Oh My! 2010 tied for ‘hottest’ year?! Relax, it is ‘purely a political statement’ — Even NASA’s Hansen admits it is ‘not particularly important’ — Prof. mocks ‘hottest decade’ claim as ‘a joke’

Climate Depot Editorial

There they go again. The global warming establishment and the media are crowing about 2010 being in a tie for the “hottest year” ever. Everyone from Senator John Kerry to Joe Romm are screaming that this is “proof” the planet is burning up in a Co2 induced hell — and it’s your fault!

It is time for Climate Depot to do a point-by-point rebuttal to the latest round of temperature data nonsense. Let’s begin:

Below are excerpts from the January 13, 2011 UK Telegraph’s coverage of the warmists’ claim of the “hottest year” ever.

UK Telegraph Headline Claim: “Flood warnings: hottest year confirms global warming say experts — Last year was the joint warmest on record, according to new figures from NASA, that experts say confirm the case for man-made climate change.”

Climate Depot Response: This is pure politics, not science. The “hottest year” claims confirm the case for political science overtaking climate science. The “hottest year” claim depends on minute fractions of a degree difference between years. Even NASA’s James Hansen, the leading proponent of man-made global warming in the U.S., conceded the “hottest year” rankings are essentially meaningless. Hansen explained that 2010 differed from 2005 by less than 2 hundredths of a degree F (that’s 0.018F).It’s not particularly important whether 2010, 2005, or 1998 was the hottest year on record,” Hansen admitted on January 13. According to NASA, none of agencies tasked with keeping the global temperature data agree with each other. “Rankings of individual years often differ in the most closely watched temperature analyses — from GISS, NCDC, and the UK Met Office — a situation that can generate confusion.”

Meteorologist Dr. Ryan Maue of Florida State University ridiculed the “hottest year” rankings and Hansen’s admission that it “was not particularly important” which year was declared the “hottest.” “Well, then stop issuing press releases which tout the rankings, which are subject to change ex post facto,” Maue demanded in a January 14 commentary at WattsUpWithThat.com.

The “warmest year” claim falls apart even further when you look at even slightly longer time scales. Climatologist Patrick Michaels explained to USA Today on January 12: “If you draw a trend line from the data, it’s pretty flat from the 1990s. We don’t see much of a warming trend over the past 12 years.” Also note that the planet has warmed since

UN IPCC’s Michael Oppenheimer: ‘An activist first — A scientist a distant second’ — Scientific work ’roundly trashed’ even by fellow warmists!

Climate Depot Editorial

Prof. Michael Oppenheimer, a UN IPCC Lead Author, is in the news again, this time defending his hilariously wrong climate predictions he made in 1990 and being embarrassed by the unearthing of a 2000 article in the New York Times. See: Maudlin Michael Oppenheimer the Propagandist on his unused sled in 2000: ‘Oppenheimer even had a tear-jerking personal angle on the ‘absence of snow’ in modern winters

Prof. Oppenheimer ([email protected]), one of the media’s most cited man-made global warming proponents, is quite simply transforming into an activist first and a scientist a distant second. Oppenheimer’s most recent “scientific” paper on climate’s impact on immigration has been roundly trashed. See: Propagandist Michael Oppenheimer shredded: ‘There are only 6.3m agricultural workers in Mexico. For Oppenheimer to predict that they will all move north seems preposterous’ & Prof. Pielke Jr. Mocks Oppenheimer’s ‘Silly Science’: Immigration paper ‘is guesswork piled on top of ‘what ifs’ built on a foundation of tenuous assumptions’

Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, was also a paid partisan of the environmental pressure group Environmental Defense. Update: Michael Oppenheimer was the holder of the “Barbra Streisand Chair of Environmental Studies” at the Environmental Defense Fund. Streisand explained: “My Foundation started supporting climate change work in 1989, when I donated a quarter of a million dollars to support the work of environmental scientist Dr. Michael Oppenheimer at EDF. Since then, I, and others have spent countless millions on this issue.”

Oppenheimer also proudly served as an advisor to former Vice President Al Gore on his 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth” and he has consistently defended the accuracy’s of Gore’s film. “On balance, he did quite well — a credible and entertaining job on a difficult subject,” Oppenheimer said of Gore’s film in 2007. “For that, he (Gore) deserves a lot of credit,” Oppenheimer added.

Oppenheimer’s political activities easily overwhelm his “scientific” advocacy. Oppenheimer actively campaigned against President George Bush in 2004 and, like NASA’s James Hansen, publicly endorsed Senator John Kerry for president. Oppenheimer was affiliated with the partisan group “Scientists and Engineers for Change” and the green group “Environment2004” financially bankrolled in part by the Heinz Foundation where Teresa Heinz-Kerry serves as the chairwoman. “Environment2004”, which put up billboards in Florida mocking President Bush in the final months of the 2004 presidential election.

Oppenheimer personally donated to the