Was 2010 the Hottest Year Ever?

by Brian Sussman     1 January 2011

According to the world’s best-known climate change mouthpiece, 2010 was the hottest year on record. 

Wrong.  It’s yet another example of a political activist with a Ph.D. donning a magician’s cape to try pull one over on the audience.

Last week NASA’s chief temperature trickster, James Hansen, issued a press release claiming, “Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record.” 

Don’t mean to sound like the kid in the front row that informs the cheap magician of a playing card protruding from beneath his shirtsleeve but, “I see the ace up your sleeve, Hansen.”

First, the facts.  We’ve only possessed the ability to precisely measure the temperature with thermometers since the early 1800s, which interestingly coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  Since then the temperature on the planet has only warmed .7 degrees Celsius (or slightly more than a degree Fahrenheit), with most of that warming occurring before 1940.  In fact, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the warmest decade on record was the 1930s, with twenty-two of the now 50 states recording their highest temperature ever during those years.  Thirty-eight states recorded their all-time highs before 1960.  Likewise the hottest year on record was 1934.  Even Jim Hansen’s NASA unit has been forced to acknowledge this.  Period.

Second, we know from proxy data (ice core samples, tree rings, historical writings, etc.) that Earth’s temperature was significantly warmer over most of the past 10,000 years by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit.  Certainly the SUV can’t be blamed for that.

Third, the current temperature data collection system is horribly rigged.  Government temperature gurus are using significantly less data—or even estimating data—from cold places like Canada and Siberia.  They’re also relying on more temperatures from thermometers placed in highly urbanized (artificially warmer) locations, as well as taking more readings from the oceans.  Thus, overall global temperatures are being skewed upward. That’s exactly what NASA did again this year.

If they relied solely on satellite data, which accurately covers the entire planet, 2010 would not top the list.  Why NASA of all places, refuses to use space age technology to measure the global temperature is absurd.

By the way, even Phil Jones, head of the defamed UK Climate Research Unit, admitted following the release of the Climategate emails there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995. 

The bottom line is our global temperature databases are so seriously screwed up, and the people crunching the numbers so tilted politically to the left, that climate trends and annual rankings can no longer be presumed accurate.

As for Hansen, in a recent blog posting he’s now calling Americans “the barbarians” of the planet who are run by a “fossil-money-democracy that now rules the roost.” 

Hey, Hansen.  For your next trick how ‘bout disappearing?