The Brain Trust Errs With NOAA Climate Data

But then again, how surprising is that?

Here's what Richard Mellon Scaife's Editorial Board had to say today about October's weather:

Another month, another set of data that counters global-warming orthodoxy -- and another reason why the climate debate must stop generating more heat than light if it's to arrive at scientifically valid conclusions.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center has released its "State of the Climate National Overview October 2009." The report finds that the month just past was America's third-coolest October on record. All but six states and all but one of nine "climate regions" had below-normal temperatures.

Though it covers just the U.S. climate during a brief period and the data are preliminary, it's reports such as this that, over time, add up to a most inconvenient truth for "green" high priests:

There's been no significant warming since 1998.

And so on. I want everyone to note the qualifiers the Brain Trust has liberally (yea, I said it) sprinkled into the text. While they admit that the data "covers just the U.S. climate during a brief period" they're using the data to counter what they call global warming orthodoxy.

So how global is this data? And what does NOAA have to say about all this?

On their "State of the Climate" page we find:

* The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for October 2009 was the sixth warmest on record, with an anomaly of 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F).
* The global land surface temperature for October 2009 was 0.82°C (1.48°F) above the 20th century average of 9.3°C (48.7°F), and ranked as the sixth warmest October on record.
* The worldwide ocean temperature was the fifth warmest October on record, with an anomaly of 0.50°C (0.90°F) above the 20th century average of 15.9°C (60.6°F).
* For the year to date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 14.7 °C (58.4 °F) tied with 2007 as the fifth-warmest January-through-October period on record. This value is 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20th century average.

Wait there's a link to more:

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature anomaly for October 2009 was 0.57°C (1.03°F) above the 20th century average, resulting in the sixth warmest October on record since records began in 1880. Similar to the combined global land and ocean temperatures, the worldwide land surface temperature was the sixth warmest October on record, with a temperature anomaly of 0.82°C (1.48°F) above the 20th century average. As shown in the dot maps above, warmer-than-average temperatures during the month of October were present across much of the world's land areas. The warmest anomalies occurred in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, specifically, in Alaska and northern and eastern Russia. Cooler-than-average conditions were present across the contiguous U.S., Scandinavia, New Zealand, and parts of northern Europe, northern Australia, and southern South America.

This is from the same folks the Brain Trust is quoting to say that there's no there there. I wonder if they realized how close to the truth they got in their money shot ending:

The only faith that provides a proper approach to the climate debate is faith in the scientific method. Conferring unwarranted credibility on self-interested prophets of legitimately questionable doom only clouds the picture.

Did they know they were referring to themselves?