National Post flubs global warming denial attempt

National Post writer, Lorne Gunter, has written a column today following other global warming skeptics in trying to make a mountain out of a molehill about a data entry error. Some September temperature data were copied into October, making a report from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies seem to indicate that October was very warm. In fact, GISS pulled the report after less than a day, got a new report from the source that sent them the erroneous data (about 10% of their data stations were affected), and fixed their report a couple days after that. From a scientific point of view, it's good to have skeptics (good scientists are skeptics, especially of their own work, which is more than I can say for most global warming deniers). The more skeptics do their work, the more solid the scientific conclusions become. That's how science works.

Mr. Gunter seems to think this incident is evidence of bias by researchers at Goddard. He writes, "...unscientific bias at GISS and elsewhere in the global warming community -- has been exposed by this incident." He doesn't think that a quickly identified and corrected programming error or data entry error could have simply been just that.

Now Mr. Gunter, look at your own article:

Look at the fourth paragraph (and the reason I included an image is in case the Post corrects their online article:


"Moreover, sea ice expanded so rapidly it covered 30% more of the Arctic than at the end of October, 2007. (Of course, you saw few stories about that, too, since interest in the Arctic ice cover is reserved for when it's melting.)"

Wait a minute, we're talking about October 2008, not October 2007. Would that be a data entry error on your part, Mr. Gunter?