A top NASA scientist has been promoting alarmist conclusions about global climate change based on faulty temperature data.
James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a harsh critic of global warming "deniers," declared on Nov. 10 that last month was the hottest October on record. An ally of former Vice President Al Gore, Hansen has called for oil execs who spread disinformation to be "tried for high crimes against humanity and nature."
Well, score a point for the deniers, as this time it is Hansen who is guilty of misinformation.
A number of observers who analyzed the latest temperature figures found a very peculiar thing: a whole swath of the
world had the exact same temperature figures for September and October.
As it turns out, NASA had relied on other climate agencies for data from Russia and elsewhere, and they had simply copied the September readings over to October. Naturally, they showed warmer temperatures.
The Goddard Institute acknowledged the error two days after Hansen's public comments, posting on their website: "It seems that one of the sources sent September data rather than October data."
You might say, that's not climate change, that's more of the same.
Goddard's surface temperature analysis research can be found at: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/