I’m sitting in a classroom at the conference now,...
Is NASA playing with global temperature statistics?
Posted by Kelly Adams on May 2nd, 2008 
Print This Post
Liars, damned liars, and statistics. Apparently, several of the most “reliable” temperature recording surveys in the world indicate that the Earth’s average temperatures are actually showing a downward trend during the last decade. But the single most quoted source, NASA, says exactly the opposite. From an article on The Register…
How can scientists who report measurements of the earth’s temperature within one one-hundredth of a degree be unable to concur if the temperature is going up or down over a ten year period? Something appears to be inconsistent with the NASA data - but what is it?
One clue we can see is that NASA has been reworking recent temperatures upwards and older temperatures downwards - which creates a greater slope and the appearance of warming.
[From Is the earth getting warmer, or cooler? | The Register]
The report suggests that NASA has been “correcting” historical temperature records using some method known only to them. These corrections don’t agree with anyone else’s historical records, and result in a more convincing upward slope in temperatures over the last century than anyone else’s data. Interestingly, the man in charge of the NASA data is Dr. James Hansen: science advisor to Al Gore, and a luminary in the global warming advocacy movement.
There are a ton of interesting links and data in the article. What is the truth? Well, as I’ve said before, I think humans have had a major negative impact on the world’s environment and climate, and it is critically important to start doing something about it. But I also think we barely understand how the climate actually works, and if we are being fed rejiggered data by various supposedly authoritative bodies then the job of trying to figure out the reality becomes increasingly impossible.
There is a lot of evidence of misdirection and outright lying on both sides of the global warming discussion: enough to make me doubt where the truth actually lies. There are obvious (to me, at least) political agendas here. Unfortunately, scientists are human just like the rest of us: subject to arrogance, hubris, political scheming, power hunger, greed, and all the rest. Usually, scientists are, as a whole, capable of self-regulating- the nature of their work demands that they question the common truth. But when funding, careers, and public opinion can be pulled, terminated, and manipulated, it makes it hard for scientists to remain honest and neutral.
According to Dr Hansen, the climate tipping point will arrive within my own lifetime. By 2016, we will be past the point of no return. Nothing we do after that will save us: if we haven’t already radically reduced our CO2 footprint, it will all be over. I hope Dr. Hansen is wrong, I fear he is right: regardless, we have to make major changes to the way we live, or pay the price. Just how radical do those changes have to be? Are we really the singular cause of the problem, or are there other factors at work? What worries me here is that the facts are being manipulated, possibly by both sides of the debate, and perhaps by people and organizations we should have absolute trust in.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:16 pm
If Dr Hansen is right, we are already toast, since nothing short of major plague that kills 20% of the population is going to be enough to reduce emissions significantly in the next 8 years.
We can probably slow the growth of emissions.
With herculean effort we might be able to halt them at present levels.
But there is no way in hell we can significantly reduce them in only 8 years. Modern civilization simply doesn’t work that way. Paradoxically it requires energy to manufacture energy saving devices…until we have those devices we can’t really stop using the ones we have now.
None of which is to say that we can’t be vastly more efficient, and that we shouldn’t be making all due haste towards that goal … but 8 years is not enough.
( It *is* coincidentally the time in office of a two term president … mmmm. )
So … either Dr Hansen is lying, and we should ignore him … or he is telling the truth, in which case we are already doomed … and we should ignore him, since there is no point worrying about something you can’t do anything about.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 pm
You hit the nail on the head regarding why I have a problem with the “extreme” end of the Global Warming movement. Is it a movement? A belief? A theory? A fact? I don’t know what to call it, but when I hear what sounds like fear mongering, my hackles rise.
It isn’t a matter of disbelieving anything: I believe the data. Humanity’s wasteful consumption and our polluting ways have contributed to a worrisome shift in the climate. I also believe we can do something about it, that it will take time, but that we have to start making a serious investment. I don’t believe it is the end of the world, that we have to shut down everything and call it quits. From my obviously limited vantage as an interested amateur, I think the climate is a whole lot more complex and much more “self healing” and resilient than the doomsayers would have us believe. I’m even somewhat doubtful that the entirety of the climate shift is humanity’s “fault”: some data seems to suggest there are some major cycles at work in sun activity and the like that could overshadow our role.
But I guess there is another way to look at this. Assume for the moment that Dr. Hansen is “cooking the books” and adjusting stats to support his position. He may be absolutely right that there is a problem that we *must* act on quickly to correct. The 2016 date and the “adjusted” stats may be his way to scare the hesitant into making the necessary investment: inaccuracies, maybe even lies, but in the service of a greater truth.
Would that really be wrong? Maybe it *is* the only way to get things started. Personally, it bugs the heck out of me: I like having real data, I hate people using FUD to “sell” something, even if it is the right something. But I know that people are weird critters: $400 billion a year on the military gets barely a second glance, yet $10 billion in that same year on the space program is a “colossal waste”. To make the changes we need to make, disconnecting ourselves from the petrochemical teat and reducing our impact on the environment, means spending hundreds of billions of dollars. It also probably means making some difficult sacrifices like possibly trading in our Hummers for Smart cars. Maybe we have to be lied to, scared shitless, and pushed around in order to get the necessary action.
May 3rd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
If you really want to save the world from fossil fuels you head to the commodity market and you promote war in the middle east. Buy every drop of oil and every oil future you can, leverage everything and drive the prices through the roof.
Make sure the middle east is enough of a mess that places like Chine and India will look at it as too much hassle to go in and get oil, and look for alternatives.
People will give up oil when it gets to damn expensive. It doesn’t even have to be consistently expensive as long as you make sure the price hikes are big enough and frequent enough.
Right now, brand new pickups like mine are selling for $10k *less* than what I paid 5 years ago and even then they are not selling very fast. Sure, a lot of that is exchange rate, but what has driven the change in exchange rate? Oil and gas prices.
Thanks to Ralph’s Enron electricity policies Alberta has gone from having the lowest consumer electricity rates outside of Quebec to the highest. Not coincidently we also have one of the highest rates of non subsidized Compact Fluorescent retrofitting.
None of which is to say Alberta is environmentally sensitive… in general quite the opposite. But that’s the point: otherwise wasteful people simply can’t afford not cut back.
If you are a true believer that feels you have to save the world inspite of itself, and you think people will not listen to reason and have to be tricked into action… then fudging scientific data is the wrong way to do it. Manipulating the commodities market is