“CRUTEM3 error getting attention by Met Office“. Anthony Watts reports an error in temperature corrections has been found by a denialist nit-picker (John Graham-Cumming)!!! Thus ending global warming forever and also proving that scientists are stupid and evil. Naturally he expects his readers to scan the headline but ignore the details, because the details aren’t so helpful…

Anthony has to admit that “the error he found may lead to slightly less uncertainty” (emphasis naturally mine) but he immediately tries to counter this by claiming that “the magnitude of the uncertainty (especially in homogenization) is quite large”. This has a few unfortunate consequences for his argument.

• The presumed deceitful “consensus” temperature trend is strengthened and not undermined by this nit.
• Anthony allusion to the “magnitude of the uncertainty” again proves that he knows nothing about objective statistical analysis.

Here’s the trend in question: