Eric Worrall writes: It looks like NOAA have found a new way to stifle FOIA inquiries from the public. According to Steve Goddard, NOAA have just demanded a $262,000 administrative fee for zipping up a few raw data files.
Steve Goddard has published a scan of the outrageous fee demand he and fellow FOIA requestor Kent Clizbe received from NOAA administrator Maria S Williams. The letter, sent on March 17th, demands $262,000 by March 24th, or further communication – otherwise Maria says they will consider the matter closed.
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/fee-notification-letter-2014-001602.pdf
The NOAA staff directory lists Maria Williams as the Chief of Staff Support Services Branch. https://nsd.rdc.noaa.gov/nsd/pubresult?LNAME=wil
For the full story read Steve’s post – https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/freedom-isnt-free/
As an IT expert with over 20 years of experience, my expert opinion on the claim by NOAA that it would require $262,000 to gather up a few computer files and send them to Steve is that it sounds like a complete crock. Even if some of the files are in printed form, they can just be run through a scanner – my automatic page feed scanner can process a page every few seconds, even cheap scanners can process thousands of pages per day. If the files are too big to put in an email (likely), for trivial cost NOAA could publish them on a password protected web page – it would take at most a day to set up such a web page, and add the files to it.
If NOAA’s data files really are so poorly catalogued that several man years of effort would be required to find them, this is something NOAA should be fixing on their own time. If this is the case, NOAA should not be attempting to charge FOIA petitioners outrageous fees to cover NOAA’s own incompetence.
Respect is like trust, it cannot be taken it has to be earned. NOAA is forfeiting the respect that people once held for the organization. It will not easily regain the trust and respect that it has lost.
Good grief — apparently the request was not just for “a few raw data files”. As explained in the response from NOAA: “Responding to this part of the request would require retrieving, reviewing, and packaging many tens of thousands of items in at least 29 years of communications, if they can be located.”
Do we get to see the original request letter? WTW, WUWT?
Yes, without seeing the actual request there’s no way to know if all the outrage is justified.
Sad to see how few demand a complete story before jumping to conclusions, and ironic that those who demand original data fail to show their own.
The only reason to NOT show the original request is if it justifies to some degree the snarky response.
Barry:
According to the link:
This letter is in reference to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request entered into FOIA
online on September 7, 2014, for records pertaining to “Temperature Data Record Adjustments:
Rationale, Methodology, Discussions–USG employees and others for the NOAA/National
Climactic Data Center”.
There is no original “letter”, it was done online.
The request, however, is spelled out in the response.
Nutso fasst:
“Yes, without seeing the actual request there’s no way to know if all the outrage is justified.
Sad to see how few demand a complete story before jumping to conclusions, and ironic that those who demand original data fail to show their own.”
That information was on the link. If you want the “complete story” then click on the links, that’s what they’re there for. 😉
Bezotch:
I followed both links (which many commenters obviously didn’t) and did not find an original request.
Since then I read through the comments to Steven Goddard’s blog post and found a comment by Mr. Clizbe that copied part of NOAA’s email response to his request. The request is more extensive than even NOAA’s official reply indicates:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/freedom-isnt-free/#comment-508739
Nutso, there is no rational justification to charge that obscene amount of money for what is basic administrative work. If they haven’t been cataloguing the information in any logical, organised manner whatsoever they have no right to be a scientific organisation.
“If they can be located”? You must be kidding.
Obviously they are trying to make it hard for the public to get their hands on the fiddled and /or raw data.
Ian W: “Respect is like trust, it cannot be taken it has to be earned. NOAA is forfeiting the respect that people once held for the organization. It will not easily regain the trust and respect that it has lost.”
Yes, I can testify to that. I used to work for NOAA back in the early 1970s – and was proud of it. But now, I have lost all respect for NOAA – it’s like when Noah got all drunk and naked.
They are obviously moving to stand-over tactics and extortion to add to their crimes of Fraud.
Now, now. Guilty of hysterical nonsense and that’s about it. Of course, it is nice to see they feel forced to reply at all even if it is too witness, once again, the degree of delusion they operate under.
Not really. The FOIA request as outlined in the response to Clizbe delineates a huge domain that includes lots of material from “the beginning” of the adjustments through the present. Lots of the material described such as phone logs will be in archive boxes “somewhere” rather than on electronic media, which is where the “if they can be found” comes from. Even some of the electronic media may no longer be supported by available hardware. Scientifically, all Goddard should need are the methodological assumptions behind the adjustments and the code used to produce the adjusted data. However, NOAA science is skint on the actual methodological reasoning behind determining what adjustments are needed and why.
“Methodology” is not to be confused with methods. You use arithmetic as the preferred method to balance your checkbook. The methodological reasoning behind that decision is the argument that by adding all deposits and subtracting all debits, you’ll know how much you have in your bank account and what is outstanding. Theoretically, you should know even before and with more precision than your bank. Reality of course will be different, but it always is.
His congressman ought to inquire on his behalf as to the details. Sounds like a ruse to avoid compliance with the law.
+1….and don’t let up. This is clearly an attempt to stifle dissemination of public data. Someone should look into other FOIA requests and see if like charges were assessed. I’ve written my congressman already about NOAA rewriting historical temperature records.
willybamboo has a good answer. Pester their Congresscritter and Senators. Remember the squeaky wheel concept. Write, call, email. Get others to do the same.
It’s your best shot at getting results.
Right – I’ll get a note off to Bernie right away.
Not disagreeing, but please pick another state than the Green Blob er Mountain one.
Just sayin’
Yep. Same thing here in New Jersey. Nothing but National Socialist Democrat American Party “turtles” all the way down.
Yeah, I’m sure Patty Murray and Jim McDermott will be all over this.
It is obviously a fence built around a crime scene to hide criminals working for our government at NOAA. Congress should investitage teh NOAA and make their data completely public, give names, and expose the entire scan.
A long time ago, a Republican told someone at NASA to do his job and that person went to claim he was being silenced. George W. Bush told James Hansen to stop doing public events on taxpayer’s time and that is when Hansen claimed he was being silenced. The only ones who would investigate this malfeasance are Republicans. If they dare ask NOAA to do their job, you’d better believe they would cry suppression. (But, of course, it is perfectly okay for their side to engage in smear tactics like having a member of Congress ask about your funding.)
Carl, all this in the Obama Administration? Even a direct court order would produce similar results. And do not believe that the White House is not involved in hundreds of other similar stonewalling efforts. If it gets too hot for the White House Obama will just issue an executive order denying most almost all FOIA requests.
House Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority leader McConnell will huff and puff, call press conferences, and threaten to see that justice is done. Then, they will privately roll over on a Sunday night or on a holiday when the MSN will have an excuse to ignore it. Count the times this situation has been repeated if you like large numbers.
So much for the transparency we were promised.
Leonard Lane,
Are you saying, “Wave the White Flag”? That’s what it sounds like.
Contacting representatives is free. But there’s always the alternative of filing suit in federal court. They cannot ignore that.
Fortunately, in less than 2 years there will be a Republican in the Big Seat then perhaps progress can be made. After all PROgress is the opposite of CONgress
NObama ’16
Leonard,
I am as frustrated with the Republican Congressional leadership as the next guy, but it is necessary to remember that NOTHING can now get out of Congress without 60 votes in the Senate, and there are only 54 Republican votes.
Harry Reid has blocked everything, most recently the attempt to de-fund DHS and thus Obama’s illegal immigrant amnesty. If anything, today’s news is worse, since the new Senate minority leader will be Chuck Schumer, who is notoriously one of the most partisan guys in Washington.
It would be very different if the MSM played fair, but they sang the Democrat narrative in the recent fracas over a “clean” bill to fund DHS, and that is the narrative that ultimately prevailed.
Bryan A
PROgress is the opposite of CONgress.
Beyond funny.
Eugene WR Gallun
Someone needs to request a similar set of records under the aegis of proving CAGW from Greenpeace, some obscure UN “agency” or similar eco-loon organization whose hand-in-hand work with US Government bureaucrats is already established. Then let’s see what fee would be charged then… any bets?
Fee? They’d probably enclose a check for a cool quarter million.
I’d immediately FOIA all internal correspondence between NOAA employees relating to Steve’s FOIA. I bet that’d make for interesting reading!
Good idea.
Hummmm, except that gov hard drives are notoriously unreliable. They crash and get recycled at the most (un)opportune times. Better hire somebody to track all the unlisted email addresses, as well. Oh, there are interoffice chats that are not recorded or archived at IRS… Maybe in other agencies too?
Employees in “other agencies” have their own private servers over which they can edit and delete as they please.
Rounded up, that’s around £176,000 Sterling.
Another excuse for ‘vested’ reasons why we need to charge you a Global ‘get rich quick whilst we still have a chance’ Warming fee for scanning more than 1 piece of A4 paper.
I know that researchers doing studies that require data from satellites have to pay a fee for it (studying subsidence of a region from some activity, regional agricultural or forestry studies, etc). Exactly what was asked for? Governments over the past 20 years began charging fees for visits to national galleries, museums, etc. that used to be free.d
They requested NOAA’s published monthly temperature data over the past couple of decades; not raw data from a superconducting supercollider, just simple temperature readings. Steve believes they overwrite the data in place in order to hide their ongoing manipulations. From his article:
“The data should be kept in a simple file structure like the NOAA drought data, and it should require no more than 10 seconds for me to recover it online. Instead, they want a quarter of a million dollars.”
When you read between the lines, this is what NOAA really said:
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it…?”
-Phil Jones email Feb. 21, 2005
There is only one reason they won’t turn it over.
No there are two reasons at least
1. Fudging the data.
2. They haven’t GOT the data; they have a mess.
The second one turned out to be the real reason Hadcrut never complied with Britain’s FOIA law when McIntyre requested their raw data.
No, the request went well beyond the temperature data. Here is an excerpt from the letter
This letter is in reference to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request entered into FOIA
online on September 7, 2014, for records pertaining to “Temperature Data Record Adjustments:
Rationale, Methodology, Discussions–USG employees and others for the NOAA/National
Climactic Data Center”.
Its the temperature data (not too bad to supply), the adjustments (probably not too bad either), methodology (might be easy-ish if it was well documented) and finally the kicker “discussions”.
Its this last point that was ridiculous to ask for. As if “discussions” are easy to identify! They happen across many employees past and present, in email, paper copies and heaven only knows what. To properly get “discussions” relating to the request would indeed take an enormous amount of resources and I fully side with NOAA on this.
Steve Goddard should have been much more specific. He could have asked for a more achievable search such as emails between 1994 and present sent from the following employees…and then list a few. At least that wouldn’t be open ended.
The “Discussions” claim could be satisfied with a simple summary of the adjustment. All Godard was asking for was for reasoning behind each adjustment. If they objected to that, then a simple “that last item is unspeakably broad, please clarify what you are looking for” would have been a reasonable answer. Claiming that it would take 2.5 man-years to find everything and pay up now, is not
Ben writes “The “Discussions” claim could be satisfied with a simple summary of the adjustment.”
No it couldn’t. The request is what it is and asking for “discussions” is clearly stupid because it legitimately gives NOAA an “out” based on an unreasonable request.
Hmmm…..I don’t know what was requested but if it was data and they don’t already have it on hand, then how can they declare things like “2014 was the hottest year on record!”?
(Unless it would cost that much to de-Hansen the records.8-)
Can’t we just get the Koch brothers or big oil to write a check? Isn’t that how we pay for everything? lol
If they paid for it, you know they’d be targeted, and the data would be called “tainted”.
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?grep
zemlik,
Some words of explanation would be appreciated.
well I think if you want to search through a load of files that contain some words grep can help to do that and indicate those files that contain the expression searched for.
http://www.rexegg.com/regex-perl-one-liners.html
meaning, as others have said, with all these super-duper computers mimicking the earth’s atmosphere surely it shouldn’t be difficult to categorize everything everybody ever has said ?
LOL and remember, less is more!
Who knew that Obama’s “most transparent” Government had a Green filter on it?
Oh it’s clear that there are lots of filters…that clarity is what is transparent.
It has taken the alarmist cult long enough to notice that sceptics continually complain about pay walled papers.
The reason? Sceptics have less than 0.1% of the funds that alarmists have.
So, let’s take it up several orders of magnitude, instead of asking $30-50 to look at some dodgy research, let’s scare the bastards off with a ridiculous financial demand.
Bottom line? Looks like some second rate bureaucrats have something to hide.
I’m all for creating a general FOIA pool which, by law, must be replenished immediately if it overruns its annual budget. All in favor, say “aye”.
I hear you, but I can think of a lot of ways such a fund could be abused – government administrators worried about their budget could get a few “friends” to make fake FOIA requests. Said administrators could then use the alleged cost of such requests to cover their own incompetence, to plug the holes in their budget.
Simply capping fees to something reasonable is probably the way to go. If agencies whose data is of interest to the public have to repeatedly deliver the same or similar data, the need to keep costs down will be a major incentive for them to sort out their internal mess.
Eric,
The potential for abuse is one thing I was getting at. I thought about capping fees as well, but then the argument would turn to reasonableness of the cap, whether the cap has actually been reached or if creative accounting was done so as to deny a particularly inconvenient request.
Though you and I are opposites in this debate, I do want the same transparency and accessibility you are asking for. More of it.
The big problem I see with publicly-funded research is that there are so many private interests at stake, and not a priori nefarious for it. The major for-profit journals and their market-sensitive paywalls are always the first thing which leap to mind. I’m less familiar with intellectual rights to data, methods, and the laws protecting academic freedom from nuisance interference, but my general sense is that there are a lot of things there which cannot be simply disentangled.
My suggestion is that FOIA filings are the least constructive way to go about this. Grijalva’s stunt was not just politically stupid, but potentially harmful to any and all science being done on the public dime. Which is hands-down idiotic, plain and simple. Name-calling and taunting in the press and on the blogs is one thing. Targeted information requests made by an elected representatives with official powers, either real or implied?
That’s crossing a line. It’s a continuation of a bad precedent which really does not need further encouragement.
Mr. Gates,
In politics, as in life, turnabout is not only fair play but pretty much guaranteed.
And I ‘spect that the political payback for all this is gonna be a sharp and enduring and eye-opening slap in the face and kick in the seat of the pants, come swearing in day, 2017.
Menicholas,
Perhaps. I personally doubt it. Recall that most US voters don’t rate climate very high on their list of concerns. Latest polls still have Hillary beating any prospective Republican nominee by 10%. But two years is a long time.
On this point though, I’m far more concerned about the long-term implications for all publicly funded science than I am the normal ebb and flow of partisan sentiment in the voting booth.
I think the current method is fine. The problem is inconsistent or prejudicial application of fees. As all of the applications are public record, it’s easy to find when they are giving preferential treatment to certain groups.
The problem lies in that there is no mandate to be fair and no legal enforcement thereof. The only recourse is to sue and say that this fee is fraudulently large.
Agreed. So long as the govt is able to keep in check the incentive to grossly inflate costs.
Never happen. Kind of my point.
Not often, but I fully support Brandon’s suggestion.
Thanks, but take care to note I’m not fully committed to it. The whole idea of FOIA is somewhat ridiculous … just publish “all the data” and be done with it is the opposite, and logical, extreme. But not practical either.
It’s funny that the estimate is 1.9 years of search and review time. That would make it done almost the exact time Obama leaves office. I guess that’s their best current estimate of how long they can stonewall.
That is not a fee. That is “buzz off” written in a rather long-winded way.
Besides contacting congressmen, spread news of this far and wide. Put postings on obscure blog sites. I think it is fair to ask, “What are they hiding?”
They are getting more and more flagrant with their arrogant impunity. It has reached a degree where you don’t have to say much; just pointing out this behavior says enough to cause Maria Williams’ relatives to blush, and for her to consider changing her name, I imagine. However I suppose it was a dirty job, and someone had to do it. I wonder who ordered it done?
Steve Goddard must be stomping on some big toes, by constantly pointing out the “adjustments” NOAA makes to temperatures.
What, exactly, has Goddard requested? Without knowing that, one can not judge this fairly. Goddard doesn’t say. But look at the NOAA letter: “letters, phone logs, memos, and other communications on this subject”, “Historical internal and external emails”, “data stewardship …”, “retrieving, reviewing, and packaging many tens of thousands of items”, “investigating availability of items and code, some from obsolescent systems, evaluating content, and screening for non-responsive, deliberative, or personally identifying information”.
A “few files” indeed. I think I trust “Steve Goddard” even less than I trust the government.
OK. So they cut back a tiny bit on “sustainable subsidies” to cover the cost. In the end the taxpayers would likely save a bundle….including the prison cost. 😎
Mike,
Does the “M” stand for “Moby”?
Pay attention Mike. They requested NOAA’s published monthly temperature data over the past couple of decades. From Steve’s article:
“The data should be kept in a simple file structure like the NOAA drought data, and it should require no more than 10 seconds for me to recover it online.”
A “few files” indeed. I think you’re either an alarmist troll or your reading comprehension skills are severely impaired.
The key was that he also requested the adjustments and “discussions”. They seem to be doing literal-genie resistance. It would of course taken an astronomical effort to comb through all the e-mails for discussions about all of the adjustments. Rather than clarifying or just giving a summary of the adjustments, they are just stating the maximum bill based off a ludicrously broad interpretation of the request.
Louis pay attention Steve claims what you quote. He however does not provide the wording of his request nor any other evidence. The letter from NOAA however makes specific statements which directly contradict what Steve says. I’m sorry but as a tax payer I’m with NOAA on this if NOAA’s statement is of what was requested was accurate.
If Steve produces a the request that ONLY asks for this OK, I’ll back him, but if it is what NOAA is stating, then shame on him for misleading everyone by trying to claim it is only a few files. Steve has made an accusation, he should either put up or shut up. If he wants to go fishing then he should use his money to do so not mine.
benofhouston, there is something called the Data Integrity Act from years ago requiring any research funded by taxpayer dollars to be archived and retrievalble (other than embargoed data awaiting publication). As Steve commented, this data should be easily obtained at little or no cost. When the past data, that has been archived, is “adjusted” or changed in some fashion, the rationale for having done that should also be easily obtained. The fact that this has become such a maze to navigate indicates something is seriously wrong. Steve should not have had to ask for the emails and discussions behind this rationale to change previously recorded as official data. Transparency should be the routine, and not a gauntlet requiring FOIAs to obtain. Something is seriously wrong and it is not conspiratorial to see that something is rotten in Denmark.
I don’t understand how data from years ago can be “adjusted.” If the data can be shown to be invalid or unreliable, then it should be discarded, not “adjusted” by another arbitrary means which then can’t be tested to see if it is truly valid or reliable. Imagine anyone doing this with financial reports of business results from previous years.
I second most of your point. In any case, I like a key sentence from the NOAA letter: “As data stewardship – including homogeneity adjustments – has been central to NCDC’s mission
for decades, determining which records are responsive to this extremely broad request will require significant resources.”
Why would anybody doubt NOAA adjustments? It must hurt deeply.
The letter complains that his request is too broad while at the same time complaining how difficult it would be to search through everything to find the specific items he’s requesting. Huh?
It’s actually rather simple. He wants ALL docs on temperature adjustments. So, even with electronic docs you do a word search, say temperature and adjustment(s) in the same document. Now how many time do you think temperature comes up as a key word in NOAA docs, I would guess easily in the millions and adjust is a common word. Now someone has to read the doc and determine if they said “the temperatures were too low so we adjusted them up” vs. “here is the alert on the extreme low temperatures, I adjusted the wording”. Now factor in office notes, meeting notes, etc. that may or may not be in electronic format, or old formats say floppy disks, etc. and yah a quarter of a mill sounds about right, once you figure in the unions cut.
So what would you suggest to narrow the search? I see you suggested nothing at all.
It’s not like a warehouse of papers and floppies were just dropped on their desk. As the letter notes, they are the gatekeepers, and temperature adjustments are one of their important tasks. How is it that all of the relevant info isn’t already categorized?
How can anyone “suggest to narrow the search” without seeing the actual request?
Sue them and let them explain how they have violated the law in not making the data digital and easily accessible.
I’m sorry but whenever I see a post by Eric Worrall I think to myself, here might come another half-baked story with no supporting facts claiming… god knows what.
I didn’t enjoy saying that. FYI.
You could have just not said it.
Sunshine Week – this week or last? – celebrating transparency in govt. AP has been waiting 9 years for something they reported submitting FOIA for.
There are costs to replying to a FOI request. And the costs depend on the information requested and the competence of the archivists.
This seems to be an admission of incompetence by NOAA.
Have they described their plan for an investigation into their inability to access data?
And how many of their QA department have been sacked?
Read the actual FOI request, not what Steve claims he requested. Then let us know what you think the cost would be. And, don’t forget NOAA gets sued if they accidentally release any personal info.
Complete nonsense. They are doing government-funded work and all of the emails are public property. Anyone working for a corporation know that any of their emails are not their own property and are discoverable at any time. If this “adjusting” had any basis in actual scientific necessity it should be readily obtainable and part of the federally-required records and standards. You are dissembling just as they are. The entire federal government seems to be completely at odds with the voluminous requirements they themselves place on everyone in the private sector. If any of these people are performing government work on personal email accounts and private servers that points to another problem that needs to be brought out into the open and investigated.
I work in out-sourced local government IT in the UK. There was recently an FOI request for an email trail regarding a particular service contract that aroused suspicion. The local authority batted the request back with a very similar response, quoting man-hours per email times number of emails times hourly rate, etc..
The snag is, the company I work for does their IT, and they never asked me or any of my colleagues for an estimate of the effort or likely cost. We even have a standard call-off mechanism for small-scale versions of this sort of thing.
Oops.
You can draw your own conclusions.
Perhaps we and our American cousins need a tweak to the FOI legislation to eliminate the “f*** off ” responses. For sure, there has to be a way to deter the frivolous rubbish FOI requests, but I don’t think that’s beyond the wit of our handsomely paid legislators.
If you can find his actual request, let us know what you think the cost should be for compliance.
Again you are dissembling. Try that excuse in a private corporation that has their records subpoenaed by the federal government and see how well your excuse of expense and difficulty in locating the records that are demanded. What a bunch of malarkey.
Anyone semi-computer literate knows how to do a search with keywords. This FOI request could be done literally in a few minutes and emailed.
Conclusions:
1. They’re lying
2. They’ve got plenty to hide
Or,
3. They don’t know what they have to hide and daren’t risk finding out.
Or,
4. The records are on tape backup off site.
Brandon Gates at 4:47…… You can’t be serious. In my company we had multiple servers running multiple operating systems backing up every office in multiple locations on arrayed hard drives. Tape was only used weekly backups and local restoration. It isn’t hard to search and restore data. When I retired, we had 10 years of searchable information on line at all times and ALL open projects were on line at all times, some going back 20+ years. We had whole office crashes that could be restored in a few hours. Now, our old 1970’s VAX tapes took a little longer to take out of the archive and mount but it was like a couple of days to pull up and search 10 years or more of data. So, even IF NOAA is so backward that they are archiving data that they update monthly on tape …. No, sorry, that is completely unbelievable. Isn’t it?????
Wayne,
I’m hampered here by two things:
1) What Goddard is requesting isn’t entirely clear to me.
2) I know absolutely nothing about NOAA’s IT infrastructure.
In a list of speculations, I appended a speculation. Reading down, it seems Goddard is asking for more than just weather data, but communications. NOAA wouldn’t simply do a simple backup from the email server and pack that up on a USB drive. They’d do a keyword search for the relevant traffic, and assuredly have a human do a manual review of the results. That’s my guess where most of the personnel time estimates come from, and hence most of the retrieval cost.
But I don’t know. I wouldn’t presume to know. And very much unlike Goddard, I wouldn’t make any strong conclusions — or even hint at them — that the estimate is politically motivated and bogus simply on the basis that I thought the bigness of the figure was ridiculously inflated.
Now what is evidently clear to me is that he doesn’t need the data. He’s already decided. His lede:
NOAA is desperate to hide their data tampering, and is taking a new tack to defeat FOIA requests.
Not a whiff of uncertainty. If he’s so confident in the evidence at hand, why does he not file a lawsuit to open a full investigation? Inhofe would gobble it up, if he’s not already working on something similar.
It’s as obvious a political stunt to me as Grijalva’s was, though not nearly as foolish.
Brandon,
You may be right, what bugs me in Goddard is exactly this kind of whistleblowing. It is like if he swallowed the whistle and could not stop breathing through it.
Hugh, thanks for that image. It made my day.
MCourtney,
I think I like your #3 better. An honest man has nothing to hide. A dishonest man thinks they know everything about him, and thus tries to hide everything.
Your assuming that whatever Goddard asked for is online. After I get to the bottom of the comments, if there’s no explanation (apologies if I missed it already) I’ll go read Goddard’s post and figure out what he’s looking for. All I know that that it’s text, otherwise people wouldn’t be talking about grep and keywords instead of Ampex videotape.
Argh – You’re…
Seriously? Are you that ignorant? Let’s see he wanted the history of all decisions and discussions on temperature adjustments from FRICKIN NOAA. What is the size of the amount of data that contains the word temperature from NOAA!!! How many of those docs contain the common word “adjustment”? How many man hrs does it take to review the docs? NOAA is by law prevented from releasing personal information. So the personal review of the person who recorded temperatures, and also adjusted the wind vane would come up in that search. As a taxpayer I have to pay the resulting lawsuit settlement because NOAA followed your half ass advice and “emailed” a few terabytes of uncensored data.
Conclusion:
Think before you type
Don’t know whom you’re responding to, but your comment seems to assume that NOAA’s difficulty stems from the fact that it hasn’t kept personal and scientific data separated. That’s just nuts. . . . . wait a sec., you’re probably right.
Sorry, I’m replying to dbstealy’s comment. In which he state it should take minutes. If they had requested just the data, maybe, but they did not, they want meeting minutes etc. where any discussion occurred of temperature adjustments. That is not scientific data and frankly scientific data and personal data are probably mixed all the time. An email example, hey Jim here’s the reasoning for the adjustment and how’s the your child’s cancer doing? Scientific data mixed w/personal, don’t release one broke the law, do release the other broke the law. So it has to be filtered by law.
Before I can agree I’ll have to read “this FOI request.” Can you point me to it?