John Hinderaker of Powerline points to this story of an incredible mistake by NASA. In its ongoing efforts to raise concerns of global warming, NASA recently reported that October 2008 was the hottest on record. However, in order to reach that finding, they had to make a mistake that any high school student would know enough to avoid.
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So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
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So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
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Oops. Not an error that gives you confidence in NASA to perform its other functions. It reminds me of the 1999 NASA blooper, one of the worst math mistakes in history, when the the Mars Climate Orbiter when the Orbiter had to be destroyed and we lost $125 million because NASA was using metric units and the contractor, Lockheed Martin, was using English units.
That's about as elementary a mistake as copying a column of data twice. People make mistakes. However, it is a reminder to us to be extra careful before we totally change our economy around in response to the climate predictions that such scientists are putting out. It also demonstrates the value of such skeptics as US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre to provide a cross-check of the official data that is being used for those predictions.
That's about as elementary a mistake as copying a column of data twice. People make mistakes. However, it is a reminder to us to be extra careful before we totally change our economy around in response to the climate predictions that such scientists are putting out. It also demonstrates the value of such skeptics as US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre to provide a cross-check of the official data that is being used for those predictions.
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