PJ Media

to Lazar

The GISS data error was discovered by skeptic Steve Mcyntire, not GISS itself. They corrected the error after being informed by him, and only announced the error after it the issue became noteworthy. Your bizarre insistence that this somehow invalidates the entire article is illustrative of desperation, in that you haven`t found any way to impugne this article otherwise.

It is interesting that GISS, an organization controlled by the radical Hansen and also having Gavin Schmidt, coauthor of Realclimate with the Mcyntire-discredited Michael Mann (he of the hockey stick) keeps making these unfortunate errors that happen to advance their personal viewpoints.

Here is the story behind GISS`s correction http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/08/08/1998-no-longer-the-hottest-year-on-record-in-usa/

I would direct your attention to this summation of GISS Surface Temperature Analysis from 2005. Here are two quotes from GISS itself

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/:

“However, the error bar on the data implies that 2005 is practically in a dead heat with 1998, the warmest previous year“

and

“Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year. The prior record year, 1998, on the contrary, was lifted 0.2°C above the trend line by the strongest El Niño of the past century.“

GISS is clearly claiming 1998 was the warmest year on record, Lazar. If Hansen disagreed with his own staff he should have taken steps to stop the misrepresentation of facts. It is interesting that these errors suit his purposes. They had a duty to issue a press release that the information they had been using to hype the concept of AGW was erroneous (they had been providing this for years, after all) yet they simply quietly corrected the data. Irresponsible, at best; they had made the mess.

About the reissuing of September data in October; once again, strange how it benefits their viewpoints. The author of the Pajamas piece was pointing out that GISS is either biased or incompetent, and there is nothing to dispute here. What would the damage have been in the court of public opinion had GISS`s error not been discovered? Either way, the author of this piece is correct, Lazar, and you are not.

To David S.

Here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1806245/posts is a paper that illustrates that CO2 has fluctuated over time, and was considerably higher in the not so distant past. (180 YEARS OF ATMOSPHERIC CO2 GAS ANALYSIS BY CHEMICAL METHODS by professor E.G. Beck)The rise in atmospheric CO2 is not necessarily the highest in 650,000 years, and it is not even certain that the rise is a result of industrial emissions. (Someone at Free Republic thoughtfully copied the pdf so it can be read more easily. The link to the pdf is provided.)

It should be pointed out that CO2 rises after warming periods with a lag as much as 800 years. Eight hundred years ago the Earth was experiencing the Medieval Warming Period.