GISS, Hansen Frequently Report False Warming

Published February 1, 2009

Nobody outside of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies knows for sure why the organization so often reports warming trends not reflected in the actual temperature measurements.

That’s because the organization’s director, astronomer James Hansen, refuses to disclose how and why he makes his temperature adjustments.

Hansen is one of the world’s most prominent and vocal advocates of an impending global warming crisis, going so far as to call for putting global warming skeptics through Nuremburg-style trials for crimes against humanity.

While Hansen believes those who disagree with him should face potential capital punishment, his Goddard Institute repeatedly has been caught providing erroneous temperature reports that always err on the side of claiming more global warming than has actually occurred.

Artificially Inflating Temps

In 2007, statistical scientists showed GISS had been artificially inflating U.S. temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius since the year 2000. As a result of the false reports, GISS had erroneously reported U.S. temperatures this decade were warmer than those in the 1930s, when in fact the opposite was true.

In 2008 statistical scientists showed GISS had falsely reported October 2008 was the warmest October on record, when in fact it was a quite normal temperature month. (See “‘Warmest October’ Claim Was Wrong, NASA Admits,” Environment & Climate News, January 2009.)

And now, after being exposed by meteorologist Anthony Watts for cooking the books with regard to Santa Rosa, California and potentially many other temperature stations (see story on facing page), analysts say it is becoming impossible to ignore the obvious conflict of interest in having a partisan global warming crisis advocate overseeing and exercising unaccountable, arbitrary “adjustments” to raw temperature data.

Adjusting Data for Advocacy

“James Hansen and his underlings at GISS will always find a way to make the temperature data fit his global warming advocacy,” said Robert Ferguson, president of the Science and Public Policy Institute.

“Hansen’s track record for presenting false data is undeniable, and yet neither the press nor the government holds him accountable for his self-serving errors and lack of objectivity,” Ferguson added. “You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried—you would be laughed out of the room if you presented this as a plausible story line in a fiction novel.”


James M. Taylor ([email protected]) is a senior fellow of The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.