Eventually The Truth Comes Out

On Saturday (updated Sunday), The U.K. Daily Mail posted an article about new evidence of misconduct by those who are attempting to sell the idea of global warming.

The article reports:

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

…But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.

Another website, wattsupwiththat, posted the following chart:
The article at wattsupwiththat further reports:

NOAA not only failed, but it effectively mounted a cover-up when challenged over its data. After the paper was published, the US House of Representatives Science Committee launched an inquiry into its Pausebuster claims. NOAA refused to comply with subpoenas demanding internal emails from the committee chairman, the Texas Republican Lamar Smith, and falsely claimed that no one had raised concerns about the paper internally.

Last night Mr Smith thanked Dr Bates ‘for courageously stepping forward to tell the truth about NOAA’s senior officials playing fast and loose with the data in order to meet a politically predetermined conclusion’. He added: ‘The Karl study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the President’s climate change agenda, and ignored NOAA’s own standards for scientific study.’

Last night Mr Karl admitted the data had not been archived when the paper was published. Asked why he had not waited, he said: ‘John Bates is talking about a formal process that takes a long time.’ He denied he was rushing to get the paper out in time for Paris, saying: ‘There was no discussion about Paris.’

He also admitted that the final, approved and ‘operational’ edition of the GHCN land data would be ‘different’ from that used in the paper’.
I am not a scientist, but I recognize a scam when I see one.
On March 30, 2016, I posted the following (here):

Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

I hate to be cynical about this, but it seems as if the expression ‘follow the money’ applies here. One of the power blocs in the United Nations is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Despite the fact that many of the 57 nations in this group are very wealthy due to oil money, many of the people in these countries live in extreme poverty. The OIC looks at the prosperity of western countries and wants their money. They already get a lot of our money because they have oil, but greed is greed. Redistribution of wealth will leave wealthy democracies poorer and enrich dictatorships that are currently poor.

A few years ago, I posted an article about the relationship between property rights and poverty. The article was based on a Townhall.com article by John Stossel. The article included the following:

“”To get an address, somebody’s got to recognize that that’s where you live. That means … you’ve a got mailing address. … When you make a deal with someone, you can be identified. But until property is defined by law, people can’t … specialize and create wealth. The day they get title (is) the day that the businesses in their homes, the sewing machines, the cotton gins, the car repair shop finally gets recognized. They can start expanding.”

“That’s the road to prosperity. But first they need to be recognized by someone in local authority who says, “This is yours.” They need the rule of law. But many places in the developing world barely have law. So enterprising people take a risk. They work a deal with the guy on the first floor, and they build their house on the second floor.”

This is the concept the global warming alarmists want to eliminate. We need to make sure that they are not successful.

It’s All Done With Numbers

WattsUpWithThat.com reported on Sunday that the  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has changed its data and July 1936 is once again the hottest month on record in the United States.

The article states:

Two years ago during the scorching summer of 2012, July 1936 lost its place on the leaderboard and July 2012 became the hottest month on record in the United States. Now, as if by magic, and according to NOAA’s own data, July 1936 is now the hottest month on record again. The past, present, and future all seems to be “adjustable” in NOAA’s world.

…This constant change from year to year of what is or is not the hottest month on record for the USA is not only unprofessional and embarrassing for NOAA, it’s bullshit of the highest order. It can easily be solved by NOAA stopping the unsupportable practice of adjusting temperatures of the past so that the present looks different in context with the adjusted past and stop making data for weather stations that have long since closed.

NOAA has been accused by others of “fabricating” data, and while that is a strong word that I don’t like to use, it looks to be more and more accurate.

That said, I don’t believe this is case where somebody purposely has their hand on a control knob for temperature data, I think all of this is nothing more than artifacts of a convoluted methodology and typical bureaucratic blundering. As I’ve always said, never attribute malice to what can be explained by simple incompetence.

We already showed yesterday that NOAA can’t get their output data files correct, and we are waiting on a statement and a possible correction for that. But I think the problem is even larger than that, and will require an investigation from an unbiased outside source to get to the root of the problem.

The article includes multiple graphs and charts showing why the data NOAA was using was erroneous. Unfortunately, climate change has become political rather than scientific. It is now a weapon to be part of the political arsenal. Hopefully at some point we can get back to science.

As 2013 Draws To A Close

John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line today that included the following graph:

screenhunter_437-dec-19-17-16

The graph is from a website called Real Science. The article at Real Science states that 2013 will go down as one of the coldest years in history since 1895. The graph shows the average temperatures recorded at all NOAA USHCN stations from 1895 to the present.

The article at Real Science mentions the following:

NOAA will reporting something very different, because they subtract up to 1.7 degrees from older temperatures. Essentially all reported US warming is due to a hockey stick of temperature adjustments, which makes the past appear to be much colder than what the thermometers measured at the time. (They of course do not mention this in their press releases.)

I don’t know if the earth is warming or cooling. What I do know is that man is not important enough in the grand scheme of things to significantly impact the earth’s climate. Those who are shrieking that we are all going to die unless we give money to dictators in underdeveloped countries are really not primarily concerned about the planet. They have other priorities. I would like to  mention that most of the civilized countries in the world  have taken steps to curb pollution of all kinds. The idea of penalizing countries for being civilized is someone’s very bad idea for redistributing wealth worldwide. The way to prosper poorer countries is to give them freedom and property rights, but somehow that never gets mentioned by the global warming crowd.

 

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Under The Radar In The New England Fishing Industry

My friend who is working to save the fishing industry in New England sent me the following email:

As a member of the commercial fishing industry, I can say with personal experience and knowledge that the effect that Obama administration policies have had on the nations fishing industry have been overwhelmingly destructive. Not that the fishing industry hasn’t had its struggles over the past 10-15 years, but the most recent developments have been the most drastic. Upon his election, the President nominated Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a publicly outspoken opponent to all kinds of commercial fishing, to head the nation’s top fishing agency, NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration). Prior Vice Chairwoman of the Environmental Defense Fund, an NGO which during that time advocated- at a national investor’s conference- financial gain to be obtained through certain types of fishing regulations, she made these types of regulations, which cause massive loss of fishing jobs and boats, the national policy of NOAA. She pushed them through in New England, despite vehement resistance from the majority of the fleet, including an ongoing lawsuit. These policies have caused people to lose their homes, boats, lifetime livelihoods, and in some cases their families. Despite calls from a bipartisan group of various Congressmen and Senators, the President refuses to remove Dr. Lubchenco from her post. While NOAA Administrator, her agency has undergone two IG investigations, during which NOAA officials were found to have lied to the IG and destroyed 80% of the documents of the NOAA department being investigated. Still to this day, no NOAA personnel have been reprimanded or fired. This has led to Senator Brown’s repeated question- what does it take to get fired at NOAA? Under this administration, apparently nothing.

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The Earth Is Warmer Near The Air Conditioning Exhaust

In August 2008, in the early days of this blog (rightwinggranny.com), I posted an article about surface stations–the measuring devices used to calculate changes in the earth’s temperature. The article linked to a website called surface stations.org, which posted pictures of various surface stations used to measure global temperatures.

For example:

The location of the air conditioning exhaust and the cell tower might have something to do with how the temperature at this particular surface station seems to be increasing.

Well, a few years later, a scientific type (which I am definitely not) has done further research.

WattsUpWithThat posted the following Press Release today:

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward. The paper is the first to use the updated siting system which addresses USHCN siting issues and data adjustments.

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.

This is the image that appears in the article along with the Press Release:

I am not a scientific type. I do not claim to fully understand what I have read in this article or even what is shown by the pictures. I strongly suggest that you follow the link to WattsUpWithThat and read the article for yourself. I am pretty good at bottom lines, though, and the bottom line here seems to be that global warming is not happening at the frightening rate that we have been told it is happening. We can now all take a deep breath and continue on with life as we know it. I strongly suggest that we do try to be stewards of our beautiful planet, but I also strongly suggest that we don’t overreact to the fear mongering that has been going on in recent years.

In 1975 Newsweek warned us of the “Coming Ice Age.” Now we are warned of the global warming catastrophe. I think we can safely conclude that scientists really don’t know as much as they think they do.

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Abuse Of Small Businessmen

This is a press release from Senator Scott Brown’s website:

Washington, DC – Yesterday, U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) filed a Freedom of Information Act request for an Inspector General report on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) illicit purchase and use of a $300,000 luxury fishing boat. The request was granted, and today Senator Brown spoke from the Senate floor to reveal the numerous abuses detailed in the previously unknown findings of the Inspector General. Click here to read the report.

Remarks as prepared for delivery:

I rise today to inform you and the public of some highly disturbing information that I’ve just learned about a broken agency within our federal government – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

We all know that Washington doesn’t spend our money wisely. But sometimes it is worth highlighting examples of the corruption and waste.

Yesterday morning, I contacted the Commerce Department Inspector General to request a copy of their report on NOAA’s purchase of a $300,000 luxury boat.

It would be bad enough if they had purchased this boat with taxpayer dollars.

But they didn’t. They paid for it with money that should belong to our struggling fishermen.  They paid for it out of the fines that fishermen pay into the pot when they mistakenly catch the wrong kind of fish. Those dollars are supposed to stay in fishing communities to help the fishermen.

Here’s the boat. For a government vessel, that’s pretty flashy. Take a look inside. That’s a fully-appointed bar, the latest in on-board entertainment systems, and leather furniture complete with the ice chest and tackle rack.

Furthermore, the fines that fishermen have been paying are putting fishermen out of business. The stories will break your heart.

So let me again describe the situation: NOAA levied totally unreasonable fines against our fishermen. Then they used that money to buy themselves a luxury boat. So what else did the IG investigation find? Mr. President, here are the disturbing headlines. 

According to the IG, NOAA had no reasonable official use for this boat.  Let’s start there.  They didn’t need it. Period. They had some story about needing an “undercover vessel” to sneak up on whale watching vessels.  Imagine that – armed federal agents sneaking up on school groups and tourists trying to learn about nature. The IG found this to be as ridiculous. NOAA officials wanted this useless luxury boat, then they invented a reason to buy it with fishermen’s hard-earned dollars.

So why did NOAA go to such lengths to “manipulate” and “violate” the government purchasing rules to get this boat?  NOAA already has many boats and more cars than it has agents, so why add this to the inventory?  Well, Mr. President, they apparently didn’t need it for official purposes. We know that because the IG says that it was never – I repeat, never – used for official business.

The sad truth is that it was a fishermen-funded party boat for bureaucrats, Mr. President.  That’s right, while fishermen in Gloucester and New Bedford are struggling to put off foreclosure or mourning the loss of their livelihood because of NOAA’s overzealous enforcement, the NOAA office was living the good life on their dime.

NOAA officials used the boat for the following: trips to dockside restaurants; hamburger and hotdog BBQs and alcohol-fueled parties and with family and friends; and “pleasure cruises” at high rates of speed, with beer consumed on-board.

Even though federal rules ban non-employees from being on vessels, a NOAA supervisor even told a subordinate that his wife was welcome to “kick back and watch TV” on the boat.

They filed expense reports and reimbursed themselves for these trips.

What excuse did NOAA employees give for this behavior?  They needed to do all these things to maintain the recreational appearance of this “undercover” boat that was never even used for the “undercover” work that it was supposedly purchased for. 

Mr. President, let’s be honest.  A booze cruise is a booze cruise.

One NOAA officer decided to take his family on a weekend trip to a posh resort.  He took the undercover NOAA party boat to get there, but he was untrained in how to operate it and blew out a $30,000 engine. Rather than turn back and write the taxpayers a check, he simply abandoned it and took a marked NOAA law enforcement boat the rest of the way to their resort.  Nothing could get between this NOAA employee and a good time. When asked about that incident, the NOAA employee lied to the IG and said there was no family on board. That was just one of many instances of NOAA employees deliberately misleading the IG.

Another NOAA officer used the undercover NOAA boat to take his wife to lunch in Seattle. On this trip, the boat engines stalled in a shipping lane because the boat ran out of fuel due to another operator error. The guy didn’t know how to switch the tanks. So they were stuck drifting in a dangerous shipping lane. The officer and his wife apparently found the situation comical.  Well I don’t think that the fishermen in New Bedford are laughing. 

Again – the money that belonged to fishermen was paying for all this.

To this day, Mr. President, no one has been held accountable. Let me repeat. No one has been disciplined, fired, or even reprimanded for anything having to do with this boat. As you’ve seen here today, NOAA has a culture of corruption that has created a chasm of distrust between the agency and the fishing industry. 

Here is a list of all the problems I have encountered with NOAA since coming to the Senate: abusive treatment of fishermen, resulting in decimation of the fleet; investigations motivated by money; improper fines, leading to foreclosure and bankruptcy; “shredding parties” destroying 75%-80% of OLE documents; lying to Inspector General investigators; discouraging cooperation with the Inspector General; misleading Members of Congress; $300,000 party boat purchased with fishermen’s fines; $12,000 in party boat expenses paid with fishermen’s fines; $30,000 engine destroyed by NOAA employee on weekend vacation while using “undercover” NOAA craft.

This is simply unacceptable. This needs to change, and accountability starts at the top. NOAA’s leadership needs to change.

I am calling once more for President Obama to fire NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco.

If not now, when? If not for this, then for what?

Our fishermen and the American taxpayers deserve better from their Federal Government.

Scott Brown is my Senator. I don’t always agree with his votes, but I have to admit that he is living up to his pledge of going to Washington to represent the common man. He is absolutely right on this issue. I will be working to re-elect him in 2012 because I believe he truly represents the common man and the American taxpayer.

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Hope For New England Fishermen

This small shrimp trawler uses outriggers, wit...

Image via Wikipedia

During the Obama administration, there has been an attack on the commercial fishing industry in New England. I have posted on this before (rightwinggranny August 27, 2010). Now the fishermen have two allies in the Senate who are preparing to help their cause.

Senators Scott Brown and Kelly Ayotte introduced S. 1678 on Tuesday. The bill would amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to permit eligible fishermen to approve certain limited access privilege programs.

An article at The Republic states it more clearly:

Under the bill, New England’s program would be terminated if more than 15 percent of participating fishermen lost their jobs in the first year. The new system finished its first year in May, but it’s not yet known if the 15 percent threshold was reached.

The bill also requires a two-thirds vote by fishermen before any future fishery management systems are approved.

This does not restore the businesses of the fishermen who have been put out of business by over regulation, but it is a first step in limiting the power of the federal government to choose winners and losers in the fishing industry.

These are quotes from Senator Ayotte’s website about the need for the legislation:

Catch share programs are driving New Hampshire’s fishermen out of business.  Five months after federal catch shares were implemented in New England, 55 out of the initial 500 boats in the fishery controlled 61 percent of the revenue, and 253 of the boats were sitting at the dock, unable to fish without quota,” said Senator Ayotte, a member of the Senate Commerce Committee and the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fishers, and Coast Guard.  “This legislation would help level the playing field for independent small fishermen by scrapping unreasonable federal mandates that are killing jobs while giving local fishing communities more control during the program establishment process.”

Senator Brown said: “It is clear that the hastily implemented system of catch-share management in New England has led to fewer fishing jobs and a consolidated fishing fleet.  As more and more jobs disappear from Massachusetts ports, Congressional action is needed to save the fishing industry from overzealous federal regulation.  This bill sends a clear message to NOAA that the broken relationship between the agency and fishermen needs to be fixed and we need to work together to save fishing jobs and ensure a robust and vibrant industry in Massachusetts.”

Both of these Senators are to be congratulated for their efforts on the part of New England fishermen.

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