FW: Daily Tech's response to Rich Kulawiec

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () computerbytesman com>]

Here's the Daily Tech's response to Rich Kulawiec's point that 2007 is the
second warmest year on record measured by average temperature.  Rich is
correct.  However the Daily Tech is also correct that the temperature drop
from Jan. 2007 to Jan. 2008 is a record.  What the future hold is a bit
harder to pin down. ;-)

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Asher [mailto:masher () dailytech com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 4:00 PM
To: Richard Smith
Subject: Re: DailyTech.com Contact: Is the global cooling story a hoax?

Richard,

Certainly.  The graph on the entry portal to NASA's GISS site is outdated. 
It covers 2007 only (excluding Jan 2008, which we included).  Furthermore, 
it also averages all of 2007 together, rather than looking at the data 
month-by-month.

Taken as a whole, 2007 was indeed above the 1950-1980 baseline temperature. 
Taken month-by-month, however, global temperatures have declined sharply 
throughout the entire year, and even more so in Jan 08, culminating in a 
*final* value that is only three one-hundredths of a degree above baseline 
(according to HadCRUT) or 0.12 degrees above, according to GISS.

One word in regards to NASA's GISS Center.  It's run by James Hansen, a 
long-time proponent of the idea that man is trashing the planet.  The data 
they output isn't raw temperature readings, but a "corrected" dataset 
incorporating many thousands of arbitrary adjustments, "smoothing factors", 
and elimination of readings they consider inaccurate.    All the major 
temperature tracking stations correct the data somewhat, but groups like the

Hadley Center (run by the British Government) or the UAH group in Alabama do

so in a much less politically-motivated manner than Hansen.  This is why our

environmental stories tend to prefer these sources.

However, in this particular case, the data from GISS agrees with the other 
sources.

Best Regards,

Mike Asher
DailyTech

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