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NOAA Whistleblower Starts Firestorm on Climate Data
Power line posted an article from the UK’s Daily Mail that could turn out to be as explosive as the East Anglia climate change scandal of a few years back. Thus far, none of the US MSM have taken up this breaking news, but Judith Curry has the whistleblower’s entire story posted on her site along with her thoughts.
The whistleblower, Dr. John Bates (recently retired), is highly respected, and per the Daily Mail “…retired from NOAA at the end of last year after a 40-year career in meteorology and climate science. As recently as 2014, the Obama administration awarded him a special gold medal for his work in setting new, supposedly binding standards ‘to produce and preserve climate data records’.”
The reporter intends to go more into depth in this rapidly evolving story in the next few days.
In 2015, Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas questioned the NOAA data that was used to justify the US support of the Paris Accords. Looks like he was ahead of his time. He’s still chairman of the Science Committee, and it may be time for another hearing to blast this thing “out of the water” (particularly ironic considering how NOAA doctored its data).
Published in General
I have always loved that joke, though the punch line I know is “Refuse to pay her.”
To your point, you can punish them by taking away the funding. Punishment does not always mean by the operation of law.
Good point. I find lots of debate on the internet about it. In this article, one punishment struck me as one that would put fear and horror into the perps: make them return the money.
Just doing nothing is not a good idea. But if you mete out quick and certain justice to an individual, then you lose your basis for pressuring for institutional reform. I’d like to win the PR battle.
Indeed.
How in the world can you live with a person like that?
The problem is that you can live with her just fine, but because you are opposed to saving the world, you are an enemy of humanity.
I agree about not trusting a tabloid, but I figured that those interested (you?) would also turn to Curry’s blog and get the details. While not a scientist myself, I saw first hand how bureaucrats manipulate data to get the “right results”. While they are no doubt well intentioned, staff I worked with on climate regulations were “true believers” and not skeptical scientists. As for me, I just used my common sense to see that what we were being fed by the wacko enviros was cause enough for alarm.
At least the Daily Mail is covering it. I just searched the NYT for “John Bates” and “Judith Curry” in the last seven days. No results for either name.
Suppressio veri…
The issue of how much warming and data manipulation demonstrates dishonesty, but it isn’t the real issue. The real issues are policy. So far we have cash for clunkers, ethanol, wind energy, and subsidies for solar. All of these are costly net environmental loses. We have also crushed the coal energy in it’s name, delayed cost saving and energy saving pipelines etc. The warming hysteria is pushed by progressives who want power, interests who want subsides, grant farmers who are having a well paid ball and of course charlatans like Al Gore who are getting rich. It doesn’t really matter if we’re getting warmer or not and if it should become a problem in the next hundred years we better have a flexible decentralized economy so we can adapt and create new relevant technology. The idea that a centrally controlled progressive run economy will adapt better and create better technology is utter insanity. Of course they manipulate data and lie. What would one expect given the driving interests.
No. I took that to mean expose and ridicule their shoddy performance mercilessly. I do not see that as the same thing as telling them to shut up because they are deniers of truth. I do not see that as calls to jail them. At least I hope that @drlorentz wasn’t calling for that.
EDIT: I should have read more comments before commenting. The good doctor made his intentions quite clear.
EDIT: You know it’s Monday when you have to edit your edit for spelling.
Time for a call for the separation of science and state.
There should be a Federal investigation and all fraudulent scientists and organizations (including universities) should be fined and forced to pay back all the grants they received to forward this hoax.
Sadly, I bet it’s not a firestorm. I bet it’s a two-day story on conservative sites and then disappears from view. Nothing to see here!
Quite correct. If I understand it correctly, if one says “I believe in global warming”, that is fine. However, if one says “I believe in global warming and here is some data (that they know is false but you don’t), so give me money” that is fraud. It would be like false advertising, whether to people or to the government.
From reading deep in the comments at Curry and wuwt, it seems that david Roses article has some very simple and egregious errors in it. Basically not using the proper baselines in graphing the data. Also, other pro-warming scientists claim to have replicated the paper in question. They say that proper data handling may not have initially been followed, but the data is now transparent, available and correctly analyzed. Just have to wait and see.
Of course they would say that. Anything else might interfere with receiving new grants.
Walker,
The data cheats were caught red handed. The old data collection method was to sample the water by pulling it into ships. The new method was to have measurement devices directly in the water. It was clearly proven that the old method consistently produced an error to the warm side. Thus the ship data was rejected and more devices were placed directly in the water. This “pause busting” study simply went back and rejected the data from the sensors directly in the water and reinstalled the faulty ship data. Everyone who knows anything serious about the real science knows this is pure fraud.
I think those who conspired to defraud the world at NOAA should be fired immediately. One might consider criminal charges. Trillions of dollars of GNP and Billions of Human lives will be affected. There needs to be some consequences.
Regards,
Jim
For those who care, here is the opening part of the Wikipedia entry on Lysenkoism as recently as March 2015:
I’ll let you compare for yourself to see which version is distorted and made friendlier to the climate activist crowd. Neither is as good as the opening paragraph at RationalWiki:
I could have pointed Michael Bellesiles to additional data in support of his thesis, though I disagree very much with his political agenda. That Bellesiles may have had a good point about the history of guns in America does not change the fact that he committed fraud and deserved to lose his job (which he finally did).
To all,
Mr. Delingpole is ready to jump on this.
NOAA Scandal Gives Trump The Perfect Excuse To Drain The Climate Swamp
From Mr. Delingpole’s lips to Gd’s ear.
Regards,
Jim
Yep. Like someone replicating Enron’s financials. Please tell me how this is the best way for quality control? I suspect many professionals in other industries with strict quality control find the methods used in “science” appalling. In particular, the lack of consequences for fraud.
Hope you’ll come back and add some more details on those “egregious errors” you heard about. I didn’t see any.
Jim, do you have links to the different data collection methodologies? I’d like to read more.
So NOAA, NASA, IPCC and Michael Mann have all been caught changing climate data and the media is MIA? I’m shocked (not really).
I hope that Steve McIntyre comes out of his climate audit pause for this controversy. However, there are so many aspects of this thing, it would probably take several posts to cover all the bases. Lots of issues regarding the Karl paper itself as well as data handling. He has been a very detailed critic of the ice core data handlers particularly. Others as well, of course. He also seems to have the most competent commenters.
He apparently placed graphs of two data sets on the same axes that were developed with differing baselines. It seems that no one has refuted that in the Judith Curry site comments. That was my impression going through comments last night. I could be wrong, or more comments may have shed new light by now.
anyone going to Heartland Climate conference in March. How about a get together?
As has been true many times in the computer era: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).
Jamie,
Here is John Bates article which details what the NOAA people just did. It’s not about the specific measurement techniques but about how the bureaucracy broke it’s own rules. They also appear to have destroyed their own data archive or at least failed to archive it properly.
Climate scientists versus climate data
The article below speaks more to the measurement techniques relied upon.
REPORTS OF THE DEATH OF THE GLOBAL WARMING PAUSE ARE GREATLY EXAGGERATED
Will try to get more.
Regards,
Jim
There’s new data on Lamarck’s approach in epigenetics. It looks like he may have been right in some things. If others like this comment what say one of us starts a post on this and I’ll try to get my son-in-law (Phd in Immunology) to flesh out his nuanced defense of Lamarck.
Thanks for tracking the political moving target of Wikipedia.
@jamielockett @jamesgawron To add to the very good points already made and along the line of temperature collection methodologies to consider is the ‘urban heat island’ (or also known as ‘heat island effect’) where the temperatures in major cities are higher than surrounding landscapes due to the concrete, pavement, and buildings that make up large urban centers that create, collect and retain more heat. This is important to consider especially when comparing temperatures collected in the 1800s to today if you simply think about the increased sprawl of the largest cities where these cataloged temperatures were likely recorded.
Can we take anyone with the last name Mann at face value in a Climate Change discussion ;).
Hmmm. How to say yes in the most emphatic way possible? Yes. Absolutely yes.
Hmm. How to say yes in the most emphatic way possible? Yes. Absolutely yes.
edit: Sorry for double post. Server trouble.