NASA Bureaucrats Caught Doctoring Data to Make Warming Seem More Rapid

Published October 4, 2012

NASA’s Goddard Institute, run by prominent global warming alarmist James Hansen, secretly doctored the historical temperature record again, reports Randall Hoven in the American Thinker. The new changes continue an ongoing pattern of government bureaucrats making post-hoc alterations to the historical temperature record to make recent warming seem more rapid than the raw temperature data reflect.

Hoven reported that he keeps a spreadsheet of historical temperatures. When he attempted to update the spreadsheet to include July 2012 and August 2012 temperatures, he realized NASA had changed the entire temperature record, going back to 1880.

“Surprise of surprise, the change had the effect of making the long-term temperature record support conclusions of faster warming,” wrote Hovan. “The biggest changes were mostly pre-1963 temperatures; they were generally adjusted down. That would make the warming trend steeper, since post-1963 temperatures were adjusted slightly upward, on average. Generally, the older the data, the more adjustment” (emphasis in original).

“I knew NASA would occasionally update its estimates, even its historical estimates,” wrote Hoven. “I found that unsettling when I first heard about it. But I thought such re-estimates were rare, and transparent. There is absolutely no transparency here. If I had not kept a copy of the data taken off NASA’s Web site two months ago, I would not have known it had changed. NASA does not make available previous versions of its temperature record (to my knowledge).”

Hovan added, “I’m from the old school of science in which events in 2012 could not change events in 1880.… [S]omething is suspicious when the oldest data change the most—especially when it all comes without explanation.”

James M. Taylor ([email protected]) is managing editor of Environment & Climate News.

Internet Info:

“NASA’s Rubber Ruler,” American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/nasas_rubber_ruler.html#ixzz27YZRxqIW