mindset shown here. It will be food for a new generation of sociologists, but that's not Earth science of course.

 

[Edufer]

Well at least they know they made a mistake!
By the way I live in Córdoba, Argentina and 2 days ago (Thursday, 27th of november) we had the hottest day in the last 50 years (more than 40°C) and summer hasn't started yet. That's what I've heard on TV.

I also live in Córdoba, Argentina, and the Month of November actually was cooler than average with 23,94ºC in the big city, while 36 km south in Alta Gracia (rural station) the average was 19,4ºC .

The progression in temperatures in Córdoba (heat island) is this:

Nov 24: 29,70
Nov 25: 35,80
Nov 26: 33,30
Nov.27: 40,20
Nov 28: 33,60
Nov 29: 25,20
Nov 30: 26,00
Dec 1: 24,20
Dec 2: 26,50
Dec 3: 25,90

And now, at 1:25 pm we have: 26ºC. We must not confuse weather with climate. A “one-day” heat wave is ridiculous.

BTW, the highest temperature recorded in Córdoba is 45ºC in January 15, 1955.

January 7th, 2008 maximum (39.9ºC) was the highest for the year until Nov 27th. We had three cooler than average summers (and years too) in the last three years. Actually, the Córdoba and central Argentina area has been cooling since 1987. The following chart is from Pilar (rural station 40 km southwest of Córdoba), according to GISS:

 

[Edufer]

The graph above for Pilar station shows a warm year 2006. That’s was caused by a blooper made by GISS and our SMN (National Weather Service) that sent a wrong set of data with missing months. They replaced the actual data with a strange "average" from previous years, but it is plain wrong. This graph shows how it should look in the real world.