Global Warming Fraud

Story of a Credible Global Warming Denier

Source

It is safe to predict that when 20,000 world leaders, officials, green activists and hangers-on convene in Paris next week for the 21st United Nations climate conference, one person you will not see much quotedis Professor Judith Curry. This is a pity. Her record of peer-reviewed publication in the best climate-science journals is second to none, and in America she has become a public intellectual. But on this side of the Atlantic, apparently, she is too ‘challenging’. What is troubling about her pariah status is that her trenchant critique of the supposed consensus on global warming is not derived from warped ideology, let alone funding by fossil-fuel firms, but from solid data and analysis.

Some consider her a heretic. According to Professor Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a vociferous advocate of extreme measures to prevent a climatic Armageddon, she is ‘anti-science’. Curry isn’t fazed by the slur.

‘It’s unfortunate, but he calls anyone who doesn’t agree with him a denier,’ she tells me. ‘Inside the climate community there are a lot of people who don’t like what I’m doing. On the other hand, there is also a large, silent group who do like it. But the debate has become hard — especially in the US, because it’s become so polarised.’ Warming alarmists are fond of proclaiming how 97 per cent of scientists agree that the world is getting hotter, and human beings are to blame. They like to reduce the uncertainties of climate science and climate projections to Manichean simplicity. They have managed to eliminate doubt from what should be a nuanced debate about what to do.

Professor Curry, based at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, does not dispute for a moment that human-generated carbon dioxide warms the planet. But, she says, the evidence suggests this may be happening more slowly than the alarmists fear.

In the run-up to the Paris conference, said Curry, much ink has been spilled over whether the individual emissions pledges made so far by more than 150 countries — their ‘intentional nationally determined contributions’, to borrow the jargon — will be enough to stop the planet from crossing the ‘dangerous’ threshold of becoming 2°C hotter than in pre-industrial times. Much of the conference will consist of attempts to make these targets legally binding. This debate will be conducted on the basis that there is a known, mechanistic relationship between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how world average temperatures will rise.

Unfortunately, as Curry has shown, there isn’t. Any such projection is meaningless, unless it accounts for natural variability and gives a value for ‘climate sensitivity’ —i.e., how much hotter the world will get if the level of CO2 doubles. Until 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a ‘best estimate’ of 3°C. But in its latest, 2013 report, the IPCC abandoned this, because the uncertainties are so great. Its ‘likely’ range is now vast — 1.5°C to 4.5°C.

This isn’t all. According to Curry, the claims being made by policymakers suggest they are still making new policy from the old, now discarded assumptions. Recent research suggests the climate sensitivity is significantly less than 3˚C. ‘There’s growing evidence that climate sensitivity is at the lower end of the spectrum, yet this has been totally ignored in the policy debate,’ Curry told me. ‘Even if the sensitivity is 2.5˚C, not 3˚C, that makes a substantial difference as to how fast we might get to a world that’s 2˚C warmer. A sensitivity of 2.5˚C makes it much less likely we will see 2˚C warming during the 21st century. There are so many uncertainties, but the policy people say the target is fixed. And if you question this, you will be slagged off as a denier.’

Curry added that her own work, conducted with the British independent scientist Nic Lewis, suggests that the sensitivity value may still lower, in which case the date when the world would be 2˚C warmer would be even further into the future. On the other hand, the inherent uncertainties of climate projection mean that values of 4˚C cannot be ruled out — but if that turns out to be the case, then the measures discussed at Paris and all the previous 20 UN climate conferences would be futile. In any event, ‘the economists and policymakers seem unaware of the large uncertainties in climate sensitivity’, despite its enormous implications.

Meanwhile, the obsessive focus on CO2 as the driver of climate change means other research on natural climate variability is being neglected. For example, solar experts believe we could be heading towards a ‘grand solar minimum’ — a reduction in solar output (and, ergo, a period of global cooling) similar to that which once saw ice fairs on the Thames. ‘The work to establish the solar-climate connection is lagging.’

Curry’s independence has cost her dear. She began to be reviled after the 2009 ‘Climategate’ scandal, when leaked emails revealed that some scientists were fighting to suppress sceptical views. ‘I started saying that scientists should be more accountable, and I began to engage with sceptic bloggers. I thought that would calm the waters. Instead I was tossed out of the tribe. There’s no way I would have done this if I hadn’t been a tenured professor, fairly near the end of my career. If I were seeking a new job in the US academy, I’d be pretty much unemployable. I can still publish in the peer-reviewed journals. But there’s no way I could get a government research grant to do the research I want to do. Since then, I’ve stopped judging my career by these metrics. I’m doing what I do to stand up for science and to do the right thing.’

She remains optimistic that science will recover its equilibrium, and that the quasi-McCarthyite tide will recede: ‘I think that by 2030, temperatures will not have increased all that much. Maybe then there will be the funding to do the kind of research on natural variability that we need, to get the climate community motivated to look at things like the solar-climate connection.’ She even hopes that rational argument will find a place in the UN: ‘Maybe, too, there will be a closer interaction between the scientists, the economists and policymakers. Wouldn’t that be great?’

Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again

Source

The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with predictions.

By WILLIAM HAPPER

During a fundraiser in Atlanta earlier this month, President Obama is reported to have said: "It gets you a little nervous about what is happening to global temperatures. When it is 75 degrees in Chicago in the beginning of March, you start thinking. On the other hand, I really have enjoyed nice weather."

What is happening to global temperatures in reality? The answer is: almost nothing for more than 10 years. Monthly values of the global temperature anomaly of the lower atmosphere, compiled at the University of Alabama from NASA satellite data, can be found at the website http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/. The latest (February 2012) monthly global temperature anomaly for the lower atmosphere was minus 0.12 degrees Celsius, slightly less than the average since the satellite record of temperatures began in 1979.

The lack of any statistically significant warming for over a decade has made it more difficult for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its supporters to demonize the atmospheric gas CO2 which is released when fossil fuels are burned. The burning of fossil fuels has been one reason for an increase of CO2 levels in the atmosphere to around 395 ppm (or parts per million), up from preindustrial levels of about 280 ppm.

Enlarge Image

Getty Images

CO2 is not a pollutant. Life on earth flourished for hundreds of millions of years at much higher CO2 levels than we see today. Increasing CO2 levels will be a net benefit because cultivated plants grow better and are more resistant to drought at higher CO2 levels, and because warming and other supposedly harmful effects of CO2 have been greatly exaggerated. Nations with affordable energy from fossil fuels are more prosperous and healthy than those without.

The direct warming due to doubling CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be calculated to cause a warming of about one degree Celsius. The IPCC computer models predict a much larger warming, three degrees Celsius or even more, because they assume changes in water vapor or clouds that supposedly amplify the direct warming from CO2. Many lines of observational evidence suggest that this "positive feedback" also has been greatly exaggerated.

There has indeed been some warming, perhaps about 0.8 degrees Celsius, since the end of the so-called Little Ice Age in the early 1800s. Some of that warming has probably come from increased amounts of CO2, but the timing of the warming—much of it before CO2 levels had increased appreciably—suggests that a substantial fraction of the warming is from natural causes that have nothing to do with mankind.

Frustrated by the lack of computer-predicted warming over the past decade, some IPCC supporters have been claiming that "extreme weather" has become more common because of more CO2. But there is no hard evidence this is true. After an unusually cold winter in 2011 (December 2010-February 2011) the winter of 2012 was unusually warm in the continental United States. But the winter of 2012 was bitter in Europe, Asia and Alaska.

Weather conditions similar to 2012 occurred in the winter of 1942, when the U.S. Midwest was unusually warm, and when the Wehrmacht encountered the formidable forces of "General Frost" in a Russian winter not unlike the one Russians just had.

Large fluctuations from warm to cold winters have been the rule for the U.S., as one can see from records kept by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. For example, the winters of 1932 and 1934 were as warm as or warmer than the 2011-2012 one and the winter of 1936 was much colder.

Nightly television pictures of the tragic destruction from tornadoes over the past months might make one wonder if the frequency of tornadoes is increasing, perhaps due to the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. But as one can read at Andrew Revkin's New York Times blog, dotearth, "There is no evidence of any trend in the number of potent tornadoes (category F2 and up) over the past 50 years in the United States, even as global temperatures have risen markedly."

Like winter temperatures, the numbers, severity and geographical locations of tornadoes fluctuate from year-to-year in ways that are correlated with the complicated fluid flow patterns of the oceans and atmosphere, the location of the jet stream, El Niño or La Niña conditions of the tropical Pacific Oceans, etc.

Related Video

Princeton physicist William Happer argues that computer models vastly exaggerate the effects of carbon dioxide on climate and that CO2 may in fact be beneficial.

As long as the laws of nature exist, we will have tornadoes. But we can save many more lives by addressing the threat of tornadoes directly—for example, with improved and more widely dispersed weather radars, and with better means for warning the people of endangered areas—than by credulous support of schemes to reduce "carbon footprints," or by funding even more computer centers to predict global warming.

It is easy to be confused about climate, because we are constantly being warned about the horrible things that will happen or are already happening as a result of mankind's use of fossil fuels. But these ominous predictions are based on computer models. It is important to distinguish between what the climate is actually doing and what computer models predict. The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with model predictions.

We need high-quality climate science because of the importance of climate to mankind. But we should also remember the description of how science works by the late, great physicist, Richard Feynman:

"In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong."

The most important component of climate science is careful, long-term observations of climate-related phenomena, from space, from land, and in the oceans. If observations do not support code predictions—like more extreme weather, or rapidly rising global temperatures—Feynman has told us what conclusions to draw about the theory.

Mr. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton.

Al Gore Slammed By Congress

New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hold In Global Warming Alarmism

Source

Jul. 27 2011 - 3:23 pm | 1,219 views | 0 recommendations | 10 comments

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

Scientists on all sides of the global warming debate are in general agreement about how much heat is being directly trapped by human emissions of carbon dioxide (the answer is “not much”). However, the single most important issue in the global warming debate is whether carbon dioxide emissions will indirectly trap far more heat by causing large increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds. Alarmist computer models assume human carbon dioxide emissions indirectly cause substantial increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds (each of which are very effective at trapping heat), but real-world data have long shown that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing as much atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds as the alarmist computer models have predicted.

The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models. The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA’s ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge discrepancy” between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.

James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.

Why The Global Warming Agenda Is Wrong

John Stossel - Global Warming

MSM Inertia: What We Can Learn from 120 Years of Climate Catastrophe Reporting

Source

The media falls in love with catastrophic predictions, and is consistently 10-15 years behind(!) in reporting on what the global temperature is actually doing.

December 5, 2010 - by Art Horn

Page 1 of 3 Next -> View as Single Page

The annual Climate Catastrophe Party is marching along in Cancun, Mexico, making for a lovely all-expenses-paid vacation.

At this latest doom fest, some 20,000 delegates from around the world are doing their best to keep the scary story of man-made global warming/climate change alive. I’ve been around long enough to remember a time when global warming was a non-issue — in fact, it was the very real threat of another ice age making headlines in the 1970s. With that in mind, I did an investigation into the comings and goings of predicted environmental cataclysm in modern history. What I found is that this has all happened before — the reporting of climate catastrophe has been going on for over 120 years.

What’s fascinating about the reporting is that it has encompassed the full range of temperature: searing heat and bitter cold, both reported as real and potentially deadly.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world is warming at an unprecedented rate. The irrefutable results of this global temperature heat wave will be starvation, drowning of coastal cities, mass extinctions, war, and the death of billions. These warnings come to us from many reliable sources, including all forms of news media. We have been alerted to this climate catastrophe for two decades now.

But when one looks back at the history of climate reporting, you find a remarkably consistent and recurring theme. The global temperature has cycled from cold to warm to cold to warm again over the last 120 years. The media cycles of impending climatic doom mirror the climate cycles themselves, but with a roughly ten- to fifteen-year lag. It seems whenever the world warms, the volume of global warming stories increases to match the trend. Conversely, when the climate cools the major media outlets pull on their long johns and warn us of the next ice age. However, it takes many years for the media to catch up to what the climate is actually doing.

On February 24, 1895, the New York Times reported: “Geologists think the world may be frozen up again.” The story wondered “whether recent and long continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period.”

In 1912, shortly after the sinking of the Titanic by an iceberg, the New York Times reported on a professor from a Cornell University: “Professor Schmidt warns us of an encroaching ice age.” On the very same day, the Los Angles Times reported: “Fifth ice age is on the way. … Human race will have to fight for its existence against the cold.”

Was what they were reporting true? The temperature records from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia say yes. The Earth was cooling from about 1875 to 1910, about 35 years of downward temperature. During this time there would have been more ice in the Arctic, and glaciers would have advanced. The stories were based upon what scientists of the day were observing. From there, the media drew their own conclusions as to what this meant for the future climate and its effects on humanity. Many times, they chose disaster.

The oceans contain more than one thousand times more heat than the atmosphere, and the vast majority of that heat is in tropical waters. When the oceans warm, so does the atmosphere. When they cool, global temperature follows. The Pacific Ocean covers a third of the Earth’s surface and exhibits a dominant impact on the global temperature. Around 1920, the tropical Pacific Ocean began to warm. The impacts of such a warming are not always readily apparent — it takes years for glaciers and sea ice to react to the gradual ocean warming.

The huge social inertia generated by the ice age scare prior to 1910 continued to drive media fear stories of coming cold into the 1920s. On July 3, 1923, the Christian Science Monitor reported: “Captain MacMillan left Wiscasset, Maine, announcing that one of the purposes of his cruise was to determine whether there was the beginning of another ice age as the advance of glaciers in the last 70 years would seem to indicate.” On September 18, 1924, the New York Times declared the threat was real, saying: “MacMillan reports signs of new ice age.” Earlier that year, on April 6, the LA Times reported that Swedish scientist Rutger Sernander claimed there were “scientific grounds for believing” that “when all winds will bring snow, the Sun cannot prevail against the clouds and three winters will come in one, with no summer between.”

Unknown to anyone during this time was the fact that the Pacific was beginning to warm, and would continue to do so until the mid-1940s.

Reacting to this ocean warmth, the temperature of the Earth began to rise as well.The ice age stories began to fade from the headlines. On March 11, 1929, the LA Times reported: “Most geologists think the world is growing warmer and that it will continue to get warmer.” On March 27, 1933, theNew York Times headline read: “The next ice age, if it is coming … is still a long way off.” Also that year, meteorologist J.B. Kincer of the United States Weather Bureau published in the September Monthly Weather Review: “Wide-spread and persistent tendency towards warmer weather.” He noted that of the 21 winters prior to 1933 in Washington, D.C.: “Eighteen were warmer than normal and all of the past 13 were mild.”

During the early 1920s, the Atlantic Ocean began its cyclic 30-year warming trend. This warmer water combined with the warmer Pacific pumped up world temperature to the point where everyone began to take notice. By November 6, 1939, the Chicago Daily Tribune published the story: “Experts puzzle over 20-year mercury rise.” The story noted: “Chicago is in the front rank of thousands of cites throughout the world which have been affected by a mysterious trend towards warmer climate in the last two decades.”

They knew it was warming, but not why. On August 2, 1952, the New York Times reported that Eskimos were eating cod, a fish not previously in their diet. The following year the Times reported that studies confirmed summers and winters were getting warmer. Again, unknown to the Times and other media outlets, was the fact that the oceans were changing again.

The stories of a warming continued into the late 1950s as the media inertia plowed forward with the popular warming stories of the 1930s and 1940s. The Atlantic Ocean had been warming since the early 1920s. This warming was keeping the Arctic milder by pumping warmer water northward trough the Gulf stream. On February 15, 1959, the New York Times reported: “Arctic findings in particular support theory of rising global temperatures.” However, the temperature of the Earth was not warming at this point, it was falling.

The massive and dominant Pacific had been cooler since the mid-1940s and would continue to be so into the middle of the 1970s. The climate data show that starting in the middle 1940s the Earth began a multi-decadal cooling trend. Around 1960 the Atlantic began to cool again. Both oceans were in their cooler phase, working together to chill the planet.

It was not until later in the 1960s that the media noticed.

On November 15, 1969, Science Newsquoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr.: “How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilizations. … If the cooling continues for another 200 to 300 years the Earth could be plunged into an ice age.” On January 11, 1970, the Washington Post reported: “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age. … Better get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters, the worst may be yet to come.” Fortune reported in February 1974: “It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude.” (Sound familiar?) On June 24, Time wrote: “Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.” Newsweek said on April 28, 1975: “The Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. … [Meteorologists were] Almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.”

So it looked like we were on the precipice of a new ice age with cataclysmic consequences for the world. Then, unannounced to all, the Pacific Ocean began to warm again, and so did the Earth’s temperature.

The warming Pacific Ocean began to nudge global temperature up in the late 1970s. This warming continued through the 1980s — soon, the ice age stories were gone. By 1993, from U.S. News and World Report: “Global Climate Change may alter temperature and rainfall patterns, many scientists fear, with uncertain consequences for agriculture.” Time wrote on November 13, 2000, that 27 European climatologists have become worried that the warming trend “may be irreversible, at least over most of the coming century.” Newsweek, in its August 8, 2005, edition: “Extremely dry weather of recent months has spawned swarms of locusts.” Was global warming the cause? The story concluded: “Evidence is mounting to support just such fears.”

On April 3, 2006, Time magazine’s cover story — accompanied by a picture of a lonely polar bear on a small piece of ice — read: “Be Worried, be very worried. Climate change isn’t some vague future problem — it’s already damaging the planet at an alarming pace.” It also stated on the cover in bold: “Earth at the tipping point. How it threatens your health. How China and India can help save the world, or destroy it.”

What can we learn from 120 years of media reporting on climate change?

1: The mainstream media outlets are going to publish whatever sells. If someone publishes a story about the world getting colder and people buy it, you can be sure there will be many more stories touting the same headline.

2: There is a long lag between what nature is doing and what the media will report. The lag seems to be anywhere from 10 to 15 years after the climate changes. There is an inertia problem with the mainstream media even when the evidence is clear.

3: When all the stories are about warming or cooling, you can be sure they are all wrong.

When government agencies or United Nations Climate Change conferences warn you that the climate is changing you can be sure that is true — the climate is always changing. Determining the direction is the hard part. Based on the past reporting of these changes, be it from global cooling or warming, the trend will have reversed many years earlier than reported.

Incidentally there has been no global warming for a decade. Get a good grip on your long johns. Maybe a trip to Cancun is not such a bad idea after all, but I’ll wait until the delegates have gone home.

Decade Of Global Warming Temps In Doubt

http://www.revolutionbroadcasting.com/?p=692

From: ClimateChangeFraud.com

Written by John O’Sullivan, special to Climate Change Fraud | 11 August 2010

US Government admits satellite temperature readings “degraded.” All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high.

The fault was first detected after a tip off from an anonymous member of the public to climate skeptic blog, Climate Change Fraud (view original article) (August 9, 2010).

Caught in the center of the controversy is the beleaguered taxpayer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA’s Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis has now confirmed that the fast spreading story on the respected climate skeptic blog is true.

However, NOAA spokesman, Program Coordinator, Chuck Pistis declined to state how long the fault might have gone undetected. Nor would the shaken spokesman engage in speculation as to the damage done to the credibility of a decade’s worth of temperature readings taken from the problematic ‘NOAA-16’ satellite.

‘NOAA-16’ was launched in September 2000, and is currently operational, in a sun-synchronous orbit, 849 km above the Earth, orbiting every 102 minutes providing automated data feed of surface temperatures which are fed into climate computer models.

NOAA has reported a succession of record warm temperatures in recent years based on such satellite readings but these may now all be undermined.

World-renowned Canadian climatologist, Dr. Timothy Ball, after casting his expert eye over the shocking findings concluded, “At best the entire incident indicates gross incompetence, at worst it indicates a deliberate attempt to create a temperature record that suits the political message of the day.”

Great Lakes Sees Unphysical Wild Temperature Fluctuations

Great Lakes users of the satellite service were the first to blow the whistle on the wildly distorted readings that showed a multitude of impossibly high temperatures. NOAA admits that the machine-generated readings are not continuously monitored so that absurdly high false temperatures could have become hidden amidst the bulk of automated readings.

In one example swiftly taken down by NOAA after my first article, readings for June and July 2010 for Lake Michigan showed crazy temperatures off the scale ranging in the low to mid hundreds - with some parts of the Wisconsin area apparently reaching 612 F. With an increasing number of further errors now coming to light the discredited NOAA removed the entire set from public view. But just removing them from sight is not the same as addressing the implications of this gross statistical debacle.

NOAA Whitewash Fails in One Day

NOAA’s Chuck Pistis went into whitewash mode on first hearing the story about the worst affected location, Egg Harbor, set by his instruments onto fast boil. On Tuesday morning Pistis loftily declared, “I looked in the archives and I find no image with that time stamp. Also we don’t typically post completely cloudy images at all, let alone with temperatures. This image appears to be manufactured for someone’s entertainment.”

But later that day Chuck and his calamitous colleagues now with egg on their faces, threw in the towel and owned up to the almighty gaffe. Pistis conceded,

“I just relooked and (sic) the image again AND IT IS in my archive. I do not know why the temperatures were so inaccurate (sic). It appears to have been a malfunction in the satellite. WE have posted thousands if (sic) images since the inauguration of our Coatwatch (sic) service in 1994. I have never seen one like this.”

But the spokesman for the Michigan Sea Grant Extension, a ‘Coastwatch’ partner with NOAA screening the offending data, then confessed that its hastily hidden web pages had, indeed, showed dozens of temperature recordings three or four times higher than seasonal norms. NOAA declined to make any comment as to whether such a glitch could have ramped up the averages for the entire northeastern United States by an average of 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit by going undetected over a longer time scale.

Somewhat more contritely NOAA’s Pistis later went into damage limitation mode to offer his excuses,

“We need to do a better job screening what is placed in the archive or posted. Coastwatch is completely automated so you can see how something like this could slip through.”

In his statement Pistis agreed NOAA’s satellite readings were “degraded” and the administration will have to “look more into this.” Indeed, visitors to the Michigan Sea Grant site now see the following official message:

“NOTICE: Due to degradation of a satellite sensor used by this mapping product, some images have exhibited extreme high and low surface temperatures. “Please disregard these images as anomalies. Future images will not include data from the degraded satellite and images caused by the faulty satellite sensor will be/have been removed from the image archive.”

Blame the Clouds, not us says NOAA

NOAA further explained that cloud cover could affect the satellite data making the readings prone to error. But Pistis failed to explain how much cloud is significant or at what point the readings become unusable for climatic modeling purposes.

As one disgruntled observer noted,

“What about hazy days? What about days with light cloud cover? What about days with partial cloud cover? Even on hot clear days, evaporation leads to a substantial amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, particularly above a body of water. How can this satellite data be even slightly useful if it cannot “see” through clouds?”

Top Climatologist Condemns Lack of Due Diligence

The serious implications of these findings was not lost on Dr. Ball who responded that such government numbers with unusually high or low ranges have been exploited for political purposes and are already in the record and have been used in stories across the mainstream media, which is a widely recognized goal.

The climatologist who advises the military on climate matters lamented such faulty data sets,

“invariably remain unadjusted. The failure to provide evidence of how often cloud top temperatures “very nearly” are the same as the water temperatures, is unacceptable. If the accuracy of the data is questionable it should not be used. I would suggest it is rare given my knowledge of inversions, especially over water.“

How Many other Weather Satellites Are Also ‘Degraded’?

A key issue the government administration declined to address was how many other satellites may also be degrading. ‘NOAA-16’ is not an old satellite - so why does it take a member of the public to uncover such gross failings?

Climate professor, Tim Ball, pointed out that he’s seen these systemic failures before and warns that the public should not expect to see any retraction or an end to the doom-saying climate forecasts:

“when McIntyre caught Hansen and NASA GISS with the wrong data in the US I never saw any adjustments to the world data that changes to the US record would create. The US record dominates the record, especially of the critical middle latitudes, and to change it so that it goes from having nine of the warmest years in the 1990s to four of them being in the 1930s, is a very significant change and must influence global averages.”

Each day that passes sees fresh discoveries of gross errors and omissions. One astute commenter onwww.climatechangefraud.com noted, “it is generally understood that water heats up more slowly than land, and cools off more slowly. However, within the NOAA numbers we have identified at least two sets of datathat run contrary to this known physical effect.

The canny commenter added, “two data points in question are at Charlevoix, where the temperature is listed at 43.5 degrees – while temperature nearby (+/- 30 miles) is 59.2 degrees; and in the bay on the east side of the peninsula from Leland is listed at 37.2 degrees. These are supposedly taken at 18:38 EDT (19:38 Central, or 7:38PM). These are both taken in areas that appear to be breaks in the cloud cover.

With NOAA’s failure to make further concise public statements on this sensational story it is left to public speculation and ‘citizen scientists’ to ascertain whether ten years or more of temperature data sets from satellites such as NOAA-16 are unreliable and worthless.

John O’Sullivan is a legal analyst, author and journalist. As an accredited academic, John taught and lectured for over twenty years at schools and colleges in the east of England before moving to the United States. As an analytical commentator, O’Sullivan has published over 100 major articles worldwide.