Antarctic Global Warming Figures Fudged

The recent headline blaring about a 1 degree rise in Antarctic temperature blared through the news media, yet another warning of impending doom. Historically, Antarctica has been the weak link in the global warming thesis because it refused to warm — the satellite and weather station data had shown the icy continent actually cooled. Then came a new report, claiming the continent was actually warming…

The continent of Antarctica is warming up in step with the rest of the world, according to a new analysis. Scientists say data from satellites and weather stations indicate a warming of about 0.6C over the last 50 years.

…there was only one problem with this report in the prestigious Nature magazine — the numbers had been MADE UP (this from the Telegraph UK)…

But then a good many experts began to examine just what new evidence had been used to justify this dramatic finding. It turned out that it was produced by a computer model based on combining the satellite evidence since 1979 with temperature readings from surface weather stations.

The problem with Antarctica, though, is that has so few weather stations. So what the computer had been programmed to do, by a formula not yet revealed, was to estimate the data those missing weather stations would have come up with if they had existed. In other words, while confirming that the satellite data have indeed shown the Antarctic as cooling since 1979, the study relied ultimately on pure guesswork, to show that in the past 50 years the continent has warmed – by just one degree Fahrenheit.

One of the first to express astonishment was Dr Kenneth Trenberth, a senior scientist with the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a convinced believer in global warming, who wryly observed “it is hard to make data where none exists”. A disbelieving Ross Hayes, an atmospheric scientist who has often visited the Antarctic for Nasa, sent Professor Steig a caustic email ending: “with statistics you can make numbers go to any conclusion you want. It saddens me to see members of the scientific community do this for media coverage.”