Was 2010 the hottest year on record? Climate alarmist James Hansen says yes. Climategate author Brian Sussman begs to differ:
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.
