Sunday. Jack Kelly. Global Warming. Spin.

Sigh. I thought we'd gotten further than this. With great disappointment, I guess I have to accept that this week's column by Jack Kelly is strong evidence that he does not, in fact, read this blog.

Or else he would have seen this posting from Thursday. Perhaps if he'd seen it, he would have saved himself a whole mess of embarrassment.

No matter. We'll just retrace our steps.

He begins:

Al Gore claimed in his 2006 crockumentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that nine of the 10 hottest years in history have been in the last decade, with 1998 the warmest year on record.

Not so, says the GISS, which is affiliated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Columbia University, and is headed by Dr. James Hansen, scientific godfather of global warming alarmism. According to the GISS, the hottest years ever in the United States were, in order: 1934, 1998, 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939.

He then goes on to retell the Trib's editorial in analysed in Thursday's posting. Hey, here's an interesting question: How much of a difference is there between the newly corrected temperature data from 1934 and 1998?

Here's how a real climate scientist, Gavin Schmidt, describes things:

The net effect of the change was to reduce mean US anomalies by about 0.15 ºC for the years 2000-2006. There were some very minor knock on effects in earlier years due to the GISTEMP adjustments for rural vs. urban trends. In the global or hemispheric mean, the differences were imperceptible (since the US is only a small fraction of the global area).

There were however some very minor re-arrangements in the various rankings (see data). Specifically, where 1998 (1.24 ºC anomaly compared to 1951-1980) had previously just beaten out 1934 (1.23 ºC) for the top US year, it now just misses: 1934 1.25ºC vs. 1998 1.23ºC. None of these differences are statistically significant.

For those with a calculator, that's two one hundredths of a degree.

I should point out that nowhere in his story (and this matches The Trib more or less exactly) does Jack Kelly mention that the errors affected the US data a tiny bit and the global data not at all.

Schmidt goes on. First about the US data:

More importantly for climate purposes, the longer term US averages have not changed rank. 2002-2006 (at 0.66 ºC) is still warmer than 1930-1934 (0.63 ºC - the largest value in the early part of the century) (though both are below 1998-2002 at 0.79 ºC). (The previous version - up to 2005 - can be seen here).

And then about the global data:

In the global mean, 2005 remains the warmest (as in the NCDC analysis). CRU has 1998 as the warmest year but there are differences in methodology, particularly concerning the Arctic (extrapolated in GISTEMP, not included in CRU) which is a big part of recent global warmth. No recent IPCC statements or conclusions are affected in the slightest.

And he sums up:

Sum total of this change? A couple of hundredths of degrees in the US rankings and no change in anything that could be considered climatically important (specifically long term trends).

And yet to Jack Kelly, it's enough to shake the foundations of climate science.

Let's fact check some more of Jack's column. I got some time. Here's Jack:

The United States is only 2 percent of the world's land mass. It's possible the rest of the world's been getting hotter in the last few years, even if the United States hasn't. But as Lorne Gunter of Canada's National Post noted, we only have surface temperature readings for half the world today. Prior to World War II, we had readings for less than a quarter of it.

So who is this Lorne Gunter? Is he an expert in some way?

He's a "right-of-centre" columnist from Alberta, Canada. The short column from which Kelly takes the above information is another skeptical view of the global climate change data. In that instance it's a four paragraph over-simplification of how temperature data has been collected by weather satellites.

But Kelly's finale is true to form. Here's the last two paragraphs:

As the GISS was quietly acknowledging its error, Newsweek magazine, with exquisitely bad timing, declared in an Aug. 13 cover story that the debate on global warming was over.

"The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading," wrote Newsweek contributing editor Robert Samuelson in the following issue.

Again, this is the error about the US data that was not statistically significant nor does it affect the IPCC's conclusions in the slightest. Jack Kelly quotes Robert Samuelson as saying the story is "fundamentally misleading." But what part of the story? That the planet is warming up? That the debate on global warming is over?

Uh, no. Here's the Samuelson piece. Here's the article Samuelson is talking about. And here's the paragraph where Kelly found the phrase "fundamentally misleading."

If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." This "denial machine" has obstructed action against global warming and is still "running at full throttle." The story's thrust: discredit the "denial machine," and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.

So what was "funamentally misleading" to Samuelson centered on the "denial machine" not about whether the debate is over. Here's an example:

...NEWSWEEK's "denial machine" is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability.

Samuelson spends more time writing that, whatever the truth, we probably can't do much about global anyway. And what, pray tell, does he say about the global warming "debate" itself?

Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.

Too bad Jack isn't reading this. It might stop him from making similar mistakes in the future.