On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 07:07:57 -0700, Captain Compassion
<daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net> wrote:

Scientific secrecy is a danger to all
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Sunday, August 19, 2007

The latest wrinkle in the global-warming controversy finds the
National Aeronautics and Space Administration quietly correcting its
historical data to compensate for an earlier error, a correction that
should deflate some of the recent panic-mongering about an apparently
warming Earth.

... and the Bush admin has scientists telling them what
they'll be talking about before going overseas for conferences, and
making sure that the topic won't be drowning polar bears.

The correction reduced the average temperatures for 2000-2006 in
the continental United States by about 0.27 degrees Fahrenheit (with
many stations showing lower readings and many showing readings much
above average). That dethroned 1998 as the hottest year on record, a
distinction in the NASA data set that now belongs to 1934 (by an
insignificant margin over 1998). Several other recent hot years were
moved down in the rankings, and the 1930s now account for four of the
top 10.

The number changes don’t greatly affect worldwide averages - but
they reveal a disturbing arrogance among scientists in the community
of global-warming true believers.

The data-handling error - the assumption that one set of numbers
was identical to another when it was not - was discovered by Canadian
researcher Steve McIntyre, who notified NASA on Aug. 4. NASA almost
immediately corrected its Web site, but without any notice of the
changes. You can bet that if the correction had shifted the data the
other way, there would have been press releases, news conferences and
lugubrious music on the TV news. As it was, it was left to the
conservative blogosphere to spread the word; the mainstream media
ignored the episode.

That’s not the worst of it. NASA refused to release to McIntyre
the computer codes it used to make the correction, though a huge
amount of the agency’s other climate codes are online. McIntyre
believes there are “real and interesting statistical issues” involved
in the records of the observing stations on which NASA relies, issues
of whether the proper corrections have been made for the well-known
“heat island” effects of urban areas. Most warming believers take it
on faith that they have; McIntyre says he knows of too many instances
where a thermometer has been placed closer than 100 feet to a paved
surface.

Science is not supposed to work by secrecy. Stonewalling by NASA
will only increase the number and fervor of the skeptics.