Analysis of James Taylor’s “2015 Was Not Even Close To Hottest Year On Record”
14 Jan 2016
Ten scientists analyzed the article and estimated its overall scientific credibility to be ‘very low’.[
1].
This is an inaccurate and misleading report.
It only comments on the temperature in the troposphere (not at the surface of the Earth, where people live) and ignores most of the data available to discuss whether or not Earth’s climate is warming. It is based on a single, unpublished and contested record.
Note that another contributor to Forbes published an accurate article on the subject, however the inaccurate article has been read 15-20 times more (26k) than the accurate one (1.5k) as of Jan 22, 2016.
See all the scientists’ annotations in context
Guest comments:
Carl Mears, Senior Research Scientist, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS)
The author is guilty of ignoring the surface temperature record, which is probably more accurate than the satellite temperature record. The author ignores the fact that record temperatures often occur in the year following an El Nino, because the global temperature response tends to lag the El Nino SST anomaly by 3-4 months. The author engages in excessive derogatory name calling, and appears to lump scientists in with “global warming activists”.
Zeke Hausfather, Research Scientist, University of California Berkeley
This article makes startlingly inaccurate claims about the earth’s surface and satellite temperature records, as well as attempts to ascertain the earth’s temperatures over the past two millennia through proxy measurements. The author would do well to talk to scientists involved in surface and satellite records and to consult the peer-reviewered scientific literature rather than blogs when writing in the future.
Reviewers’ overall feedback:
These comments are the overall opinion of scientists on the article, they are substantiated by their knowledge in the field and by the content of the analysis in the annotations on the article.
See
who the scientists quoted are.
Alexis Berg (Alexis_b)
Very misleading and biased article. The author tries to confuse readers by using the satellite record of the lower atmosphere temperature to disprove the fact that 2015 was the warmest year, when everybody else is in fact referring to the mean temperature at the surface. They are slightly different things. Satellite measurements do not disprove surface measurements. A more interesting question would be to understand the difference between the two. A better-informed – and less biased – author would have addressed that and tried to explain it to their readers.
Julien Emile-Geay (elnino)
This is a highly misleading piece by an author with a history of cherry picking. Nothing in this piece is factually accurate. Furthermore, in relying on discredited reports by the Heartland Institute instead of the peer-reviewed literature, the author completely misinterprets the paleoclimate record, which only strengthens the point that 2015 is an exceptionally warm year, not just since 1979 but for the past 10,000 years.
David Easterling
The coverage is a bit disingenuous since it only uses one satellite data set, and emphasizes the troposphere rather than the boundary layer [surface] where people actually live. The surface and upper air are two very different areas and their temperatures differ for lots of scientifically valid reasons.
JamesRenwick (JamesRenwick)
This piece is a rehash of several points that have been refuted many times over. The “satellite temperature record” from Roy Spencer is trumpeted so much because it is the only record that shows slow warming.
Victor Venema (VictorVenema)
The Forbes post of James Taylor provides the deepest possible contrast to the accurate New York Times article on the 2015 temperature record.
Eric Guilyardi (eguilyardi)
A biased piece that confuses scientists and activists, full of inaccuracies and even plain errors. The author has obviously no expertise in climate science and did not seek to get some to write his piece. Quite poor journalism, if the term even applies.
Britta Voss (bmv)
The author uses inaccurate and misleading claims (based on evidence from scientifically discredited sources) and rhetorical devices to confuse the facts and bias readers against legitimate climate science.
Stephan Lewandowsky (lewan)
Nothing in this article is either scientific or novel. Those are stale talking points that are constantly recycled by political operatives in pursuit of an agenda.
Andreas Schmittner (andreass)
The article contains major scientific inaccuracies by claiming that most of the last 10,000 years and most of the past several thousand years were warmer than today (not true, see
Marcott et al. 2013 or
PAGES 2K). It omits the surface temperature data from the last 100 years, which show that it was a record warm year. It presents logical flaws by first showing the satellite data of lower tropospheric temperature estimates from 1979 to the present to say that 1998 was warmer than 2015 and then argues that the surface temperature record from the last 100 years was too short to make an argument. What I find most disturbing is that the author paints scientific facts as coming from “activists” and being “doctored”. Clearly an attempt to discredit science.
Notes:
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rating guidelines used for article evaluations.
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2015 was indeed the hottest year on record. This was rigorously determined by a large group of climate scientists. By calling these scientists “global warming activists,” the author misleadingly implies that the claim is made by a fringe group of non-expert partisans.