So global warming is definitely man-made then. We do it by fudging the numbers!

Slevdi Davoteca, Brussels, Belgium

i did a scholl report on this it just shocked me of how hot it could get.

dania, coachella, california

Nicholas in Maine:
Please don’t' use a MOVIE to support your inane claims that the sky is falling, you embarrass the rest of us Yanks!
Using a work of obvious fiction to support your silly arguments and your inability to spell or punctuate your comments indicate that you are an uneducated victim of our public school system. Unfortunately you have been taught to feel fear and guilt but not how to write, spell or tell fact from fiction. Which is exactly what your teachers wanted!
Your ignorance is frighteningly Orwellian.

Pete, Houston, Texas

The point that's being over looked is that the data for the USA is being revised, not the rest of the world. The data for Europe, for example is not being revised.

Peter, London, UK

An important thing to remember, is that this is about the correction to the raw temperature figures, essentially the temperature sites that are known to be sited in urban areas are always adjusted to account for this fact, by methods (algorithms) that are said to account for Urban heat effects. McIntyre saw a jump in temperature after 2000 because the raw data was getting used.

The next thing we should be interested in is, if a method of correction for raw temperature is used ,how rigourous and accurate is it applied?

To Peter from Grimsby there may inaccuracies in TGGWS but I never knew about the oceans effect on the latencies of CO2 uptake/release before, so I found it somewhat edifying

When the mystery two scientists actually sue I'm sure we will all hear about it, but they wont. ;)

Simon, Leeds,

Eric, the C4 programme 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' has been proved ridiculously flawed - so much so that at least two of the scientists misrepresented in it have considered suing the director. For informed point-by-pount dismissal of the theories that solar flares, vocanic activity and bovine flatulence are causing climatic change search out articles from the Camapign Against Climate Change, New Scientist and RealClimate.

Peter, Grimsby, UK

However, you fail to point out that the four of the hottest ten years, including the hottest, now occur before carbon emissions began to acclelerate sharply. Carbon emissions prior to the 30's pale in comparision to carbon emitted from 1940 onward. Thus there is a problem for the anthropogenic global warming fanatics, especially Al Gore who bases his entire claim upon a blind acceptance of the fact, now discredited, that 1998 was the hottest year on record. Obviously this is not the case as NASA has finally admitted. It is time to stop worrying about the Chicken-Little claims of the Anthropogenic Global Warming crowd and get on to solving much more immediately important issues such as preserving our planet's oceans fisheries before they collapse due to overfishing, protecting our clean water supplies and reclaiming those already polluted, and decreasing our global dependence on oil. The latter not because of Al Gore, but because it makes rational economic and environmental sense.

Scott, Durham, NC, USA

Fifteen hundreds of a degree revision is huge, no matter what the defenders of the campaign would want us to believe. This is especially obvious now that 1934 is now recognized--correctly--as the warmest year on record and that all those years from the last ten years have lost their status in the Top 10 Hottest of all time. Now that temperature change curve has flattened a bit more, it projects significantly less potential warming in the decades to come. There is no way around that.

Boxorox, Annapolis, MD

To say that the 1934 and 1998 temperatures were "practically the same" is not very scientific! To have published that the hottest years since records began were the most recent ones was high impact ,and when Gore and Co quoted the old stats they made BIG headlines. However now that the stats no longer back this up they dismiss this a a blip. Hmmm...perhaps they are on thin ice?

Ian Simpkins, Offley Hay,

Not surprised by this revelation. So many climate scientists have been over-hyping their claims that it is inevitable that some will be proved false. Over-hyping also encourages fanatics as we can see now at Heathrow. We need good, considered, un-hyped science. For example 90% certainty that global warming is occurring due to man made action is obviously nonsense. We still understand only a small fraction of the variables which affect climate and therefore it stands to reason that we cant have 90% certainty.

james gallagher, montreux, suisse

An Inconvenient Fact.

Frank Upton, Solihull,

I blame the New Labour party's hot air for the "so called global warming" over the past ten years.

Thomas Slattery, Paisley , Scotland

I always wanted to know why greenies are called green? Surely as we up the level of CO2 in the atmosphere plants grow better, the world will become more green than before. Maybe they should rename themselves "Exactly-the-same-colour-as-before-ies".

Harry, London,

David, you fail to point out that the four of the hottest ten years, now including the hottest, occur before carbon emissions began to acclelerate sharply. Carbon emissions prior to the 30's pale in comparision to carbon emitted from 1940 onward. Thus, there is a problem for the anthropogenic global warming fanatics, especially Al Gore who bases his entire claim upon a blind acceptance of the fact, now discredited, that 1998 was the hottest year on record. Obviously this is not the case as NASA has finally admitted.

It is time to stop worrying about the Chicken-Little claims of the Anthropogenic Global Warming crowd and get on to solving much more immediately important issues such as preserving our planet's oceans fisheries before they collapse due to overfishing, protecting our clean water supplies and reclaiming those already polluted, and decreasing our global dependence on oil. The latter not because of Al Gore, but because it makes rational economic and environmental sense.

Scott, Durham, NC, USA

As long as global warming advocates continue to proclaim every hot day proof of their theory, we need people like Stephen MacIntyre to restore perspective. If the hottest year on record for the US is only 1.25C above normal and it occurred when the industrial revolution was young, we are not currently experiencing dramatic effects of global warming. This does not mean that global warming isn't a threat, it means that responsible journalists should stop publishing the hype so we can evaluate any threat soberly.

The next time we get seven hot days in a row, it is no more evidence of global warming than seven cold days in a row are of an ice age. There would be dramatic variation in the weather and severe hurricanes even in a world where man never learned to make fire.

If the threat of global warming is real, it is a threat to future climate and not the cause of current weather.

Michael Goetz, CFACT Europe, Dedham,

Channel 4's "Great Climate Swindle" show proved conclusively that while GW may be a fact, it is caused by (in descending order of impact): 1) solar flares; 2) vocanic activity; and 3) bovine flatulence. Like it or not, the greenies have to face facts that humankind has virtually no ability to change Earth's climate trends.

Eric Green, Peterborough,

Now THAT'S an inconvenient truth! Doh!

John, New York,

tell me if you are part of the "fringe" group, why has the sea level risen so high, so fast. where is it all coming from? space? no. the polar icecaps, which satelite imagry has shown to be deteriorating at a phenomenal rate. the temperature in antarcita now rises above 40 degrees with some regularity. what is causing this? an increase in solar activity? no. global warming. it is a PROVEN FACT that CO2 acts as an insulator, trapping heat. remember, we are not just talkinga bout eh past century. we have to start back at the end of the last ice age, since then it has gotten significantly, continuously. something has to be done about it. we have an estimated maybe 50 years before it is too late to do anything about it. if you ahve seen the movie "day after tomorrow" what happens is NOT impossible. it CAN happen. the NAC is in danger of being shutdown by fresh water from the ice caps. not to mention we will eventually run out of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels.

Nicholas Rudolph, Kittery, Maine, USA

Phrase "the fringe group of researchers and pundits" reflects your bias most succinctly.

ed buscemi, New York, usa

It is amazing that those with the 'vision' of Global Warming will never wavier in their beliefs. The elite swho believe this tosh would sooner sell their children than know the truth. Do not forget they change their view every generation. Check out the stories. Global Warmong-Global Cooling. Just go back to the 70's.

Desmond Taylor, Houston, USA Tx

Those years (the 1930s) were the coal burning years. Every steam locomotive chugging along pushed out tons of CO2. People burned coal for heating and some even for cooking. In London air inversions combined with coal heating caused deadly fogs.
Coal burning Electrical plants pushed out tons of CO2 emissions.

Neil, Dallas, Texas

The arrogance of James Hanson is unfortunately typical of many of the 'scientists' keen on promoting the global warming hypothesis. Why doesn't he just admit he got it wrong and apologise, instead of trying to trivialise his errors. He would then at least have some credibility. In science fractions count.

Laurence Ward, London, England

"no need to read further unless you are interested in temperature changes to a tenth of a degree over the US and a thousandth of a degree over the world"

but that's precisely what the 'hottest day since whenever' game is all about. If Hansen doesn't want publicity about minor temperature differences, he should ring up every newspaper that's done the 'hottest day' story and tell them off. Helluva phone bill.

William McIlhagga, Bradford,

There was also once a paradigm wherein people claimed that climate change wasn't happening. What's wrong folks, does the idea of cutting back on your lifestyle a bit offend your bourgeoise values?

Science is generally saying that carbon emissions are bad for the earth, what's wrong with trying to do something to mitigate that?

Beth, Calgary, Canada

No one who has invested - in terms of time, money, career and credibility - in the 'climate change through human activity' paradigm can have any interest whatever in reassessing their findings in any significant way. They've got to be right, so much hangs on it. It would be just too excrutiatingly embarrassing for the 'experts' to admit fallibility, bad science, or (whisper it) bias, not to mention the resulting, sudden drop in income and status. Most must hope they'll have moved on to Happy Valley long before their calculations prove to be useless. Meanwhile, that great ,white-hot ball of fire in the sky will continue regulating our climate, just as it has always done.

anne, bournemouth,

Global warming is now political so I am expecting a lot more really inconvenient truths to pop up.

Bob, Slough,

Tom in Wyoming might be interested to see that "denial" of man-made climate change has already been equated, revoltingly, with holocaust denial by one Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe on February 9, 2007 (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/)

"When everyone else is in agreement about something, you can be almost certain they are wrong." Ludwig Wittgenstein

John, London, UK

That's enough of an error to completely discredit his research. How many other errors in data collection have gone unaccounted for?

If this was a student defending his doctoral thesis, I'd throw him out.

Doug, Phoenix, AZ, USA

Nice spin. I'm part of what you call the "fringe group" of researchers who question global warming. Your use of the word "deny" makes those of us who question research sound like holocust deniers. Your article points out correctly that small adjustments can make big differences in the statistics. Too bad when we have a warm year the media is all over how hot it is getting...due of course to "global warming".

Tom, Laramie, Wyoming/USA

So the global warming fanatics screamed that 1998 was the hottest year on record without mentioning it was only by one tenth of a degree. Now its been proved that the 1930s were hotter, they are screaming that it is only by one tenth of a degree!! The psychological implications of this behaviour are of someone who has an extreme bias towards a particular agenda without regard to reason or balance. Global warming is one of the biggest hoaxes ever invented.

Mark, Marlow,