DailyTech - Deja Vu All Over Again: Blogger Again Finds Error in NASA Climate Data

The error not only affected October data, but due to the complex algorithm GISS uses to convert actual temperature readings into their output results, altered the previously published values for several other months as well. The values for August 2008, for instance, changed by 0.11C and the global anomaly as far back as 2005 increased by a hundredth of a degree.

GISS is run by Dr. James Hansen, a strident global warming advocate who has accused oil companies of "crimes against humanity". Hansen recently made headlines when he travelled to London to testify on behalf of a group of environmentalists who had damaged a coal plant in protest against global warming. Hansen also serves as science advisor to Al Gore.

Dr. Hansen could not be reached for comment.

Lateline Business - 11/11/2008: Ian Plimer joins Lateline Business

PROFESSOR IAN PLIMER MINING GEOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE: Thank You.

TICKY FULLERTON: You are a greenhouse heretic, if I may say so. How can so many governments and the media have got it wrong?

IAN PLIMER: Well heretic is quite correct. That's a religious word and that's what we're dealing with- a modern political religion.

Governments do not seem to understand that the UN is a political organisation and there were scientists who were seeking fame and fortune, there's not much money around, and if you can get on that bandwagon, then you can have yourself funded and have a great party frightening people witless.

TICKY FULLERTON: So what do you think the science is that proves your case?

IAN PLIMER: The science that defiantly proves my case is history. Looking back at history, looking at archaeology, looking at geology. And it shows us that the planet is dynamic, the planet is always changing, some of these changes are as cycles.

And what we're seeing today are changes that are far less than anything we've ever seen in the past. I look in my area of expertise, which is geology, and we look at how sea levels rise and fall, and they always have, but they've risen and fallen up to 600 metres.

The sea level changes we've had in the last 12,000 years have been about a centimetre a year. That’s what the IPCC are claiming is going to happen in 100 years.

That doesn't really frighten us, that's happened before. In geology we look at changing climates, and we see periods in the past when we had very high carbon dioxide contents yet we had glaciations.

So explain that. They sit under the oceans, provide a lot of heat to the ocean, they put a huge amount of carbon dioxide into ocean water that doesn't have much carbon dioxide in it, and it later is vented out.

TICKY FULLERTON: But Professor, why not back the precautionary principle and accept that perhaps there might be a tipping point looking forward on climate change.

IAN PLIMER: There's no such thing as precautionary principle in science, and if there was in society you'd never get out of bed. The second thing is that we've had plenty of opportunity in the last 4,500 million years when we had high carbon dioxide contents and we had very warm climates in the past.

We had plenty of opportunity for a tipping point.