....to take Fox News seriously...whoops...yes you do.


Media Matters for America
Fox News Questions Whether Government Faked Hottest Year On Record
Blog ››› January 11, 2013 10:56 AM EST ››› MAX GREENBERG
Quotes "Skeptic" Blogger Suggesting Scientists Should Go To Jail

Source: Climate Central using data from NCDC

A FoxNews.com article questioned whether 2012 was actually the hottest
year on record, quoting "skeptics" who suggest a government office is
manipulating data to fabricate proof of rising temperatures. In fact,
statistical adjustments made by the agency are required,
publicly-documented changes to correct for errors and known sources of
bias in the raw data.

In January, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) announced that 2012
was the hottest year on record in the contiguous U.S. - an announcement
that Fox News ignored until one of Fox News' few liberal commentators,
Bob Beckel, tried to bring it up on The Five. Soon after, FoxNews.com
reporter Maxim Lott solicited the views of a few professional climate
"skeptics" to claim that scientists made unjustified data adjustments to
exaggerate 2012's heat.

Under the headline "Hottest year ever? Skeptics question revisions to
climate data," Lott quoted Roy Spencer, a rare climate contrarian
scientist who considers it his job to "minimize the role of government,"
and Steve Goddard, a climate denier-cum-birther writing under a
pseudonym, to cast doubt on the temperature record. According to
Goddard, the U.S. only "appears" to have warmed as a result of the
agency's adjustments, making the data "meaningless garbage." Lott gave
the final word to former television weatherman and blogger Anthony
Watts, who said, "In the business and trading world, people go to jail
for such manipulations of data."

But the NCDC has publicly explained that it needs to make adjustments to
the raw temperature data to account for flaws that can result, for
example, when stations are moved, are measuring temperatures at
different times of day, or are measuring temperature with different
instruments. The NCDC carefully applies these adjustments after
publishing their methods in multiple peer-reviewed papers. As several
scientists tried to explain to FoxNews.com, these adjustments make the
temperature data more accurate:

Government climate scientist Peter Thorne, speaking in his personal
capacity, said that there was consensus for the adjustments.

"These have been shown through at least three papers that have
appeared in the past 12 months to be an improvement," he said.

NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen agreed.

"These kinds of improvements get us even closer to the true climate
signal, and help our nation even more accurately understand its climate
history," he said.

Peter Thorne, a climate scientist at the Cooperative Institute for
Climate and Satellites who was quoted by FoxNews.com, wrote in an email
to Media Matters that recent changes to the data served to improve
accuracy. The changes were posted prominently by NCDC in the September
2012 State of the Climate report and, according to Thorne, were
"supported by extensive documentation" and "flagged with significant due
process undertaken prior to release."

John Abraham, an IPCC reviewer concluded that Fox News had "misinformed
its readers about climate change again."


Copyright © 2013 Media Matters for America. All rights reserved.