Last week, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies — one of the four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures used by the United Nations — announced last month was the hottest October on record. That was because the institute's maps showed a 10-degree increase across parts of Russia.

But Christopher Booker at the Telegraph newspaper writes that when some climate change skeptics took a closer look at the numbers "they made an astonishing discovery."

He says the blogs Watts Up With That? and Climate Audit found "figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running."

That means October's supposedly record-breaking temperatures were in fact recorded in September and the institute promptly revised the figures. A spokesman says the error occurred because the Russian figures were obtained from an outside source. He said the Goddard Institute does not have the resources to exercise proper quality control over the data.

Please install flash. » download mp3 RELATED TOPICS: Climate Change | Mark Levin | Levin Audio | ALL TOPICS

del.icio.us