[Azure]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/c...857765035.html

Imagine if the American government agency responsible for temperature records had announced a fortnight ago that it had overestimated annual temperatures since the year 2000. Imagine if, at the time of correcting this error, the hottest year on record was mysteriously altered from 1998 to 1934. Imagine further that if you considered the 10 hottest years on record after these corrections, the hottest decade changed from the 1990s to the 1930s.

Would that change your views on global warming? It should, because climate change theory says increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises the temperature. Yet the hot 1930s was hardly a decade of carbon-spewing industrial growth.

Well, all these things have happened. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates the average US temperature figures. It does this by processing data from land measurement sites. Earlier this year a Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre approached the institute and pointed out an error in its more recent calculations. Figures since 2000 had been inflated by about 0.15 of a degree celsius.