Last word on GISS

The most alarming thing about today's GISS debacle is not that the data was wrong, but that no one at GISS thought to question what was clearly a duff anomaly (0.78). I can only imagine the glee with which Hansen greeted the draft figures when they came across his desk, rubbing his hands together and thinking to himself, "This'll shut the flat-earthers up for a while."

But the likely truth is that because the anomaly fitted GISS's pre-conceived ideas of runaway global warming so well, nobody thought to double-check the source data. The fact that this data was published with such an obvious error does little for the reputation of GISS (and NASA) - either way, they lose: if there was no quality control on on the published data, then that's unacceptable, and alternatively, if there was quality control which failed to spot an obvious flaw, then that's unacceptable too.

I await with interest the press release that re-issues the corrected data.

See my full post on the sorry tale here.