David Whitehouse

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David Whitehouse, who has no apparent expertise in climate science, serves on the Academic Advisory Committee for the contrarian Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Bio

Whitehouse has a doctorate in astrophysics and was successively BBC Science Correspondent and Science Editor of BBC News Online. He is the author of a number of books on solar system astronomy and the history of astronomy.[1]

Climate change

Failed 2010 Global temperature prediction

In an early December 2010 Global Warming Policy Foundation blogpost, Whitehouse predicted that "2010 will be remembered for just two warm months [March and June], attributable to the El Nino effect, with the rest of the year being nothing but average, or less than average temperature."[2]

According to the NASA and NOAA datasets, 2010 tied with 2005 for the hottest year on record[3]; and NASA's GISS data showed November 2010 as the hottest November on record[4].

And the use of the term "average" in Whitehouse's statement was misleading, as the dataset referenced (CRU, through Oct 2010) actually shows every month in 2010 to be considerably warmer than the corresponding historic (1850+) average.[5] - a pattern evident visually in NASA's GISS data.[6]. Whitehouse later explained (see Talk page) that he meant the "average" for just one decade - a timeframe statisticians consider too short to be meaningful[7] in seeing the underlying trend.[3]

Another of Whitehouse's blogposts [4]at the GWPF was debunked by London School of Economics climate change guru Bob Ward with the epithet "I do not know of any other web page about global warming that is so error-ridden."[8]

Website

http://www.davidwhitehouse.com/Home.html

Articles and resources

References

  1. ↑ "[1]"
  2. ↑ David Whitehouse (2010-12-03). 2010 - An Unexceptional El Nino Year. Global Warming Policy Foundation. Retrieved on 2010-12-18.
  3. ↑ Joe Romm (2011-01-02). Breaking: Both NOAA and NASA data show 2010 tied with 2005 for hottest year on record. Climate Progress. Retrieved on 2011-01-22.
  4. ↑ Joe Romm (2010-12-10). NASA: Hottest November on record, 2010 likely hottest year on record globally — despite deepest solar minimum in a century. Climate Progress. Retrieved on 2010-12-18. “NASA released its monthly global temperature data, revealing November was easily the hottest in the temperature record. The “meteorological year” — December to November — was also the hottest on record. Calendar year 2010 appears poised to be the hottest on record. These records are especially impressive because we’re in the middle of a strong La Niña, which would normally cool off temperatures for a few months (relatively speaking), and we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.””
  5. ↑ http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/crutem3gl.txt (the uniformly positive numbers for Jan-Oct 2010 indicate warmer than average temperatures)
  6. ↑ Tom Yulsman (2010-11-11). What are you looking at?. CEJournal - Center for Environmental Journalism. Retrieved on 2010-12-18. “...[2010 is the rightmost column;] each colored square depicts how the Earth’s mean surface temperature departed from the long-term mean during a specific month in a particular year. The warmer the color, the warmer the temperature. [Data source: NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies Surface Temperature Analysis]”
  7. ↑ No byline (2010-10-27). AP Science Reporter Borenstein Reports Statisticians Reject ‘Global Cooling’ Line. Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media. Retrieved on 2010-12-19.
  8. ↑ "[2]"

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