From the “we’ve told you so time and again” department comes this agreement with my assessment of the state of the climate programs as conducted by the US Government. Readers may recall this report from the GAO that was spurred by the work of the Surfacestations project: GAO report on the poor quality of the US climate monitoring network
Now there’s another report, for the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that not only looks into the problems with reporting climate data from such programs, but also accountability (or lack of it) with climate program money.
Here’s the damning quote:
Lack of oversight, non-compliance and a lax review process for the State Department’s global climate change programs have led the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conclude that program data “cannot be consistently relied upon by decision-makers” and it cannot be ensured “that Federal funds were being spent in an appropriate manner.”
For example, OIG found that:
“[T]he Department was unable to address the funds transfer promptly or account for $600,000 in Department funds,” referring to “Economic Support Funds transferred to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).”
Based on oversight issues it identified in a 2012 audit, last week OIG released its “Compliance Followup Audit of Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) Administration and Oversight of Funds Dedicated to Address Global Climate Change.”
OIG’s original report found that “OES did not fully implement the guidance for conducting [Data Quality Assessments] to help ensure that the data used in reporting programmatic results were complete, accurate, consistent, and supportable.”
Source of story
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Source of OIG report: http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/220858.pdf
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Hopefully we will now see at least some people admit the possibility of errors in their beliefs. It may be difficult though, as true believers/PR people/activists pretending to be scientists can’t afford to back down. Too much loss of face.
600K is an awful lot of climate conferences in tropical locations.
Question is, will this report cause anything to change? Will the public notice and react to this, or policy makers? Will this report be actionable?
I fear this will just be a footnote in some history book.
Question is, will this report cause anything to change? Will the public notice and react to this, or policy makers? Will this report be actionable?
I fear this will just be a footnote in some history book.
###########
the reports on the sorry state of land stations date back to at least 1995.
collecting, archiving and sharing data has not been the number 1 priority for a long time.
Don’t get your hopes up. This is the government we’re talking about. Besides, the chotsky bags at the conferences have really cool stuff!
Maybe a little premature:-
Words by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and Music by Jule Styne
Lurch will not be happy
the Office of the Inspector General [has concluded that] program data cannot be consistently relied upon by decision-makers
Luckily they don’t need “the program data” because the president has already declared that climate change is a fact.
Global Climate Change Program Data Are Unreliable
There, fixed. Never allow weasel words to occur in government reports.
So like a bad car salesman or shady investment broker, they’re saying “Trust us!”
Yeah, right….
Everything may seem out of whack for the fear mongering Chicken Littles: their climate models and predictions of doom have all failed, they have openly advocated dishonesty and called for themselves to make up “scary scenarios” (Stephen Schneider), they are credibly accused of manipulating temperature data to dupe the public, and ice at both poles is either at record levels or has been growing at a record rate.
But here’s the thing. The Prophets of Doom can just say: “so the models are no good, and there are other issues with our ethics or evidence, BUT the established physics still holds… eventually we are going to fry.”
So, our task: undermine the bs “established physics.”
Remind people that the evidence (no warming attributable to CO2) suggests CO2 has a logarithmic effect and has little impact beyond ~ 200 ppm. Remind people that any water vapor feedbacks for this tiny amount of direct warming from CO2 is likely to be minimal or even negative. Remind people that the causal correlation that for over a decade the ipcc contended was proven… has been rebutted, by spreading the word about this 3 minute video which exposes Al Gore for willfully deceiving the public on CO2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Congratulations to Anthony, who fought a long, tough battle to draw attention to these problems, and incurred much abuse along the way from people who had no interest in seeing that accurate meterological data was acquired. This is a big step forward.
And it was worth it. The decisions being made based in part on this data have global reach.
Steven Mosher says:
February 7, 2014 at 3:16 pm
great that you acknowledge there may be deficiencies (in station data), Steve – however, is this not the same data used within BEST ? Look, we all accept that ‘it’s all we have’ – what we don’t accept (without adequate demonstration) is that ‘it is fit for purpose’ !
B- b- b- but . . CONSENSUS!
First, $600K is nothing.
Alot to you and me, maybe.
To the Governments in this world collectively spending a billion dollars a day on this climate fraud, well, it’s round off error.
Now… to the paragraph immediately below…
Lack of oversight, non-compliance and a lax review process for the State Department’s global climate change programs have led the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conclude that program data “cannot be consistently relied upon by decision-makers” and it cannot be ensured “that Federal funds were being spent in an appropriate manner.”
I’m becoming a careful reader. I notice that the words “program data” is outside the quotes. So did the OIG actually say program data, or has this been inserted by the referenced article’s author.
While we demand accuracy and integrity from our government so should we expect the same while criticizing it.
I smell spin here. I’d be happy to be proven wrong.
Another lustrum or two of no warming will be necessary to turn the ship of state from the path of economic sacrifice on the barren altar of carbon strangulation.
Sounds like my mechanic backing up their “limited lifetime warranty” for the seven-year-old part that is disintegrating from wear. “We don’t know if we were the ones who installed that part. It may not be the same part. Does it SAY ‘lifetime warranty’ on the receipt? We’re just waiting to see if the manufacturer will step up and back their product…” I guess they have a point. Who is to say what the “lifetime” of a muffler is? .
Sebastian Junger’s book “The Perfect Storm” asserts that the whole idea of ascribing liability for bad weather forecasts to the government began with the “Sea Fever” and “Fair Winds” incident in 1980 when a faulty weather buoy caused the National Weather Service to fail to predict a major storm coming up from the Gulf. In fact they forecast mild weather in the North Atlantic, where the fishing fleets were out. The Sea Fever
Four years later a U.S. District Judge in Boston
In their court case, “Brown vs. U.S.”, the government claimed it was going to fix the Buoy during scheduled maintenance:
http://www.leagle.com/decision/19841476599FSupp877_11317
In truth, the whole issue of ascribing blame to someone else for what could easily be viewed as one’s own critical mistakes is a bit iffy. Sin of omission? Sin of commission?
Don’t depend on government data if you want to be a fisherman.
In short, business as usual.
PiperPaul 3:07pm
“…as true believers/PR people/activists pretending to be scientists can’t afford to back down. Too much loss of face.”
I see fodder for a great cartoon – bunch of faceless warmists milling around. Guess you could call them “faceless chickens” (?)
Complete, accurate, consistent, and supportable? I cant work under these conditions!
At the end of the day CO2 is a trace gas afloat in a dynamic self regulating system that we are just beginning to understand.. We are still building the bench that we one day hope to put a mark on..
Jumping to the science is settled was a huge mistake.. Setting policy upon that mistake only shows how criminal politics can be in the wrong hands..
Say it ain’t so!
Could someone help me out with an online dispute I’m having? I posted:
My opponent posted:
I posted:
My opponent posted:
How should I counter that last paragraph? (Is it one of SkS’s sophistries?)
Walter Allensworth says: February 7, 2014 at 3:50 pm
“I’m becoming a careful reader. I notice that the words “program data” is outside the quotes. So did the OIG actually say program data, or has this been inserted by the referenced article’s author.
While we demand accuracy and integrity from our government so should we expect the same while criticizing it.
I smell spin here.”
The full sentence from the OIG report was:
“Without fully implementing DQAs that consider appropriate sources of data, reviewing methodologies used by sources to collect and validate data, and verifying what recipients have provided with evidence of processes and raw data sources, the data used by OES to report programmatic results for climate change programs cannot be consistently relied upon by decision-makers.”
They are an audit body. They haven’t examined the actual data. They say that a specific Government body hasn’t implemented (to their satisfaction) a specific Data Quality Assurance program that they think it should.
What???? You mean to tell me the data is even a smidgen corrupt? Does the I.R.uS know diss??
WUWTers should be aware that the data flaws the IG has found relate only to how money was spent abroad by the State Dept. on climate change, not to climate change scientific data.