Any post that begins, “Far-right blogs were all atwitter the other day…” is bound to end up making conservatives look pretty bad. This is another one of those posts. This time, the topic is global warming.
The WaPo noted the bones of the “controversy” today.
NASA has slightly revised its record of average annual temperatures in the United States since 2000 — modifications that researchers say are insignificant but that some conservative commentators and bloggers have seized upon to assert that global warming has been hyped as a problem.
The revisions, which were first posted on the Web site of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, stemmed from an error noticed by Canadian blogger and global warming skeptic Stephen McIntyre. James Hansen, director of the institute, said McIntyre brought the error to the institute’s attention, and the error was corrected.
Average annual temperatures are based on readings collected from many different sites. To compare these readings over time, scientists adjust them to take into account factors such as urbanization. Hansen said the mistake occurred because NASA scientists thought some readings they used in determining the average annual temperature after the year 2000 had been adjusted, when they had not been.
So, no big deal right? A computer glitch altered the overall global mean temperatures by one-one-thousandth of a degree. An amateur noticed the problem, NASA corrected it, and the agency gave the person who noticed full credit for the catch. The trends remain the same, and scientists’ understanding of climate change is entirely unaffected.
At which point conservative global-warming deniers praised scientists for making the minor correction and went about their business. No, I’m just kidding — after the minor data correction, the right threw a hissy fit and argued that this is proof that global warming is bogus.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh used reports of the revisions to argue that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by scientists with liberal agendas.
“We have proof of man-made global warming,” Limbaugh said on his show last Thursday. “The man-made global warming is inside NASA. The man-made global warming is in the scientific community with false data.”
Limbaugh’s clownery is actually mild compared to the reaction generated by several conservative blogs, which collectively lost their minds. One accused NASA of perpetrating a “deliberate fraud.” Several others called for Hansen to be fired from his position. Fox News — surprise, surprise — got in on the fun.
Brad Plumer summarized nicely just how foolish the right’s reaction to this meaningless story really is.
1998 went from being listed as 0.01 degrees warmer than 1934 to being listed as 0.02 degrees cooler. That means 1934 is back to being the “official” hottest U.S. year on record, although it’s still a statistical tie. Some of the other U.S. years in this decade were also downgraded slightly. This all had virtually no bearing on the global temperature record, in which 2005 is still the hottest year and Al Gore’s claim that nine of the ten hottest years in history have occurred since 1995 is still operative. […]
Nothing’s really changed. All told, it’s a tempest that deserves a very tiny teapot.
I often wonder if conservatives ever get tired of being this wrong, this often. I suspect it must be demoralizing after a while.