Here is a letter I sent to the Ft. Worth Star Telegram today:

I haven’t seen it reported in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram, but recently NASA revised the temperature history of the United States. The revision was made after a computer error was pointed out to them by Stephen McIntyre, one of the men who debunked the Mann “hockeystick” curve which purported to show Earth’s surface temperature for the last 1000 years. It is interesting that 1998 is no longer the warmest year on record; that distinction now belongs to 1934. The revised list of hottest years, starting with the hottest is: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938, and 1939. Notice that nine of the ten hottest years have no longer occurred since 1995. In fact, five of the ten hottest years came prior to 1940.

James Hansen of NASA refused to provide McIntyre the algorithm by which they had determined past temperature, but after the error was pointed out others at NASA made the correction. Mann had also refused to provide his data to other researchers until he was forced to do so by Congressman Joe Barton. One of the disturbing characteristics of those who promote the hypothesis of CO2 induced global warming is that they refuse to share their work for others to critique.

The supporters of the CO2 induced runaway temperature predictions for Earth will point out that the revised temperature history is only for the United States, not the entire world. But, if the record in the United States was in error, imagine what might be found in a closer examination of temperature history in primitive places such as Central Africa, Eastern Asia, and the Middle East. Now the prediction is that temperatures will runaway upward starting in 2009. Previously the runaway was going to start in 1990, but somehow natural processes got in the way. We’ll have to wait and see what actually happens. My guess is that natural processes will get in the way again.