That relentless climate...

of climate change (global warming, when they can fit it in) reporting that has become virtually the BBC's trademark is put in an interesting light by this saga of diligence on the part of bloggers (I presume scientists too, but maybe just enthusiasts).

Today the BBC have regaled us with British scientists' latest grandiose attempts to predict the weather ten years ahead. The BBC assert that "Currently, 1998 is the warmest year on record, when the global mean surface temperature was 14.54C (58.17F)."

Well, perhaps they are out of date; indeed misled and misleading. According to the story I linked above, NASA's data for the US was in fact skewed by a Y2K hiccup, and thus 1934 is in fact the warmest year on record- at least for the USA (other data were upset too, apparently, and generally in the direction of downgrading recent temperatures relative to the past, but this is the most notable example). Perhaps that would not affect the global data, but I suspect it would come close to upsetting those set-in-stone league tables of temperature which the (basically) man-made global warming proponents of the BBC hammer home at every opportunity.

Oh, and I suppose I should point you in the direction of NASA's "new" data, which can be found here.

Update: Don't miss HotAir's analysis, including former Nasa scientist Bryan Preston's view. "Can we at least get some peer review before we build the ark?"