GULF SHORES, Ala. — As anglers on Alabama’s Gulf coast prepare for the only weekend of this year’s Red Snapper season, they may be interested to hear that the same agency who restricts the amount of time they can fish to only 10 days was also just caught manipulating climate change data.
According to a story by Mike Bastach at the Daily Caller, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) “adjusted” the data to erase the 15 year “warming hiatus” seen in surface temperature data since the turn of the century.
“Newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data from NOAA’s [National Centers for Environmental Information] do not support the notion of a global warming ‘hiatus,’” wrote NOAA scientists in their study presenting the newly adjusted climate data.
According to Bastach, NOAA “put more weight on certain ocean buoy arrays, adjusted ship-based temperature readings upward, and slightly raised land-based temperatures as well. Scientists said adjusted ship-based temperature data ‘had the largest impact on trends for the 2000-2014 time period, accounting for 0.030°C of the 0.064°C trend difference.’ They added that the ‘buoy offset correction contributed 0.014°C… to the difference, and the additional weight given to the buoys because of their greater accuracy contributed 0.012°C.’”
NOAA’s adjustments now show that there has been twice as much warming over the last decade and a half than was originally recorded. But more than one climate scientist is taking issue with the administration’s manipulations.
To “manufacture warming during the hiatus, NOAA adjusted the pre-hiatus data downward,” said climate expert Bob Tisdale and meteorologist Anthony Watts on their science blog, Watts Up With That.
“If we subtract the [old] data from the [new] data… we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did,” according to Tisdale and Watts. “It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise. Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.”
Similarly, climate scientists who work with the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute argue that the adjustments were made with the sole intent of putting “a warming trend in recent data.”
“The main claim by the authors that they have uncovered a significant recent warming trend is dubious,” wrote Cato scientists Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and Chip Knappenberger. “The significance level they report on their findings is hardly normative, and the use of it should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard.”
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— Elizabeth BeShears (@LizEBeesh) January 21, 2015
