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Title: Was 2010 the Warmest Year Ever?
Source:
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URL Source: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/01/028246.php
Published: Jan 31, 2011
Author: powerlineblog
Post Date: 2011-01-31 12:48:28 by no gnu taxes
Keywords: None
Views: 8023
Comments: 27
It is widely being reported that, based on surface-temperature data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 2010 was tied for the warmest year on record. What is not so widely reported is that those surface temperature data have been so shamelessly manipulated by climate alarmists that they are entirely unreliable. For a short course in one of the great scientific scandals of all time, go here. There are a number of things wrong with the data produced by NOAA and NASA, but one of the most basic involves the urban heat island effect. It it commonly understood that cities are warmer than the surrounding countryside; you see that every day in weather reports. Thus, weather stations located in urban areas, as many of them are, tend to show increasing temperatures as urbanization and changing land use make the immediate area of the weather station warmer. One study indicated that even a tiny village of 1,000 people can warm temperatures by up to 3.8 degrees F. NOAA and NASA used to acknowledge the urban heat island effect and try to correct for it, but that didn't produce the sort of alarming temperature increases that warmists are looking for. This is how NOAA depicted US temperatures from 1880 to 1999, as posted on NASA's web site in 1999; James Hansen, the head of NASA's climate unit and one of the worst of the alarmists, said truthfully in 1999: The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed, in the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934. That didn't get the warmists where they were trying to go, so they have now changed the data by eliminating or drastically reducing the urban heat island effect. NASA now shows very different data for the period 1880-1999 from what it published in 1999. This animated GIF shows how the alarmists changed their own data to create the false impression of a climate crisis: 
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#2. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
"It's all a conspiracy" four different data sets, land and satellite records and thousands of scientists all over the world are in on it. Only Jim Inhofe knows the truth.
#3. To: All (#2)
(Edited)
James Hansen, Reto Ruedy, Jay Glascoe and Makiko Sato, August 1999. Guess what, they were correct.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestWhat is not so widely reported is that those surface temperature data have been so shamelessly manipulated by climate alarmists that they are entirely unreliable.
Replies to Comment # 2. In the meantime, we can venture two "predictions" on "whither U.S. climate". First, regarding U.S. temperature, we have argued (Hansen et al., 1999a) that the next decade will be warmer than the 1990s, rivaling if not exceeding the 1930s. Second, regarding precipitation and drought, even without analysis of regional patterns of change, we can offer the probabilistic statement that the frequencies of both extremes, heavy precipitation and floods on the one hand and droughts and forest fires on the other, will increase with increasing global temperature. The rationale for this (Hansen et al., 1991) is that increased surface heating increases evaporation, and this increases the intensity of both precipitation and drought conditions where and when they occur.
#4. To: go65 (#2)
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