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Blogger Finds Bug in NASA Global Warming Study?
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article at DailyTech, a blogger has discovered a Y2K bug in a NASA climate study by the same writer who accused the Bush administration of trying to censor him on the issue of global warming. The authors have acknowledged the problem and released corrected data. Now the study shows the warmest year on record for the contiguous 48 states as being 1934, not 1998 as previously reported in the media. In fact, the corrected study shows that half of the 10 warmest years on record occurred before World War II." The article's assertion that there's a propaganda machine working on behalf of global warming theorists is outside the bounds of the data, which I think is interesting to note.
I've lost count... is this report now politically acceptable to the Bush administration or not?
What's their current line?
Some skepticism is needed here. This reminds me of Hume's Maxim
> The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our
> attention) that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless
> the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more
> miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish
In other words, some random blogger claiming that climatologists have been using screwed up figures about global warming due to a "year 2000" bug is pretty miraculous. I find it more believable that there's more to the story here than what's being posted. I read some of the logic chopping in the blog post's comments, but I didn't see any climatologists speaking there. Just some random people who seemed like they were playing detective.
I'd like to see some additional corroboration on this. The Bush Administration has had no problems in skewing information to match their political agenda, and clearly discounting the science around climate change is part of that agenda. One article sitting on some blogger's site isn't enough to convince me. Moreover, I immediately discount any statement that contains:
> I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the
> mainstream media.
What is that supposed to mean? It sounds like an appeal to a conspiracy theory. The fact is the mainstream media has been biased towards the Bush administration and Republicans in general for at least the past 10 years. For example, the New York Times trumpeted the Bush administration claims about Iraq nonstop until we went to war. All the major newspapers reported every unsubstantiated accusation against Clinton when he was in office, but they quickly lose interest in all the far more serious Bush scandals. And closer to this subject, this same press will give as much time to people who promote Biblical Creationism and "Intelligent Design" as they will to real biologists who are doing science.
So if this isn't reported in the mainstream press, or better yet in a science journal, it's because whatever the blogger is stating isn't what it sounds like.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
It's due to being in denial.
Think of the scientists! Without Global Warming, they would have nothing to bleat about.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Some things to remember guys...
:)
:)
There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
It's a pity that the politicians decided to take an interest in science.
As they've waded into the debate, good scientists have felt pressured
into arguing with them. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind every one of...
"Never argue with an idiot. They will will just drag you down to their level,
then beat you with experience"
As for global warming, even if the experts are right (and I think they may well be)
There is fuckall we can do about it. The basic problem is too many people who
want the little luxuries of life, good food, water an SUV and 10 kids.
Earths population is now what 6billion. I can remember as a kid when it was only 3.5billion
In 20-30 years it will be 12+ billion. Assuming widespread disease, starvation etc doesn't bring
these number down a little.
Lets face fact. Were done for. I strongly suggest investing in Tinned food and a shotgun.
If they're right it might just save your life.
If they're wrong, you still have some tinned food and a shotgun
Buying land thats 100meters at least above sea level and a rowboat might also be a good idea.
So long and thanks for all the fish
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
Oh come ON. Were people like you (please, forgive the generalization, but I can't come up with a better way to put it) saying this when the NASA study came out originally? The bias you're exhibiting is much too obvious to be confused with rational, scientific thought, and it isn't helping anyone's 'cause', just or unjust.
Also, and this is a general complaint, but...unfounded statements like "the sensor network is poorly maintained" do NOT (EVER) qualify as "Informative", unless backed up by some actual reference material. They just aren't, and it's ridiculous that there is that much blind trust here that unsupported assertions like this one get quickly accepted and praised. =P
I've always wondered why the far right wants to believe that there is some kind of conspiracy about "global warming". Your post clears that right up. A socialist conspiracy to de-industrialize the modern world. Riiiight. That makes *total* sense, now.
Did you hear the one about the Free Masons, red-haired, pale skinned kids ("ginger kids", if you will), and the secret alien transporting tunnel between Boston and Sydney? That's was one of my favorites, but it can't really stand up to... [trying to type this without laughing]... a "socialist agenda to try and deindustrialize western nations". Wow.
I don't respond to AC's.
My blog
See realclimate for a complete discussion of the subject.
The global trend is a robust dataset, and the pattern is scientifically explainable and is not correlated with urban areas, which is what you would expect if it was a UHI effect.
lol... "orson scott card" and "great analysis" go together like "michael crichton" and "sound scientific reasoning". both are pseudoscience douchebags. i used to love reading their fiction until i realized they thought they were actually scientists. unfortunately, both have done a great deal to harm public perception of science.
Ah, okay. So these models can accurately predict the future state of weather systems, as long as you don't count any states that were unexpected . Impressive!
2) Well, we've pretty well adapted to our current climate conditions. Therefore, it is likely that any significant deviation from those climate conditions will be net negative. And we are looking (in the absence of climate policy) at a temperature change on the order of 2 degrees to 6 degrees celsius over the next century (and still rising): 6 degrees is interglacial to glacial numbers.
3) Kyoto isn't really my plan. I have other, preferred methods. But Kyoto would be better than nothing. And yes, we can quantify the reductions that various plans would make (with uncertainty bounds, of course)
4) Consensus is actually perfectly good science. If I go into a chemistry lab and want to take an NMR spectra of a compound, do I need to rederive fourier transforms? No? Why not? Because there is consensus out there that people have figured out how this stuff works. Now, consensus doesn't mean that you stop poking at stuff, because consensus is sometimes wrong (though rarely in a big way) and there are almost always additional details which are worth delving into. And in the case of climate change, it is a very complex system and we probably won't ever understand it completely (at least within my lifetime), so there are plenty of ways to improve our understanding by doing good science.
5) Um. You think the ozone hole didn't exist? What planet do you live on??? Or do you use your own private definition of the term? And the scientific community never had anything like a consensus about a coming ice age - if you read the original literature there are caveats up the wazoo about it - including a lot of comments about the possibility that increasing CO2 might turn a hypothetical approaching ice age around.
So, sorry, no, you are much more laughable than is climate science.