By Sterling Burnett
The left-wing media’s rumor mill has been rumbling in recent weeks like an upset stomach in need of an antacid at the thought President Donald Trump will soon form a Presidential Commission on Climate Security (PCCS) to objectively examine the science behind the oft-repeated claim humans are causing dangerous climate change.
A PCCS is long overdue, and award winning physicist William Happer, Ph.D., the administration’s senior director of the National Security Council office for emerging technologies, is the perfect person to run it.
Such a committee should have been formed before 1992 when President George Herbert Walker Bush brought the United States into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Bush put the cart before the horse, agreeing to the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) despite the fact no comprehensive assessment of the state of climate science had been undertaken.
The IPCC was not charged with examining the causes and consequences of climate change, but rather it was directed from the start to limit its enquiries into the “human causes” of change.
One can’t understand a problem if one is directed to study only one aspect of it. It’s like the parable of the blind men and the elephant—if all the blind men had only been allowed to touch the trunk.
Since then many scientists advanced their careers and raked in big government research grants by towing the party line that humans were causing dangerous climate change and we needed a government takeover of the economy, something like the Green New Deal, to fix it. Time and again, data has been manipulated or altered, and research questioning whether humans are causing dangerous climate change has been suppressed or ignored, to make the facts conform to the theory.
Happer at the Helm
Before joining Trump’s National Security Council, Happer had a distinguished career in academia and in government service. He was the Cyrus Fogg Brackett professor of physics at Princeton University, served as the director of the Office of Energy Research at the U.S. Department of Energy, is a fellow the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
With Happer at the helm, the PCCS will assemble a group of qualified scientists to examine and debate the causes of current climate change, and its purported impacts on national security, agriculture, sea level, and extreme weather.
Happer has written previously on two critical aspects on climate change science: the need for quality data, and a fair examination of the potential benefits of increased carbon dioxide.
In 2015, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rushed into publication research announcing “the observational evidence related to a ‘hiatus’ in recent global surface warming” did not “support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.” This claim conflicted with every extant temperature data base, and the findings of many organizations worldwide, including the IPCC, that there had been a lengthy hiatus in global warming.
Along with more than 300 other scientists, Happer objected, noting in an article in Environment & Climate News that in the rush to get their findings published in time to influence the then forthcoming Paris Climate Agreement negotiations, NOAA’s researchers had violated the 2001 Data Quality Act (DQA).
In response, Happer and more than 300 experts signed a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology criticizing NOAA’s actions and stressing the need for climate research to comply with DQA requirements.
Beneficial Carbon Dioxide
Aside from his strong stand on behalf of scientific transparency, the liberal media has been hyperventilating over Happer’s previous statements on climate change, which he explored in an interview I conducted with him in 2015 for Environment & Climate News:
Doubling the carbon dioxide concentration will probably cause a warming of around 1 degree Celsius. … A warming of 1-2 degrees Celsius will be beneficial in itself by lengthening growing seasons and cutting winter heating bills. … The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “most likely” warming estimate if carbon dioxide is doubled [is] 3 degrees Celsius[, which] is almost certainly much too large.
In addition to the direct beneficial effects of modest warming, there will be a huge benefit to agriculture from more carbon dioxide. By the standards of geological history, … , we have been in a carbon dioxide famine over the past tens of millions of years, with low concentrations of several hundred ppm. More carbon dioxide will increase crop yields, make plants more tolerant to droughts, and will shrink deserts. Yet, we keep hearing about “carbon pollution.” Carbon dioxide is beneficial, not a pollutant.
Thousands of experiments, the actions of greenhouse operators worldwide, and the fact the earth has been greening and crop yields continue to set records year after year, all confirm Happer’s assertions on the agricultural benefits of higher carbon dioxide and a modest warming.
From the perspective of climate alarmists and the print and broadcast media that has adopted their cause, Trump’s big sin in forming the PCCS is to question the claim climate science is settled. And Happer’s big sin is to defend the need for high quality data and to point out a modestly warmer world and increased carbon dioxide will bring benefits as well as costs.
All the panic and hyperbolic gnashing of teeth concerning the PSSC in recent weeks comes down to this: Neither good science nor sound policy can be advanced without an unbiased examination and debate of the facts. This is the cornerstone of scientific discovery. So get to work Dr. Happer, and thank you for your service.
Originally published in The Epoch Times
Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. (hburnett@heartland.org) is a senior fellow on energy and the environment at The Heartland Institute, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
It is hardly a surprise to find an area that approves of the use of industrial scale ‘smoke and mirrors’ usage, being worried about any ideas of ‘transparency’ .
While if the science is anywhere near as ‘settled ‘ as so often claimed, they should have no worries at all about people judging if it really is so , unless of course, it turns out to be ‘not settled ‘ that is .
When you look at the people leading the area, does ‘good science ‘ come anywhere near the top of the list of the things you think they do ?
What they fear most is having support their ‘settled’ science within the rules of actual science.
An exact parallel is the 50-year smackdown of any dissent from the saturated fat/heart disease dogma of the late Ancel Keyes, which few survived questioning until recently despite the fact that his original research was cherry-picked garbage, rammed into policy by the dietary institutions bought and paid for by Big Sugar and Big Veg. Oil. not to mention the USDA, AHA, and fellow troughers. Long debunked but doesn’t matter, the world is still overrun with “registered dieticians” pushing Obama/DiBlasio’s fat-free lethal swill on the sorry captives of schools, hospitals and jails for the greater glory of the diabesity epidemic. “Settled Science” too big to be questioned, until it’s not. ‘Bout time we threw ALL these clowns overboard . . . first step is to dare to read primary sources for oneself!
“towing the party line”
Was it broken down on the highway?
They could be using the Seattle toe truck.
Good old Roadside America! My (now) wife moved from Redondo Beach CA to Arlington VA five years ago. I drove her Jeep Liberty towing a trailer with all of her remaining stuff the entire distance, while she read from the iPhone Roadside America app. We have never laughed so much in our lives. I highly recommend this one.
That should have been “toeing the party line”
I wondered if anyone caught that besides me. https://grammarist.com/usage/toe-the-line/
Will is a brilliant physicist and total gentleman. His expertise revolves around the understanding of how light waves interact with molecules, the perfect discipline to evaluate the effects of CO2 and infrared light waves.
“A warming of 1-2 degrees Celsius will be beneficial in itself by lengthening growing seasons and cutting winter heating bills.”
How will my heating bill be affected if it’s 1F instead of 0F outside?
A one degree increase in global temperature won’t be uniform over the whole surface of the globe. It is quite likely that night time minimum northern winter temperatures will be several degrees higher. link
The amount of heat radiated from an object depends on the temperature difference. Any change that lessens the difference will decrease your heating bill.
Your thermostat will activate your heating slightly later. In your example, not by much but by some.
The time between activations will increase by a small amount.
Depends. Look up hysteresis.
Jeff
It is calculable on the basis of the number of degrees of heating you require. I’d say about 1% per degree F. It is not linear because of radiation effects from the house, L but it is on that order. A 3 deg F increase would save you (on average) 3% of the fuel.
I might throw an extra medium-size log on the fire. Meh . . .
Please let it be so.
“Hey, Diogenes! We found that fellow you were looking for!”
The commission needs to expose what the global warming scam is really about.
U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare
At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
That comment by Figueres was made in Feb 2015.
It is however worth repeating.
It was so, but like a lot of other stuff it’s been covered up.
Not so much “covered up” as simply “not covered”. By the Lame- Stream Media (and I include Fox News among that cohort while still acknowledging they’re not quite as Leftist as all the other cheerleaders for Team Left) that is, on the theory that if they don’t say anything about it, it never happened. Except LSM doesn’t have a monopoly on news distribution anymore.
No matter what Dr. Happer et al find, the alarmists will find a way to ignore and denigrate it. Experts can always find facts to bolster their position.
I became a skeptic when somebody did a really lame defense of Dr. Mann’s hockey stick. It seems reasonable to hope that fair minded people will be driven to skepticism by the eventual over-the-top response of the alarmists to the committee’s findings.
Any word yet on other likely members of the commission? I think they should get a couple of the climate idiots on and give them a dose of reality – Trenberth, Karl and Santer spring to mind immediately. Mann and Schmidt would make great fanfare about not participating if asked.
Yeah he is going down with the Cultural Marxist filth, like a dodgy kipper.
Ha ha yeah:
Will Happer, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University – bad scientist
Michael Mann – good scientist
Righto then
The difference, I have come to conclude, is that Will Happer probably understands the physics that he was taught, and he knows how to properly apply it, while Michael Mann does not. The PhD’s of these two are NOT equal.
In my early college days, I actually witnessed the advisor of a PhD candidate shaking her head and telling me that this American-born-and-educated, PhD candidate could not perform writing composition skills at a fifth-grade level. I visually inspected one of the papers of this candidate that his advisor had corrected with many red markings.
It’s one thing to make it through educational programs, and, unfortunately, another thing to actually understand what you were learning deeply enough to say that you have really mastered what the degree supposedly stands for.
I don’t mean to be cruel — I’m just reporting one confirmation of my suspicion that there are candidates out there who probably never learned the deep basics properly and well enough to apply them correctly in other fields.
Some of the more sophisticated climate-alarmist experts seem to have a favorite argument that goes something like, “X is not a climate scientist, he does not even understand the basics, he makes so many mistakes that I hardly know where to begin.”
I’ve seen this line of reasoning, for example, with supposed climate “scientists” making such claims about the PROFESSIONAL physicists who point out errors in the basics of the application of physics to climate “science”.
The irony is that this very criticism should be the criticism directed at the climate-alarmist experts, because it is THEY who fail to understand the basics, thus making mistakes at such a deep level that only the true respective experts in a specific field can point them out.
Imagine if a kid read these posts one hundred years from now.
Imagine when a cultural and scientific historian researching the climate scam of the early 21st Century reads these posts.
He/She will see not everyone was duped by the onslaught of climate propaganda.
Climate-alarm skeptics, thus, will be heroes and champions in the future. (^_^)
Joel – what would convince that you’re wrong?
For most skeptics, real world observational data, facts, data not baseless assertions, models built on unproved assumptions, appeals to authority, and insults designed to allude to one of the worst episodes of genocide in history.
What would it take to convince you that you are wrong meteorologist in research?
I didn’t see your reply. I’m proud of the scientific tradition and I haven’t been able to predict the trend of climate change. But we can talk about it. I have decades of experience predicting the Rossby waves.
Finally, the scientific method will be applied to the climate sciences. The overall goal is that we will no longer write the conclusion first (IPCC) but allow the valid data to modify the climate change theory.
The circumference of our planet is 24,000 miles and it is 72% covered with water. In the Marianna trench of the Pacific, the ocean is so deep that if you placed Mt Everest on the bottom there would still be a mile of water above its peak.
On the oceans’ floors there are tectonic plates; always moving, dipping beneath or rubbing against each other causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions of CO2.
Ocean currents and tsunamis bring vast volumes of water of ever-changing temperatures to all parts of the world.
The temperature of the earth’s crust is determined by the radioactivity of some of its elements. At +30,000 feet the earth’s atmosphere is colder than a bank manager’s handshake.
Where do the climate change scientists put thermometers to take the planet’s temperature with 0.5 degree accuracy?
Next to roads, carparks, airports, and in deserts.
I think we should track the trends not the temperatures.
How do you propose to track trends without data about the thing for which you are trying to track the trend of?
How do you propose to track trends if you are using garbage data (IE readings contaminated by the issues Greg mentioned)?
Again, I didn’t see your posts. We monitor waves at 30,000 feet.
“Toe” the line, as in “to carefully place your toes right on the line” in exact obedience, like at the start of a race.
Not to “tow” the line, like a boat pulling a rope.
It is helpful to remember that the AGW movement started out with politically motivated deception and suppressing opposing viewpoints. Hence the harsh criticism of any who fail to toe that line.
‘ comply with DQA requirements.’ Yes Sir.
The problem is that we let them sell us bad science before in the ozone hole episode because we fell for the fear factor used to sell it. The same tactics are now being replayed but it’s harder this time around only because the cost of compliance is higher.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/03/12/ozone1966-2015/
I’ll say it again and again…
The Climate Change scammer’s Achilles Heel are the hand-tuned AOGCM outputs. Everything in the climate change alarmism is dependent on an alarmist picture produced with subjective parameter tuning of the water and water vapor physics in the models.
The failure to observe in satellite and radiosonde data the CMIP3/5 AOGCM predicted tropical, mid-troposheric hot spot is damning indictment of the failure of the IPCC model ensemble to adequately predict future warming quantification. For 20+ years, the authors of the NCA and the IPCC WG1 reports have tried to hand-wave away this failure. But now it is a clear failure of model prediction which can no longer be ignored by the science community hat seeks objective truths of nature.
But the IPCC treats the future predictions out to 80+ years of the AOGCM ensemble as if were a truth and hard data. The continuation of the AOGCM CMIP process, with never ending tweaks, to find something that refuses to be found is now bordering on absurd. The AOGCM community’s efforts in this regard is an excellent example of Feynman’s Cargo Cult Science in its most vivid form.
As for the present, there is nothing to suggest that the current modern day, surface warming record:
1) isn’t well within the upper bounds of several multi-century periods of the last 4,000 years based on paleoclimate proxies (Greenland Norse colonies and MesaVerde Chaco-culture agriculture of the MWP as anecdotal examples) despite attempts to claim to the contrary,
2) is mostly a natural warming rebound from the LIA (the coldest 400 year period of the last 11,000 years, with some probably minor anthropogenic-CO2 and land-use change component,
3) a record artifact to a large degree of Urban Heat Island contamination since the 1950’s,
4) has an effect from the loss of rural stations in the GHCN which allows artificial and dubious model infilling to the instrumental record,
5) and has substantial adjustment bias on homogenization, where the bulk effect of the adjustments always go in the same direction, that is, making the past appear cooler and the present warmer with each new published adjustment.
It is far past time to end the Climate Hustle, and begin repairing the ethical and reputational damage that alarmist rhetoric climate scientists (many with clear records of a specific policy activism in their fields) are imparting on all of science.
Yep, most likely a negotiating tactic, but Trump proposing a $5 Billion reduction in the NIH budget. Will real scientists put together how the climate science f-word is affecting all of science (not that the NIH couldn’t use the trimming of some fat – speaking from experience(s), including one today).
NIH funding plays effectively zero role in maintaining the climate hustle.
It’s the NSF spending priorities that this the real culprit. I wouldn’t reduce it. I would just direct it away from climate modelling activities to hard physics and astronomical physics. All that climate monies in the NSF budget should go to gravitational wave observatories, optical -and radio-astronomy, particle physics, solid-state physics, condensed-matter physics, etc.
You misunderstood me. The disdain for crap climate science is spreading across all science and its scientists, whether or not it/they have anything to do with “climate”. Since they haven’t stood up against the pollution of the scientific method, it was a train wreck waiting to happen. Wake up publically-funded scientists – you have had a cancer growing in you for decades now.
Joel O’Bryan
All good points, when understood as you meant. You have left yourself open to misquotation, however – double negatives are always fun. You start your list with ‘there is nothing to suggest…’; your first point starts ‘isn’t’, which keeps the meaning; the rest get grammatically lost, and all literally mean the opposite of what you are trying to say.
I have supervised too many dissertations.
Yours warmly, a sad pedant.
I would hope that the first thing he, or rather his boss, Pres. Trump should
do, is to send out a letter, e mail etc. to all of the government scientists doing
studies into climate matter , asking if they agree that the Science on this matter
is indeed ” Settled” ?
Because if so, and we hear it said all of the time, then that scientist should be dismissed, or at least moved to some other worthy field of study.
If to retain their job he or she says no, then they should be told to find
the natural causes of CO2 production, plus how do thy tell the difference
between a Molecule of CO2 from say a power station , to one from a
bog.
I am pleased that the President is finally doing this, as its long over due
for the Federal Government to counter all of the “Fake ” facts from
the wealthy Climate Lobby.
What about some “Propaganda” from the Federal Government to counter
that from the Climate Lobby.
MJE VK5ELL
“Toeing the line9, not “towing the line”.
The adherence to the The Data Quality Act (DQA) or Information Quality Act (IQA), passed through the United States Congress in Section 515 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2001 could go a long ways to ensuring those who are either adjusting or manipulating data have to be able to prove that the data was collected and processed with honesty and not some ulterior motive that appears to be the case in so many instances.
I can think of a lot of people who would be convicted of outright lying and falsification of data to outright rigging their field of study to ensure they get continued access to funding to continue their study. It is bad enough that so many of these ‘peer’ pal reviewed science papers on global warming/climate change are just straight up word salad now with pre-planned escape qualified clauses like may, might, could, should etc, while presenting no credible evidence that can be repeated. But the ones who set out to deliberately mislead science by manufacturing data are guilty of crossing that threshold from junk science to criminal science, and should be prosecuted as such. When the law is upheld and applied to these charlatans of science who chose to misrepresent it, then we will see a change in this quality of honestly collected data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Quality_Act
Open comment to President Trump.
Dear Sir,
You will be out of office soon and unless you destroy the greens and global warming con artists now by eliminating all programs they rely on the democrats will just fill the coffers up when they are back in power. We have no time for a fair and balanced analysis. Zero everything out now.
Sincerely,
Internet Troll
The Best Outcome of the Review is:
Disestablishment and non-Funding of the National Science Bord.
Disestablishment and non-Funding of the National Academies of Science (Medicine, Science and Technology).
Disestablishment and non-Funding of the National Science Foundation.
With the disestablishment of the National Science Foundation would follow the incarceration of all NSF Program Officers and Administration “Officials and Staffs” for further processing of charges of criminal acts and high crimes and misdemeanors against the legal citizens of the United States of American, the most Hated Enemy of the National Science Foundation.
Ha ha ! 😀
Jolly Good!
Re: “Presidential Commission on Climate Security (PCCS)”
Dr. Happer might start by debunking linguistic constructs like “climate change” or “climate security”. Adjoining “security” with “climate” in ANY sense is a misinterpretation of reality painted by propagandists of the left to impress the gullible which presupposes the earth and its inhabitants can be secured against natural variation of climate. Co-opting the language has been the trademark of the these people. If he’s a scientist worth his salt, he will crush the loaded linguistic creations of the climate catastrophists. I pray for someone with Lindzen’s scientific literacy strip away the illusions and recast the entire discussion about climate in plain language using just enough science to embarrass the charlatans with their bumper sticker aphorisms and protest placard logic. Wish the man luck!
There is definitely major tampering of raw temperature data to keep global surface temp datasets within 2 standard deviations of CAGW’s hypothetical projections to avoid hypothetical disconfirmation.
This is best shown by NOAA’s graph (removed from their website in June 2017) showing the huge amount of warming added to raw temperature data from 1950~2000 (doesn’t include the Karl 2015 temp tampering):
Perhaps the best example of how GISTEMP and HADCRUT4 global temp anomaly datasets are being artificially manipulated upwards are their growing disparities compared to the UAH 6.0 and global Radiosonde datasets, especially given that most scientists agree the lower troposphere should be warming faster than surface temps as that is where most of the hypothesized downwelling LWIR CO2 Forcing is supposed to originate… not so much..
According to UAH 6.0 global temp anomalies, there hasn’t been a statistically signifant warming trend in 23 years, which should be impossible if CAGW were a viable hypothesis.
I hope Dr. Happer puts together excellent team of open-minded physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, and climatologists who can give an honest and fact-based assessment of the efficacy of the CAGW hypothesis.
“Doubling the carbon dioxide concentration will probably cause a warming of around 1 degree Celsius …”.
1C – 2C higher than it would otherwise have been without CO2 forcing.
“t President Donald Trump will soon form a Presidential Commission on Climate Security (PCCS) to objectively examine the science behind the oft-repeated claim humans are causing dangerous climate change.”
Only problem is they are going to set it up as an AD HOC committe not open or transparent or subject to the data quality act.
So no different that how climate science has been doing it all along. so what’s your beef? Afraid government money won’t be flowing to your door?
“In 2015, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) rushed into publication research announcing “the observational evidence related to a ‘hiatus’ in recent global surface warming” did not “support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.” This claim conflicted with every extant temperature data base, and the findings of many organizations worldwide, including the IPCC, that there had been a lengthy hiatus in global warming.
Along with more than 300 other scientists, Happer objected, noting in an article in Environment & Climate News that in the rush to get their findings published in time to influence the then forthcoming Paris Climate Agreement negotiations, NOAA’s researchers had violated the 2001 Data Quality Act (DQA).”
factually wrong.
“his claim conflicted with every extant temperature data base, and the findings of many organizations worldwide, including the IPCC, that there had been a lengthy hiatus in global warming.”
Nope.
Further
https://www.mitre.org/publications/technical-papers/assessment-of-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration
Relevant parts
“On June 26, 2015, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) published a manuscript in Science Magazine, “Possible Artifacts of Data Biases in the
Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus,” addressing the perceived decrease in the upward trend
of global surface temperatures. Based on a revised interpretation of the observational data for the
ocean, Karl, et al. (2015) (hereafter referred to as “the Karl Study”) concluded that “the rate of
warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th
century.” The paper was critiqued in a February 2017 blog posting written by former NOAA
employee, Dr. John Bates.
The Department of Commerce (DOC) engaged MITRE as an independent not-for-profit entity to
objectively assess the processes used to develop and publish the Karl Study. MITRE, which
operates federally funded research and development centers, has a 60-year history of leveraging
independent expertise in science and systems engineering to inform government decision
making. MITRE assembled a team of leading scientists from prestigious institutions to
collaborate with MITRE personnel to provide an objective analysis of all available information
relevant to this assessment. The teaming between MITRE and the assembled scientists will be
referred to as “the MITRE Committee.”
This report addresses the following tasks in the MITRE Statement of Work from the DOC:
• Task A: Assess NOAA’s scientific review process for assurance of unbiased decision
making when completing and publishing the Karl Study
• Task B: Assess the merits to Dr. John Bates’ complaints regarding the data and
conclusions made in the Karl Study
To perform Task B, the MITRE Committee examined the questions, criticisms, and concerns
regarding the Karl Study that were raised by Bates in a blog post dated February 4, 2017.
The MITRE Committee was also tasked with examining the adequacy of the following protocols
and whether they were followed adequately in the Karl Study:
• Procedures in place at NOAA to ensure the scientific integrity of work by its staff
• Mechanisms for internal review of manuscripts projected for external release
• Procedures for the classification of papers judged as “policy relevant” requiring either
appropriate disclaimers or stringent NOAA internal peer reviews
• Methods for selecting and applying the data used in the Karl Study
• Procedures to distinguish between the treatment and use of data developed for immediate
scientific release and data destined for inclusion in more-permanent archives
Sections 2 and 3 of this report are devoted to the MITRE Committee’s analysis and findings
regarding Tasks A and B and the additional assessment topics above tasked by the DOC.
Section 4 summarizes the MITRE Committee’s findings. The MITRE Committee was tasked to
provide recommendations, as appropriate, for changes in existing NOAA policies and procedures
to address its findings. Section 5 provides the MITRE Committee’s recommendations.”
“Information Quality Act Applicability
Federal (OMB) directives on information quality, stemming from the 2001 Information Quality
Act (IQA)12
, are the basis of the NOAA Information Quality Guidelines [14] dated October 30,
2014. These NOAA guidelines are complete and comprehensive. The NOAA guidelines repeat
the definitions of terms from the OMB Information Quality Guidelines [15], such as quality,
utility, objectivity, integrity, dissemination, influential, scientific information, scientific
assessment, reproducibility, and transparency.
The NOAA Information Quality Guidelines also reference the OMB Information Quality
Bulletin for Peer Review [16] and identify the need for more stringent peer review of
publications that are in influential categories (i.e., influential scientific information [ISI] and
highly influential scientific assessments [HISA]) as defined in the OMB bulletin. However, the
OMB guidelines make a specific exemption for scientific research published by agency
scientists:
By contrast, an agency does not “initiate” the dissemination of information when
a Federally employed scientist or Federal grantee or contractor publishes and
communicates his or her research findings in the same manner as his or her
academic colleagues, even if the Federal agency retains ownership or other
intellectual property rights because the Federal government paid for the
research. To avoid confusion regarding whether the agency agrees with the
information (and is therefore disseminating it through the employee or grantee),
the researcher should include an appropriate disclaimer in the publication or
speech to the effect that the ‘‘views are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the
view’’ of the agency. [15]
The NOAA Framework for Internal Review and Approval [17] dated April 4, 2013, which was
in effect when the Karl Study was conducted and published, did not reference the OMB Peer
Review Bulletin and did not mention ISI and HISA categories of publications.
However, the internal NOAA review of the Karl Study was conducted under the abovementioned exemption in the OMB Bulletin for Peer Review. Email exchanges among MITRE,
Patricia Geets Hathaway of the NOAA Scientific Integrity Office, and Tom Gleason of the
NOAA Office of General Counsel confirmed that this exemption to the OMB review procedures
is normally applied to internal reviews of papers to be submitted to peer-reviewed scientific
journals.”
‘Under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Guidelines [16] and the
2013 NOAA and Department of Commerce procedure documents for internal
review and approval of fundamental research communications (FRCs) [17],
research submitted for outside peer review may be exempt from the agency
review requirements of the Information Quality Act (IQA) if certain requirements
are met. Because the authors published the Karl Study in Science Magazine, and
not through NOAA, the OMB exemption was applied. However, the MITRE
Committee determined that the 2013 NOAA guidelines were ambiguous and not
clear on when the more stringent agency IQA review requirements should apply.
In 2016, NOAA updated the Framework for Internal Review and Approval to
reference the OMB exemption. While this new language is an improvement over
the 2013 NOAA guidance, it should be written more clearly and presented more
prominently in the guidance (see Finding #2 in Section 4).”
The biggest maistake they made?
‘Because the NOAA officials knew in advance of publication that the paper would
be influential, impactful, and controversial, the authors of the Karl Study should
have included a disclaimer in the paper to indicate that the views expressed in the
paper represented the opinions of the authors and, as indicated with the guideline
suggested in the NOAA Framework for Internal Review and Approval [17], that it
“did not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or the Department of Commerce.”
(see Finding #3 in Section 4).”
Bates blew the whistle however:
” The MITRE Committee believes the authors should have included this disclaimer in the paper,
particularly projecting the publicity that the paper was likely to receive as a function of
challenging the “hiatus” hypothesis. With appropriate foresight, this reaction should have been anticipated by Dr. Karl and Dr. Bates, and indeed was anticipated in Bates’ approval of the paper
(see Section 3.1). As the NOAA Approving Officer, Bates could have requested that the
disclaimer be applied before his approval of the paper, but he did not.”
‘The MITRE Committee learned that the internal review, later criticized by Bates, was conducted
and approved under his own authority. The MITRE Committee found no evidence that Bates
ever mentioned this fact in his blog, email, or anywhere else in his discussion of the matter in
public.”
Well, at first, Mr. Mosher, I wanted to thank you for posting more than your usual drive-by disagreement, but upon reading your response more thoroughly, I must conclude you only provided (apparently) copy and pastes of paragraphs where you only read the headline. The gist of your response seems to be that, MITRE (an entity that makes its living off government contracts, so possibly guilty of conflict-of-interest) found only that Dr Karl got off on a technicality. You published nothing to support Dr. Karl’s abuse of the data.
I may have more critique later, but right now I have an appointment to keep.
Yeah, a cut-n-paste. His drive-by hit and run posts are more informative.
So, they got around the data quality requirements basically because: 1) the paper was going into slam dunk pal review which has been par for the course of this whole climate play and 2) it actually was necessarily the views of NOAA.
Do you also feel that the 8 enquiries investigating the UEA scientists and colleagues such as Michael Man that came out of climategate were NOT whitewashes? Same principle. Actually one review by Wegman the statistician was sidetracked by accusations of plagiarism, not a robust defence of the points made by Wegman. And this is good enough?
He isn’t, due to his track record of payments from fossil fuel (coal) firms.
He is not independent.
https://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer
Griff, that’s weird.
Are you suggesting that solar PV promoters should not sit on the panel because they have been funded since the mid-eighties by Shell and BP? Of course you are.
No one who ever worked is “independent” according to your definition.
Worse, Desmogblog is so biased it is unworthy of citation for anything. The fact that an opinion is tolerated there is partial proof that it should not be believed without checking it against multiple other sources.
You will have to learn that calumniating is not a form of personal assessment. As a source of balanced viewpoints, Desmogblog fails the test of fairness. Similarly RealClimate stumbles repeatedly.
The point of creating this new body is to overcome these biases and to avoid the very sort of back-biting you just repeated. Everlasting sovereignty is achieved by having a pure, kindly and radiant heart.
None of the climate scientists are “independent” by that standard, since all of them depend on government grants to fund their lifestyles.
I was recently looking at a “Phylogenetic Tree of Dominant Hydrocarbon Degrading Microorgansisms” published in the September, 2016 issue of Oceanography. A whole page in very small print divided up into “Gaseous alkanes, n-alkanes, aromatics, PAHs, Crude Oil, etc.
Poor molecules don’t have a chance. A super-exponential increase in types known since biodegradation was discovered long before hydrocarbons were so toxic.
griff, for once, why don’t you tackle the science instead of attacking the man.
Unless of course you want to admit that you can’t refute his science.
All current and future government funding should be dependent upon the accessible release of all data and a script that produces the graphs/tables that are used to publish a paper.
No data, no funding.
You could even offer an amnesty, no more funding unless all of your past papers have their data and scripts released within 3 months from now.
Institutions could be judged and listed within a league table of offenders. Institutions that have data/scripts outstanding, receive no further project funding or block grants.
Simples.
No Data No Funding, so simple so obvious. Bring it on.
In the Netherlands, the government has gone crazy, they want to close all houses from natural gas in 30 years and only generate solar energy on wind panels and wind turbines, this will cost billions, hopefully Trump and Happer can change their minds here.
One day, down the road, there is going to be some pretty interesting reading of emails between all the Alarmists, during and after the announcement of the PCCS with Will Happer at the lead.
Hope I am around to read them!
Good Lord, marxist-loons have been appointed to these commissions for half a century now, but if ONE rational person is nominated, they lose their already lost minds.
Happer won’t have any difficulty slapping down NOAA’s ridiculous assertion that the 1980-2000 temperature trend continued unabated through 2018. It did not.
I expect to see Happer’s professionally crafted rebuttal (hopefully soon) here on WUWT…but I don’t expect the general public to hear much if anything about it.
Then I’d like to see the NOAA fraudsters dismissed for their fraudulent report….but I NEED to see them dismissed or fired for incompetence at least. Government Sponsered Fake Science needs some push back from somewhere…but with (apparently) 95% of scientists feeding at the trough that will continue to be a tough battle…even with Happer working to disseminate the truth.
I’d like to see climate research funding reformed. So that there are 2 bodies. One to fund climate science and another to fund climate modeling; with science getting 90% of climate research funds and modeling 10%, or less.
I think climate alarmism is a consequence of employing so many modelers who put no brakes on speculation and have little real relationship to science. I, further, suspect that journals reward the most innovative modelers by publishing the most “newsworthy” model articles.