"Hawke" wrote in message

That's what we have climate scientists for. To tell us what the facts
are regarding earth's climate. For a while now they have been telling
us that the data shows the planet is warming up and it's not a natural
event but one produced by human combustion of fossil fuels. When they
tell us something different we will change our view on the subject.
But until the consensus of climate scientists is that their
conclusions about global warming were in error we're going to keep
believing in what they tell us the science is on the subject. We're
only firm believers in global warming because that is what the
scientists have said is happening. When they say otherwise then we'll
change our views too. Unlike the deniers who never change their views
no matter what.

Hawke

Replace all the "we","us", and "we're"s in your diatribe above and
you'll have it pretty much correct. In other words, you will change your
belief system as often as the weather changes. LOL! Any way the wind blows.



Key Climate Change Data Laden With Errors:

A science blogger uncovered a catalogue of errors in records that form a
key part of the scientific evidence for global warming, it emerged Tuesday.

The mistakes, which led to the data from a large number of weather
stations being discarded or misused, were overlooked by professional
scientists and only discovered when Britain's national weather service,
the Met Office, made data publicly available in December after the
so-called Climate-gate e-mail scandal.

Although the errors did not alter the bigger picture on climate change,
they were seized upon as a further sign that scientific institutions
were not sufficiently transparent.

"It makes you wonder how many other problems there are in the data,"
said John Graham-Cumming, the programmer who spotted the mistakes. "The
whole idea of doing science without releasing your data is quite worrying."

After being alerted of the problems last month, the Met Office issued a
corrected version of its land-based temperature record on its Web site.

"We are grateful to Dr. Graham-Cumming, but they are quite minor
changes," said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution
at the Met Office.

"It shows how open we are. We have put an exhaustive amount of
information out there to show people exactly what we do."

The errors related to the calculation of the average global temperature
trend since 1850, based on measurements from land-based thermometers.
The record is regarded as one of the most robust pieces of empirical
evidence for global warming during the past century.

After trying to reproduce figures shown in scientific publications and
on the Met Office Web site, Graham-Cumming identified a number of
problems with the way measurements from Australian weather stations were
averaged.

He found that data from seven stations was discarded. Data from a
further 112 Australian stations, 28 percent of the total, were not being
fully included in calculations of year-on-year temperature differences.

"I'm not a climate skeptic, I think it's pretty sure that the world is
warming up, but this does show why the raw data and not just the results
should be available," he said.

During the checking procedure, Met Office officials discovered further
problems with U.S. temperature calculations. They realized that 121 of
the U.S. stations did not have unique identifier codes, meaning that
data for these stations was either being overwritten or assigned to the
wrong location.

When all of the errors identified were corrected, the temperature trend
remained well within the 95 percent confidence range of the original
plot, meaning that the difference would not be considered scientifically
significant.



World May Not Be Warming, Say Scientists:

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge from scientists
casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising
inexorably because of human pollution.

The predicted temperature changes (darker red indicating greater change)
due to global warming, based on data from the Hadley Centre that some
scientists now question.

In its last assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was "unequivocal."
It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and
that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts
on humanity and wildlife.

New research casts doubt on such claims, however. Some even suggest the
world may not be warming much at all.

"The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global
change," said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the
University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the
thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to
collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors
such as urbanization, changes in land use and, in many cases, being
moved from site to site.

Christy has published research papers looking at these effects in three
different regions: east Africa, California and Alabama.

"The story is the same for each one," he said. "The popular data sets
show a lot of warming but the apparent temperature rise was actually
caused by local factors affecting the weather stations, such as land
development."

The IPCC faces similar criticisms from Ross McKitrick, professor of
economics at the University of Guelph, Canada, who was invited by the
panel to review its last report. The experience turned him into a strong
critic and he has since published a research paper questioning its methods.

"We concluded, with overwhelming statistical significance, that the
IPCC's climate data are contaminated with surface effects from
industrialization and data quality problems. These add up to a large
warming bias," he said.

Such warnings are supported by a study of U.S. weather stations
co-written by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist and climate
change sceptic.

His study, which has not been peer reviewed, is illustrated with
photographs of weather stations in locations where their readings are
distorted by heat-generating equipment. Some are next to
air-conditioning units or are on waste treatment plants. One of the most
infamous: a weather station next to a waste incinerator.


Global Warming in Last 15 Years Insignificant, U.K.'s Top Climate
Scientist Admits:

The embattled ex-head of the research center at the heart of the
Climate-gate scandal dropped a bombshell over the weekend, admitting in
an interview with the BBC that there has been no global warming over the
past 15 years.

Phil Jones, former head of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the
University of East Anglia, made a number of eye-popping statements to
the BBC's climate reporter on Sunday. Data from CRU, where Jones was the
chief scientist, is key evidence behind the claim that the growth of
cities (which are warmer than countryside) isn't a factor in global
warming and was cited by the U.N.'s climate science body to bolster
statements about rapid global warming in recent decades.

Jones's latest statements seemed to contradict the CRU's data.

In response to the question, "do you agree that from 1995 to the present
there has been no statistically significant global warming?", Jones said
yes, adding that the average increase of 0.12C per year over that time
period "is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical
significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods,
and much less likely for shorter periods."

Jones is nevertheless 100% confident that the climate has warmed, he
stated, admitting that the Climate-gate scandal has undermined public
confidence in science. The scandal has worn down Jones as well: Since
the e-mails emerged -- and were subsequently posted online at
www.EastAngliaEmails.com -- Jones has stepped down from his position,
been forced to admit that he “misjudged” the handling of requests for
information, and even acknowledged contemplating suicide.

Jones also allowed for the possibility that the world as a whole was
warmer in medieval times than it is today -- a concession that may also
undermine theories that global warming is caused by man.

In addition, Jones admitted that an overall lack of organization, and
his poor record keeping and office-tidying skills, had contributed to
his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted.

"To say when you're the record keeper for the globe's temperature that
you're not a good record keeper, well, that's going to come back to
haunt you for a long, long time," Pat Michaels.of the Cato Institute, a
public-policy think tank, told Fox News.


--
Steve W.