The hottest October on record?
Nothing is more important to the deniers and delayers than finding a mistake. Oops, let me quickly correct that mistake before they do and start again.
Nothing is less important to the deniers and delayers than finding or even acknowledging the whopping mistakes by fellow deniers and delayers or frankly by anybody who publishes anything that might seem to support their anti-scientific views. See, as but a tiny sample,
- Should you believe anything John Christy and Roy Spencer say?
- Yet another denier talking point melts down
- Sorry deniers, hockey stick gets longer, stronger: Earth hotter now than in past 2,000 years
- Killing the myth of the 1970s global cooling scientific consensus
- Nature article on ‘cooling’ confuses media, deniers: Next decade may see rapid warming
- A bunch of huge mistakes by Michael Crichton
Also, nothing is more important to the deniers and delayers than finding even the tiniest and most irrelevant mistakes in NASA datasets (see, for instance, “Must read from Hansen: Stop the madness about the tiny revision in NASA’s temperature data!“).
Well, they’re back! Two of the most popular denier websites are all excited by a temporary misreporting of some temperature stations by NASA (see wattsupwiththat.com and climateaudit.org — note, I can’t actually bring myself to hyperlink to them and thereby simplify their task of spreading disinformation). Anyway, you can read the entire story from NASA’s Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate.org in a post appropriately titled, “Mountains and Molehills“:
… there was a glitch in the surface temperature record reporting for October. For many Russian stations (and some others), September temperatures were apparently copied over into October, giving an erroneous positive anomaly. The error appears to have been made somewhere between the reporting by the National Weather Services and NOAA’s collation of the GHCN database. GISS, which produces one of the more visible analyses of this raw data, processed the input data as normal and ended up with an October anomaly that was too high. That analysis has now been pulled (in under 24 hours) while they await a correction of input data from NOAA.
There were 90 stations for which October numbers equalled September numbers in the corrupted GHCN file for 2008 (out of 908). This compares with an average of about 16 stations each year in the last decade (some earlier years have bigger counts, but none as big as this month, and are much less as a percentage of stations). These other cases seem to be mostly legitimate tropical stations where there isn’t much of a seasonal cycle. That makes it a little tricky to automatically scan for this problem, but putting in a check for the total number or percentage is probably sensible going forward.
Zzzzzzz. Zzzzzzz. Zzzzzzz.
We should know in a day or two what the corrected temperature anomaly is. Obviously, whether it turns out to be one of the warmest Octobers on record or just an average October has exceedingly little bearing on the overall long-term climate forecast, which is most certainly “Hot — and then Very Hot” — and, assuming we keep listening to the deniers and delayers, “extremely friggin’ hot.”
But I still like to draw attention to the monthly temperature trends, especially because it is, of course, actually getting warmer, and I know just how much it annoys the deniers and delayers. Seriously, if we can’t stop the denier and delayers from throwing dust in the eyes of the media and convincing GOP voters and politicians to oppose the action needed to save our children from the gravest threat to their health and well-being, if we can’t do that, at least we can try to make the deniers and delayers misdirect some of their venom. And venom they do spew, especially at the most inconsequential of things:
… there is a strong yearning among some to want to wake up tomorrow and find that the globe hasn’t been warming, that the sea ice hasn’t melted, that the glaciers have not receded and that indeed, CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Thus when mistakes occur (and with science being a human endeavour, they always will) the exuberance of the response can be breathtaking - and quite telling.A few examples from the comments at Watt’s blog [hyperlink deleted to spare your blood pressure and sanity] will suffice to give you a flavour of the conspiratorial thinking: “I believe they had two sets of data: One would be released if Republicans won, and another if Democrats won.”, “could this be a sneaky way to set up the BO presidency with an urgent need to regulate CO2?”, “There are a great many of us who will under no circumstance allow the oppression of government rule to pervade over our freedom—PERIOD!!!!!!” (exclamation marks reduced enormously), “these people are blinded by their own bias”, “this sort of scientific fraud”, “Climate science on the warmer side has degenerated to competitive lying”, etc… (To be fair, there were people who made sensible comments as well).
The amount of simply made up stuff is also impressive - the GISS press release declaring the October the ‘warmest ever’? Imaginary (GISS only puts out press releases on the temperature analysis at the end of the year). The headlines trumpeting this result? Non-existent. One clearly sees the relief that finally the grand conspiracy has been rumbled, that the mainstream media will get it’s comeuppance, and that surely now, the powers that be will listen to those voices that had been crying in the wilderness.
Alas! none of this will come to pass. In this case, someone’s programming error will be fixed and nothing will change except for the reporting of a single month’s anomaly. No heads will roll, no congressional investigations will be launched, no politicians (with one possible exception) will take note. This will undoubtedly be disappointing to many, but they should comfort themselves with the thought that the chances of this error happening again has now been diminished. Which is good, right?
If you know any of the NASA GISS scientists, and I am fortunate to know both Schmidt and Hansen, then you know that, like the overwhelming majority of scientists, nothing is more important to them than data integrity, reproducibility of results, and the search for the truth.
When the history of this time is written, I suspect nothing will be so incomprehensible and infuriating to future generations as how so many clever people could devote so much of their effort to both attacking our top scientists for trying to warn the public about what is to come and delaying action that might have staved off the worst.
Related Posts:
- Yes, the globe is warming. But how fast?
- This just in: Great Ice Age of 2008 is STILL over
- “Hadley Center to deniers: We are STILL warming”
- Hansen throws cold water on cooling climate claim
- Where is the media on the incredible warming and extreme weather of February?
- Media enable denier spin 1: A (sort of) cold January doesn’t mean climate stopped warming
- No warming since 1998? Get real, deniers!
- NASA: 2007 Second Warmest Year Ever, with Record Warmth Likely by 2010
November 11th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I believe there are already news stories that state this error is about October, 2007. From what GS posted at RC it appears to be about October, 2008.
Just to be certain, which is it?
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/ ctp/ features/ 2007/ 10_20/ index.php
[JR: October 2008. It’ll be fixed in a day or two.]
November 11th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
JCH — Last month.
November 11th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
That’s what I thought, but just being careful. Thanks.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:31 am
There is a grim point in deniers: genocide. They aim to sweep away 90% of the humankind. The richest one billion goes on. And all is well again.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Thank god SOMEONE is questioning the conventional wisdom because you obviously aren’t.
[JR: Thank science SOMEONE is trying to save your descendents from 6°C warming because you obviously aren’t.]
November 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
The conclusion is obvious: Russia is trapped in some sort of time warp, in which they repeat the month of September over and over again.
Global warming has torn the space-time continuum.
God help us all.
November 12th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Do not believe Detroit when they claim that all sorts of jobs will be lost. They know better than that, and are badly misleading the public with these lies.
Few if any jobs will be lost (except very top management and possibly some Board Members) if the auto companies should go into Chapter 11.
No bankruptcy judge would close down a major auto company. He would probably be able to find competent managers to replace the current top leadership. This could only help the average employee to hold on to their jobs far more than giving the companies money for top management to squander.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:42 am
Russian data has been corrected. As a result, now large areas of Australia and Northern Canada are shown to be very hot, while they were grey (no data) on Monday. For Australia there can be an explanation, as the new NOAA data set includes TWO more stations in Australia that weren’t there on Monday (but things are really bad if we have to rely on just 2 stations to represent such a huge area of temperatures). But in Canada, no new stations’ data has been added. It is a mistery why it is suddenly shown in red. I wonder if Gavin will try to explain it…
November 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
JR,
In the words of the late great Michael Crichton about people like you who don’t question the conventional wisdom, “you’re not even wrong”. You’re so far out of the ball park that wrong doesn’t apply to you.
It’s pathetic to see people who consider themselves to be open-minded never THINKING of questioning the conventional wisdom.
[JR: The conventional wisdom for conservatives is what Crichton advanced — that climate change is an unimportant problems and that we don’t need to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. When have you ever question conventional conservative wisdom?]
Read all opinions on all sides of this issue, knock it off with the ad hominem attacks and death threats against those like Michael Crichton and Bjorn Lomborg who dare to question the conventional wisdom and then have a real debate with those who disagree.
[JR: This claim of imaginary death threats is an outrageous lie. It is simply unacceptable slander.]
That would be a novel concept as there has never really been any kind of debate on this subject since I”ve been following it since 1988.
It’s just been blind acceptance of the conventional wisdom and of James Hansen’s pronouncements since the subject fist came up in the media back then.
Do ANY of the above and maybe you might truly become an open-minded and good citizen of the Republic…….like the newly elected President who famously loves to bring in people with whom he disagrees.
Follow Obama’s example as well, maybe, and you might actually learn something!
[JR: And yet Obama agrees with me that climate change is perhaps the gravest threat to humanity and we need an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by midcentury. Go figure! I assume you don’t bother going to see doctors since they just peddle the conventional scientific wisdom and the pronouncements of the Surgeon General. I assume you don’t bother listening to the weather forecast and say just peddle the conventional meteorological wisdom and the pronouncements of some local meteorologist. Stick to your voodoo and divining rods. The rest of us will stick with real science.]
November 13th, 2008 at 10:28 am
JR,
It’s not conventional conservative wisdom vs. conventional wisdom…….it’s just wise to question everything. I don’t, Crichton didn’t, LOmborg doesn’t accept conventional anything……we simply ask questions, and for that we are pilloried.
And yes, death threats have been issued against LOmborg, Crichton and others…….I’ve read the blogs.
Obama agrees with you……but at least he is willing to have others question his beliefs……and I’m afraid he’s going to have to, because his pet projects like this aren’t going to be able to be implemented because of the economic mess we’re in…….
Real science - I’m with Crichton on this……the numbers just don’t support a doomsday scenario that has been peddled in the media.
[JR: what I think the central point is that Crichton and you and others miss is that the “doomsday scenario” is in fact something pretty much most climate scientists believe will occur — if humanity is stupid enough to keep ignoring the clear scientific evidence for yet another quarter century. Until recently, most climate scientists have been non-alarmists because 1) scientists in general are not alarmists and 2) they always assume that the world would act on their increasingly strong urgings. Now it is clear that you deniers and Delayers have convinced a large enough segment of humanity to do nothing. But doing nothing makes the doomsday scenario a near certainty.
Even IEA, which has historically been a very bland and staid group, has become increasingly dire in its warnings as humanity hurdles towards its self-destruction. Wake up and smell the coffee. The only way to avoid the doomsday scenario is to take action.]
November 13th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I’m afraid the only thing we miss is an objective opinion on this from the media and from alarmists like you.
Look, the other side of this debate act responsibly by asking others to think about this before acting so irrationally. You should too and ask yourself to consider the other side of this debate…..calmly, rationally……you don’t have to agree, but it is quite apparent you have never seriously considered the other side as anything but enemies of humanity.
[JR: You aren’t a regular reader of this blog so you have no idea what you are talking about. Who is this “other side” you are talking about? The small number of people who knowingly and actively actively spread disinformation aimed at delaying humanity’s response to the greatest preventable threat to our health and well-being are enemies of humanity. Duh! The tens of millions of people who have been suckered by the disinformers aren’t enemies of humanity, but they are unknowingly contributing to our self-destruction. You can figure out what to call them.]
So what’s that all about…..how does one advance one’s thinking by saying I’m right and they’re wrong. That’s not a PC thing to do right now with a new President-elect who keeps an open mind on eveything, including what he disagrees with……I don’t agree with the new President-elect on this subject, but I respect him for his open and enquiring mind. I hope and believe that he would say the say the same about those he disagrees with on this subject.
[JR: This is so funny coming from a conservative, who is normally the first to criticize progressives for being “inclusive.” How does one advanced ones thinking by saying that people who are spreading long-debunked disinformation are “right” or “deserve to be heard.”]
It is constantly said that “most” climate scientists agree that the sky is falling, and then I find a VERY large number of climate scientists who don’t agree, and many within the IPCC itself who don’t agree…….but those are always dismissed as holocaust deniers, enemies of the people, heretics……people not to be taken seriously.
[JR: Nobody has ever found a VERY large number of climate scientists who agree that unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions is anything other than an unmitigated catastrophe. Please identify this large number, or stop spreading disinformation.]
That isn’t open-minded……that’s 21st Century Lysenkoism.
The other side isn’t saying do nothing - as Crichton and Lomborg say throughout their writings, we should all be good, not extreme, stewards of the environment…..it’s just simply the right thing to do; but the numbers do make a strong case for a very healthy skepticism about many of the proposed solutions, and the new President-elect will run square into those shortly.
[JR: The “other side” that you cite IS against restricting greenhouse gas emissions. They are thus dndorsing business as usual warming which takes us to 5°C or more of this century, unmitigated catastrophe. I’d love to see “the numbers” you claim exist. They look to be imaginary numbers.]
We all owe him our support, our questions from all sides of what should go forward as a very vigorous debate, and our open minds on this very controversial subject.
[JR: The subject isn’t actually that controversial among climate scientists and serious policy analysts. But if you listen to the anti-scientific crowd, they have ginned up a lot of bogus controversies that people like you have fallen for.]
November 13th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
OK, I’m waving the white flag……
I’m not the conservative you mention……I actually voted for Obama……which kind of demonstrates that I DO have an open mind…….unlike those of you who seem to live in the closed world of this web site.
Obviously no one who inhabits this web site brooks any opposition, entertains any discussion - very sad.
Go ahead and keep cheering each other on and preaching to the choir….it’s great for you to know you’re right and remain convinced that everyone who questions any of this is wrong.
I read recently in the UK Register that 60 percent of UK public opinion believes that climate change is neither man-made nor urgent……
Not to worry about those poor slobs though……they’re just deniers and delayers who have been deluded by us dastardly conservatives on the other side……too bad you haven’t a clue what a real conservative is all about……you just imagine you do.
Goodbye and good luck saving the planet
November 13th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Anyone who thinks Crichton and Lomberg are climate experts is on rather thin ice.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
The author of this article is obviously a blind nitwit with not an ounce of scientific understanding…..
[JR: This is one way of insuring your posts are moderated. In case you hadn’t noticed, the planet is warming up, the Arctic is melting, the glaciers are melting….]
November 15th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Let’s see.
“They are thus dndorsing business as usual warming which takes us to 5°C or more of this century, unmitigated catastrophe..”
Is that 0.5C per decade? Or will it all come at once in the last couple years of the century?
If the first; the prior decade has produced… well, see for yourself (using all the popular products)
http://woodfortrees.org/notes#wti
- it will look far worse halfway through next year.
The conclusion (the 30 year trend further down the page) is that there is between 1.3C and 1.7C per century warming even if GISTEMP is included.
If the second; where is the science that allows this alarming projection to be made?
[JR: Try reading this blog or the IPCC report. You’ll find all the scientific literature explaining this. Heck even the uber-conservative IEA knows that BAU takes us to 5°C or more of this century. And yes, more CO2 means it warms faster in the future.]
November 15th, 2008 at 9:01 am
The GISS temp data is very suspect, the deniers have driven a scientific stake in the heart of everything James Hansen. You do not need to be deny or believe in Global warming to know this - you just need to read the reviews of the substation projects. It is very embarrassing to see station after station run by James Hansen look unkept, used as a outdoor storage facility, placed in the middle of blacktopped parking lots, etc. It is horrible. James Hansen cannot be accused of giving a flying rip about the quality of his data. He would serve the AGW movement more by actually trying to take better measurements as opposed to flying around the world supporting enviros in criminal courts as he did recently in England. The man is an embarrassement to the US, to Global warming, etc. He was caught in a major way again by the deniers this week — for a taxpayer like me I wish he was doing his job properly.
Looking the October data, it appears that the mixing of September is not the only problem. The data between Alaska and Russia does not seem plausable either. After all the bashing of the GISS temp data, you’d think James Hansen would be more careful.
Finally, the manipulation of the data as caught by the deniers is another horrible act in the name of science. If it was not for the deniers I’m quite sure that that the changes made in the historical temp records would not have been caught. Have some appreciation for all people, deniers and advocates alike - healthy debate is how to arrive at the truth.
November 15th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
“more CO2 means it warms faster in the future”
A lot of people await with bated breath the science that shows that.
Not a computer program. Not anecdotal. Not conjecture. No guesses or estimates of 90% this and that. No maybe’s, could’s or should’s.
Some 21st century engineering grade paper that has empirical evidence and a methodology based in physics and chemistry as opposed to metaphysics and comedy.
Science.
Yes, I have read the IPCC fantasy series - all 4 of them. Depressing as it was and sad as it is.
[JR: I think you’d be happier at one of the anti-science websites, like junkscience. Anyone who calls the IPCC a fantasy belongs with the voodoo flat-earth crowd. Again, I assume you don’t go to doctors or fly on airplanes. They rely on that newfangled scientific method.]
November 16th, 2008 at 10:32 am
A “temporary misreporting” is the best you can do? How about just calling it a gross error not caught by peer review, QA, or normal scientific skepticism about a a possible outlier data point?
[JR: It was caught in about a day. This isn’t peer-reviewed stuff. And unlike you, NASA doesn’t consider one month to matter that much, and, in any case, the data was not much of an outlier, if at all.]
If the outlier data point had showed anomalous cooling, I rather doubt it would have been released before EXHAUSTIVE analysis had been made to check and recheck its source.
And this is a really big error. Folks debate climate changes at a precision of a tenth of a degree Celsius, and an entire dataset is duplicated that creates an outlier, a new record, headlines, and nobody notices? It does call into question what the heck that lab has been doing over the years. Check out the history of scientific fraud, they were into it big time until they got caught. It didn’t just happen suddenly to an otherwise mild-mannered scrupulous decent person who was careless one day.
[JR: What headlines were generated? NASA does not issue monthly reports like NOAA. Wow, you can question the motives and decency of the person who made this tiny, temporary error and corrected it the moment it was noticed — but refuse to question the motives and decency of people who consistently repeat disinformation years after it has been widely debunked? Physician, heal thyself!]
November 25th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Here are two headlines:
“NASA’s curious climate capers” - The Register 2008-11-19
“The world has never seen such freezing heat” UK Telegraph 2008-11-16
I understand that “GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with.”
Peer review is just quality assurance under another name, but I agree, GISS doesn’t seem to have any peer review or quality assurance. They don’t have the resources. And exactly how long have they not had the resources? You are not going to talk your way out of this one.
And I don’t know what NASA is thinking, but if GISS were important to NASA then Hansen wouldn’t be scrounging for funding or FTE. My opinion is that NASA doesn’t care what Hansen does as long as he steers clear of shuttle operations.
US climate policy was decided by the Byrd-Hagel Senate resolution in 1997 under Clinton, stayed the same under Bush, and won’t change anytime soon under Obama. Before the USA trashes its economy (China and India get a pass of course), a lot of folks will be looking at everything related to climate change under a microscope, an electron microscope.
The point is, why should some nebulous end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it future predictions be trusted, that rely upon some extremely sophisticated computer modeling, when copying data from one source to another in the present day and time gets screwed up.
And yes I can question the professionalism (and motives) of a scientist who doesn’t take responsibility for an error published by his research group. Passing the buck is quintessential government career worker … but not acceptable in the scientific community.
[JR: It always amazes me how the denier crowd can find meaning in an utterly trivial unintentional mistake that was fixed in a day or two, but blithely repeat and embrace long-debunked disinformation and the work of people who knowingly peddle it.]