Since Kate Knuth Isn't Likely to Read This Elsewhere

News you can use:

Email messages obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that the climate dataset of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) was considered — by the top climate scientists within NASA itself — to be inferior to the data maintained by the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The NASA scientists also felt that NASA GISS data was inferior to the National Climate Data Center Global Historical Climate Network (NCDC GHCN) database.

These emails, obtained by Christopher Horner, also show that the NASA GISS dataset was not independent of CRU data.

That's a bit of a problem, since it has become clear that the CRU data is pretty much crap. So if the NASA GISS integrated CRU data into its dataset, it means that the NASA GISS dataset is almost certainly corrupted, too. And, more importantly, it also means the NASA GISS dataset provides no independent verification of AGW.

Are there other datasets? From the article:

There are only four climate datasets available. All global warming study, such as the reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), must be based on these four.

They are: the NASA GISS dataset, the NCDC GHCN dataset, the CRU dataset, and the Japan Meteorological Agency dataset.

Okay, so the climate scientists didn't like the NCDC GHCN dataset and didn't trust the NASA GISS dataset, so they buttressed their findings with CRU dataset. Good idea? Not so much.

Here's the part you need to remember -- pay attention, Rep. Knuth:

These three datasets — from NASA GISS, NCDC GHCN, and CRU — are the basis of essentially all climate study supporting anthropogenic global warming.