If I summarized Glenn Reynold’s response to my post on his hyping of a small correction to GISS data, you would not believe me, so I’m quoting the whole thing:
Lamberted! But no Instalanche.
Later: In an update: “Matthew Yglesias links to Tim Lambert, obviously deeming him a reputable source. Hey, this is about politics; not accuracy.” Yglesias has been off his game lately.
More: Brad Plumer has been fooled, too.
Yes, Reynolds is enough of an egomaniac to think that I wrote my post because I was hoping to get an Instalanche. In fact, I wrote it to correct his hype. The change meant that 1998 and 1934 went from being in a statistical tie to being in a statistical tie, and no-one had ever reported that NASA had 1998 as the warmest in the US. The JF Beck post he links to doesn’t dispute that, instead Beck repeatedly calls me a liar. But apparently that’s enough for Reynolds — he seems to genuinely believe that Matthew Yglesias and Brad Plumer are discredited just because they linked to my post. But hey, at least he linked to them. Do you think that in Reynold’s imagination Plumer was at first elated to get OMG! an Instalanche, but then Oh No! shattered to find that Reynolds had refuted his post?
I’ll try to help, too. Ace asks:
0.14 degrees is enough to warrant a scare headline, whereas .03 degrees C is completely “meaningless”? Certainly .14 is a larger number than .03. But the former grabs a big headline and the latter is utterly without any import whatsoever?
Really? What exactly is the cut-off point here? I just want to know so that in the future you guys are on record. What’s meaningful? .05? .07? You tell me; let’s get the threshold for significance stated right now.
In the post Ace is responding to, Plumer quoted James Hansen (my emphasis):
In comparing temperatures of years separated by 60 or 70 years the uncertainties in various adjustments (urban warming, station history adjustments, etc.) lead to an uncertainty of at least 0.1ÂºC. Thus it is not possible to declare a record U.S. temperature with confidence until a result is obtained that exceeds the temperature of 1934 by more than 0.1ÂºC.
I hope the emphasising helps.