The Patriot Post® · Pouring Cold Water on 'Hottest Year Ever'

The Lima Climate Change Conference hosted by the power-hungry United Nations came to a close Sunday, but not before burning through a whopping 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, the organization’s dirtiest carbon footprint to date. The dismissal capped a two-week ordeal that laid the groundwork for a pivotal meeting in Paris late next year, where delegates from across the globe will attempt to hash out a universal blockbuster deal targeting fossil fuels. That event, dubbed COP21, will mark the 21st anniversary of the Conference of the Parties – ironically a few short years older than the global warming hiatus that alarmists have swept under the rug.

The UN assembly preceded what is expected to be a major announcement next month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Should current trends continue, that announcement will effectively crank up the alarm dial right when ecofascists need it most. What is this big news, you ask? Pending the outcome of December’s temperature anomaly, alarmists are drooling over the likelihood of 2014 going down as the world’s “hottest” year yet, providing a nice garnish to policymakers’ narrative going into next year’s symposium.

According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, “The first 11 months of 2014 was the warmest such period on record, with a combined global land and ocean average surface temperature of 1.22°F (0.68°C) above the 20th century average of 57.0°F (13.9°C), surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.02°F (0.01°C). The margin of error is ±0.18°F (0.10°C). 2014 is currently on track to be the warmest year on record if the December global temperature is at least 0.76°F (0.42°C) above its 20th century average.”

Aside from the obvious disclaimer – the sample size is puny given our relatively brief history of record keeping – there are two important questions that arise. First, is NOAA’s assertion correct? Second, if so, doesn’t that stand in stark contrast to some of the other claims floating around the conservative world?

To answer the first question, we must first determine what methods NOAA uses to compile data. The agency uses two tools: The Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN-Monthly), defined as a “data base [that] contains historical temperature, precipitation, and pressure data for thousands of land stations worldwide,” and The Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST), “a global monthly sea surface temperature analysis derived from the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Dataset with missing data filled in by statistical methods.”

Simply stated, the government’s standard heavily relies on land-based instruments that are vulnerable to discrepancies, the most axiomatic of which is the heat island effect among metroplexes. Consequently, those measurements are skewed. And even if they weren’t, NOAA’s report cannot be considered complete. Case in point: The year-to-date temperature departure graph included in the research depicts globs of red ink (heat) intermingled with considerably less blue (cold), but there’s another color that takes up a lot of real estate – gray – which represents the areas that did not have data and were therefore excluded. That would include all of Antarctica and a large portion of the North Pole.

Apparently, publishing a report that omits data from the coldest places on earth – and, importantly, areas where ice is rapidly expanding and rebounding – doesn’t warrant a giant asterisk.

Back to the original question, determining if NOAA is right depends on how you construe data – or, in this case, refuse to consider it. And obfuscating your findings is generally not a good way to build trust. Moreover, this malfeasance extends to the manipulation of pre-satellite records to fit the narrative. WeatherBell Analytics meteorologist Joe Bastardi wrote in an email to The Patriot Post, “The current methods [used by NOAA] involve ‘normalizing’ temperatures in the pre-satellite era, in many cases cooling previous warm periods, making today look warmer.”

And here we thought science was “settled.”

The government does not use one method considered superior by many, and it tells a different story. Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) measurements reveal that this year doesn’t even rank among the top five warmest. The Daily Caller’s Michael Bastasch says, “2014 is nowhere near the warmest year on record, so far only ranking as the seventh warmest on record.”

That’s important because WeatherBell’s Bastardi considers satellite measurements the most objective way to accurately record global temperatures. Added Bastardi: “[W]hat we can know is what we see today – and that is the leveling off and eventual downturn in global temperatures as measured objectively. This eliminates any of the ‘fox guarding the henhouse’ arguments, as many people on my side of the argument believe is going on here.”

As for the global warming pause, that was also discovered via RSS. No wonder policymakers discard it too – objectivity has no place among ideologically driven political leaders. Is it really any wonder what the United Nations would have to say about RSS measurements if its findings happened to fit the narrative?

During the Lima Climate Change Conference, Bolivian President Evo Morales delivered an accurate description of the UN’s core motivating philosophy. “The deep causes of global warming,” he complained, “are not being dealt with here. The origin of global warming lies in capitalism. If we could end capitalism then we would have a solution.” His honesty is somewhat refreshing, if disconcerting all the same.

This war that’s being orchestrated by alarmists is not against fossil-fuel-emitting power plants, the greenhouse gas effect or rising sea levels; it’s against the free-market enterprise that springs from the foundation of Liberty. The ones who declare the debate over because Science™ says so are the same ones trashing other reputable scientific findings for their own political gain. Remember that in January when they claim, falsely, that 2014 was “the hottest year ever.”