The world has never seen such freezing heat

[bijou]

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
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[Chris]

It was just a simple mistake.  Anyone could have made it.  Honest.   

Makes me wonder if they've been doing this all along.

[bijou]

It was just a simple mistake.  Anyone could have made it.  Honest.   

Makes me wonder if they've been doing this all along.

You are very suspicious. 

I agree

[RightCoast]

And yet this facility will continue to get its funding and grants, their information, right or wrong, will continue to impact policy makers and the media and the lemmings of the world will continue to march off the climate change ledge.

While, at the same time, new reports suggest the world is cooling due to the loss of insulating green house gasses.

We are doomed by the general stupidity of the human race. 

[Jim]

people want to spend zillions of dollars and destroy the global economy on grossly incorrect science.

and then there is Al Gore who wants to do it to make money in his snake oil carbon offsets scam.

its going to be funny watching the rest of the world walk away form this nonsense just as the idiot boy king jumps off the cliff over it.

[Wineslob]

Watts Up With That and Climate Audit,

Anthony Watts is local to me and has always been at the fore front of debunking Globalls Warming. Great guy.