2010: The hottest year on rec…….never mind

Flopping Aces ^ | 02-06-11 | DrJohn

[Starman417]

Years ago near to where I live my family and I frequented a Chinese restaurant whose food was excellent. With amusement we noted that many of the meals were described as

"Our chef's most favored dish."

So when I read an article about the climate and it contains the phrase

"the world's most respected climate scientists"

I cannot stop thinking about the restaurant and begin laughing out loud. It holds the same meaning to me as does the menu.

NPR provided a good example not long ago.

The year 2010 tied 2005 with the warmest year on record. That makes 34 consecutive years where the global temperature is higher than the average temperature in the 20th century. Last year was also the wettest.

The article quotes John Christy of the University of Alabama:

John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, sees the same general warming trend in his measurements of global temperature. Those are based on satellite measurements of the planet's air from the surface up to 35,000 feet.

"The take-home lesson is that if you have an El Nino, you're going to have a hot year," he says. "But I just finished shoveling eight inches of global warming off my driveway this Monday here in Alabama. So whatever the globe is doing, your local weather can have a completely different picture, that's for sure."

(emphasis mine)

We'll get back to that later. 2010 was the hottest year on record, even before 2010 was over.

Even as negotiators in Cancun struggled Friday to reach a modest climate accord at the U.N.-sponsored talks here, new temperature readings released by NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies show 2010 now ranks as the hottest climate year on record.

But hold on a minute. Maybe it wasn't THE hottest- maybe it was only tied for the hottest:

According to climatologists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, 2010 was a very hot year. While anyone who witnessed the Vikings Metrodome collapse [video] might not have seen this coming, NASA says that data from 1,000 climate stations shows 2010, as a whole, to be statistically tied for being the hottest year in recorded history.

NOAA gets in on the "tied" mantra.

According to NOAA scientists, 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year of the global surface temperature record, beginning in 1880. This was the 34th consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20th century average. For the contiguous United States alone, the 2010 average annual temperature was above normal, resulting in the 23rd warmest year on record.

And NASA insisted that warming continues unabated.

Global warming has neither stopped nor slowed in the past decade, according to a draft analysis of temperature data by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Now take note of this from David Rose's article the Daily Telegraph:

[sima_yi]

2010 was the hottest year on record,...

I continue to ask, is that before or after they used "...Mike's Nature trick to hide the decline..."?

[The Great RJ]

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

Mark Twain

When it comes to temperature data the lies and damned lies predominate.

[MeganC]

Maybe if they didn’t place all of their weather stations in shopping mall parking lots or next to the exhaust for restaurants the temps would be lower.

[stylin19a]

ummmm...aren’t we in a La Nina period ?

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

NASA says that data from 1,000 climate stations shows...

...that you can prove just about anything if you extrapolate data from only 1000 stations as representative of the entire planet. (Not to mention, as others have, the suspect placement of many of said stations)