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A MINORITY of scientists still insist that global warming is a myth. But
their case took a potentially fatal knock in August with the discovery of a
systematic error in their main source of data. Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing
Systems in Santa Rosa, California, reported that satellite-based estimates of
the temperature of the lower atmosphere, which suggested a marginal cooling in
the past 20 years, were flawed. Wentz discovered that nobody had allowed for a
systematic bias in the data introduced by the fact that the instruments in
question are falling to Earth at a rate of about one kilometre a year.