Scientific Fraud

[bcollins]

In short, one of the fundamental cornerstones of climate skepticism was found to be significantly flawed. Once the corrections were made, it is interesting to note that the UAH-MSU dataset matched much more closely the predictions made by climate models.

The three preceding links are a bit beyond me technically. That being said, they are dated 1998, 1999 and 2002. His latest data and study suggesting wide spread differences in predicted and real temperatures was well after that. But for arguments sake lets say he isn't remotely close to correct, that doesn't change the fact that predictions of AGW doom and gloom have been completely off.




Regarding Dr. Hansen


In a global temperature update through 2012 [PDF], James Hansen and his colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies report:

The 5-year running mean of global temperature has been flat for the past decade (emphasis added). It should be noted that the "standstill" temperature is at a much higher level than existed at any year in the prior decade except for the single year 1998, which had the strongest El Nino of the century. However, the standstill has led to a widespread assertion that "global warming has stopped".

Global Warming at a "Standstill" Admits Man-Made Warming Proponent Hansen - Hit & Run : Reason.com

With regard to Dr. Hansen, this source is a blatant misrepresentation of his position on the warming trend in the past decade (in fact, the link to the actual document no longer exists at this URL). He indicates that, while the rate of warming has slowed in the past decade, the trend of the last decade is still one of increase. Here is a link to an article about a 2013 BBC Radio 4 interview with Dr. Hansen:

Global warming has not stalled, insists world's best-known climate scientist | Environment | theguardian.com

and an audio link to the interview itself:



The question is posed at 0:18, and he corrects the assumption at 0:44.

There are numerous other recent videos on YouTube of Dr. Hansen, where he clearly states his position - and he clearly does not agree with the claim that warming has stalled.

It is always best to get an expert's opinion directly from the expert, if possible - there are plenty of naysayers who want to distort the reality for one reason or another, and experts are frequently misrepresented. Checking the validity of sources is crucial in modern times - especially since there is such a large degree of deliberate misrepresentation occurring.

As for the UAH-MSU dataset, those are only the papers I posted. If you dig a little deeper on Google Scholar, you will see that Christy and Spencer are continuing to play damage control by making ongoing corrections to their dataset. Spencer made a drastic revision in 2006, but I haven't looked for the actual paper yet.

Correcting mistakes is a vital part of the scientific process; however, given the severity of the errors found by the community at large, this dataset has lost a large degree of credibility and is no longer considered nearly as reputable as that of the NCDC/NOAA dataset, or that of the Hadley Centre.