WASHINGTON (AP) – Another round of bickering is boiling over about temperature readings used in a 2015 study to show how the planet is warming.
The issue is about how readings gathered decades ago were adjusted to try to get a clearer picture of how the Earth’s temperature is changing now. Those adjustments have been questioned by some who reject mainstream climate science and have tried to claim there has been a pause in global warming.
A January study in a scientific journal used another set of measurements to confirm the readings and prove again that the earth’s temperature is rising quickly and that the warming has not paused.
But a congressional committee on Tuesday seized on complaints from a retired scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about how the original data were handled to claim the data were falsified – even though the retired NOAA scientist they cite does not argue that it was.
What is being touted as a scientific scandal is more about data handling than what rising temperatures show, according to phone and email interviews with more than two dozen experts on the issue, including the former government scientist, whose blogging Saturday reignited a debate.