What now?

This is a fairly comprehensive though not entirely spin-free description of what's been going on in the world of climate science blogging over the last years and months. The result: it appears that NASA has corrected some data, and this correction now no longer makes 1998 the hottest year on record in the US (now it's basically tied for first with 1934). World temperature averages are unchanged.

Memeorandum has the rundown from politically oriented sites, and as expected the right-wing sites are all over this story. Some initial comments I have:

First, this does not discredit or disprove global warming science, though it seems that conclusions reached from a very important data set have been undermined somewhat. Secondly, the "MSM" [mainstream media] is not to blame for not having reported this earlier, and likely James Hansen isn't either. This arose out of a long standing feud between two climate scientists and a number of blogs on either side of that feud who were duelling this and other issues out for a very long time. The back-and-forth jabs these people took at one another were highly technical--one reason I was following the debate but only rarely posted on it here--and there were no news conferences to clarify what had been going on in obscure places in the blogosphere. Just because Rush and Fox "broke" the story doesn't mean they are more balanced than the other news outlets. And just because there hasn't been a news conference to clarify what's gone on doesn't mean James Hansen is trying to hide something.

That's it for now. I suspect this will episode will be recounted for years to come as an example of how you just can't trust those scientists and how--even though they're wankers--the anti-action crowd was right. We'll be here to expose the spin.

A few more things:
1.) That's science! Ridin' high in May, shot down in June.
2.) If it is in fact the case that the new, corrected numbers are the proper ones we should be referring to for surface temperature measurements within the US, that's a good thing since the argument that global warming ended in 1998 likely won't work anymore since the global mean surface temperature still has 2005 as the hottest year on record.

The top twenty hottest years on earth since 1880:
* 2005
* 1998
* 2002
* 2003
* 2006
* 2004
* 2001
* 1997
* 1995
* 1990
* 1991
* 2000
* 1999
* 1988
* 1996
* 1987
* 1983
* 1981
* 1994
* 1944