Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Krishna Gans / NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat; New boss appointed, immediately receives an email from an employee telling him what he is allowed to do. Employment terminated.
Top NOAA scientist is removed from his position after he asked new Trump-appointed staff to adhere to the agency’s integrity policy that bans changing research data to fit political agenda
- NOAA acting chief scientist Craig McLean was removed from his position in September
- McLean was forced to step down from his role after emailing new Trump appointees about the agency’s ethics policy, according to a NYT report
- The NOAA scientific integrity policy prohibits fabrication, falsification, or the manipulation of research data to fit a political agenda
- McLean’s email drew a sharp response from Erik Noble, the agency’s new Trump-appointed chief of staff
- Noble the following morning informed McLean he would no longer serve as the agency’s acting chief scientist
- He was replaced by Dr Ryan Maue, a climate change critic and former researcher for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank
By KAREN RUIZ FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 01:35 AEDT, 29 October 2020 | UPDATED: 23:00 AEDT, 29 October 2020
The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s top scientist has been removed from his position after he asked new Trump-appointed staff to acknowledge the agency’s scientific integrity policy, according to a new report.
Craig McLean, the agency’s acting chief scientist, was dismissed from his role last month shortly after sending an email to the new political appointees, including former White House adviser Erik Noble, the New York Times reported.
McLean had reportedly asked them to respect the NOAA’s scientific integrity policy which prohibits fabrication, falsification and manipulation of research data driven to fit a political agenda.
…
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8888735/Trump-administration-fires-NOAA-scientist.html
NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat points out that, by their own now AWOL published numbers (see top of page), NOAA’s temperature records have been subject to some intriguing and substantial hockey stick shaped data manipulations over the years, a practice which apparently continued on Craig McLean’s watch.
Update (EW): Just to clarify, McClean’s employment as chief scientist was terminated, as far as I know he still works for NOAA.
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Insufficient data to comment.
Well said. It’s impossible to tell what happened here from the conflicting information, for example:
Not sure how that clarifies. It confuses.
Did NOAA have a legitimately honest “data integrity” policy or can it be demonstrated that it was itself designed to politicize and give the appearance of being neutral? No evidence is presented and the graph, without explanatory background or a useful legend, is unhelpful.
It’s impossible to understand from this breathless post what the big deal is. I had to go to the post on NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat to get a better grasp and it’s still not crystal clear. Better writing, please.
Really? He was removed as acting chief scientist for pretending he needed to tell his boss that massaging data is unscientific.
Resumes his previous role.
Unfortunately
Pretty much anywhere besides bureaucracy:
Employee goes full “rules lawyer” on the new manager on his first day → fired
Linked to in the above article is “Not a Lot of People Know That”.
The last paragraph of the linked NotALotOfPeopleKnowThat article:
Yes, I was also wondering why Trump waited until the eve of the election to do some cleansing.
ROFL, that has not been a problem for the last 30 years, why is it a problem now ? OH, wrong agenda !
“Yes, I was also wondering why Trump waited until the eve of the election to do some cleansing.”
So many Swamp Critters, so little time.
A lawyer is not a scientist, and certainly not a “chief scientist”. Never should be in the position in the first place.
There is no proof that he wasn’t about to lose his position as acting chief scientist, regardless of the email.
Exactly Robert B.
Acting Chief Scientist McLean’s detail (temporary assignment) is terminated.
That immediately returns McLean to his regular position.
If McLean’s regular position works for the Chief Scientist, then McLean just signaled to the Chief that he bears close watching and special attention to job description, performance and review.
If McLean does not work for the Chief Scientist (likely), he indicates some of corruption’s extent.
One should be suspicious if the legal department is controlling ethics, internal honesty and alarmism.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RAW AND FINAL USHCN DATA SETS
1900 – 1999 (Final minus Raw)
Seems a pretty useful legend for the graph, to me.
Sounds like another democrat trying to do the opposite. Up is down, down is up.
Orwellian, for sure: Integrity means clever, lawyerly lying. Typical of progressives.
A clear colorless gas that we breathe out and which underpins all life on Earth is…..pollution!
Curious George
November 1, 2020 at 6:08 pm
Even with little data there.
Seems clearly more like how a new boss in his right mind should approach a clear case of narcissism.
Fast sharp clear and with no any regrets.
“You are fired”… the only working solution or remedy for narcissism, sociopathy or the worse,
psychopathy… in a work place or a business of any kind.
In such cases the rest makes no difference or has no any value whatsoever really, either in opinion
or propaganda.
cheers
whiten
More or less agree, except these rats never actually get, you know, “fired”. They just get moved from one rat hole to another, still accruing pension benefits.
Net change = exactly zero
ps: Am I the only one wondering why a lawyer was the “acting chief scientist”? Has anybody ever seen a scientist as the “acting chief legal counsel”?
ROFL.
Excellent question.
Sounds like insubordination to me. No other reason for such a request comes to mind.
Curious George wrote, “Insufficient data to comment.”
One of the biggest problems in climatology and politics (which are too often the same thing) is people pretending to know things that they do not know. I have no problem with someone saying, “I do not know.”
https://archive.is/MlOiz#selection-3467.9-3469.1
https://youtu.be/8eDYVtPwWiM?t=43
That said, there’s no question that some people at NOAA have been substituting political activism for science. That I do know.
Great to hear that Dr Maue has a GS-14/15 level job and the climate scammers embedded deep inside NOAA/NCDC should be worried. They can only hope Trump loses to Dementia Joe and the Marixists. Otherwise, it’s climate scam game-over.
I doubt the climate scam game will ever be over.
Unfortunately, you are probably correct.
you’re right….Ryan is not the big critic he’s played up to be
GS15?
If Dr. Maue is taking the Chief Scientist role of Hansen, then he will be in the SES ‘Senior Executive Service’ ranks, likely signing a negotiated contract.
That McLean was a lawyer acting in the Chief Scientist position provides evidence that the job is SES level, not administrative staff.
So NOAA has a policy in place to ban fudging numbers and it has been fudging numbers for years?
Great alibi.. “We don’t fudge no numbers because we have a policy in place to prohibit fudging numbers.” Classic.
I dont know.. Zeke makes some good arguments for the NOAA adjustments:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-data-adjustments-affect-global-temperature-records
Cheers,
LoN
Wow, that’s the most thorough and sober presentation I’ve seen of that side of the story. I’d really like to see a calm and responsible debate on this subject.
The pristine gold standard USCRN network shows zero warning since 2005.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn¶meter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2005&endyear=2020&month=9
This fact exposes much of the trucker employed by Zeke and others.
He cites the land-ocean temperature record, because the ocean temperatures are mostly made up before 1950, and he talks global averages because many global stations are equally bad.
Look at the best, high quality air temp data from the continental US, and the story changes. The raw data trends are consistent over time, and the ham handed time of observation adjustments are mostly bunk and assume that all station volunteers were morons.
The better the data quality, the fewer adjustments, the less warming you see, which is why the party is over with USCRN producing multi decade flatlines.
If anything the more recent temps need to be adjusted down not up to allow for increase UHI effect due to encroaching development on the location of the temperature stations.
Zeke’s explanations for adjustments are indeed credible. But the following is an example of why there remains a valid skeptical take on adjustments. Zeke mentions Karl’s 2015 paper adjusting buoy vs ship data. He states that this paper has “has since been validated by other studies.” Karl explicitly presented his 2015 paper as addressing the much-discussed hiatus, “These results do not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.”
So, here is the important question: If the prospective temperature record had instead been tracking the models closely, would Tom Karl have gone through the same process of retrospectively discovering and correcting “artifacts of data biases” in the NOAA temperature record? Would he have published the same results in a paper in 2015? Is there a risk here of post hoc data adjustments that are biased in one direction, even if the adjustment procedure is done correctly in any given instance?
That’s actually a lie but if you must believe you’ll believe.
Doesn’t agree with the published record of the data manipulations.
Meteorology & Climate Science are the only fields that allow “adjusting” raw data. They just are real science. And it is why their models don’t work.
The zeke should not mind proving why, in court.
“So NOAA has a policy in place to ban fudging numbers and it has been fudging numbers for years?”
Yes, that’s the case.
Ironic, isn’t it.
Contemptible is probably a better description. Contemptible, and extremely damaging to human society, on many fronts.
NOAA paying homage to data protection while at the same time bastardizing the global temperature record, is like Joe Biden saying he will bring us all together, when Biden is the one dividing everyone with his hateful rhetoric.
Hypocrits and Liars all.
It is Federal law to falsify or misrepresent data.
Bosses and their flunkys have been fired and occasionally prosecuted for falsifying data in other Federal Agencies and Departments.
The real question is why the relevant Inspector General has not written up NOAA “adjustments” and NOAA “misrepresentations” and forwarded their findings to Department Of Justice for prosecution?
It would be sweet for the wheels of Justice to catch up with the miscreants, all of the miscreants who falsify Federal data, adjust or delete inconvenient sensors and data, play statistical fallacies in their programs, etc.
Excellent!
So was he asking these new employees to acknowledge a policy that he was nor following? Or is the implication that the new employees are manipulating data?
That’s the implication that the “report” wants to make. The actual truth probably varies.
I look at it this way….. an employee dared to tell the boss how to do his job while implying the new guy might not be completely unbiased. New guy is new, and the boss. What would happen in your job if they hired a new boss and you lectured him on how to do his or her job? You would have a short future with that company for sure. Add the fact that new guy is an appointee of the President of the United States. Discretion is ofter the better part of valor. If you don’t agree with the boss in a political arena, you’d best keep your mouth shut and find a new do-nothing job.
From what I surmise, the email was preemptive. It’s a tactic sometimes done by an “irreplaceable” employee to browbeat the new boss into submission.
It only works if the employee is truly irreplaceable (usually not the case), or the owner’s idiot kid – otherwise it’s a quick way to the unemployment line.
Patrick:
Or if you are covered under Civil Service protections: the boss can’t fire you. The boss might be able to reassign you though. Sounds to me like that is what happened in this case.
To truly drain the swamp would require draconian changes to federal civil service rules: very unlikely!
Projection. Typical. Ever so slowly the tide is turning and the deep states top operatives being taken out. This is a part of the reason why they are so afraid of a Trump win. Word is Trump is really going to start to clean house after his reelection. He knows the lay of the land much better now and as after winning a 2nd term there is little to stop him.
So prepare to hear stuck pigs screaming night and day for four solid years.
So what cheese goes with that whine? I had better stock up!
Do felons and treasonous employees still get their fat pensions? Can these be reduced or taken away if a clear case can be made of fraudulent politically motivated manipulation?
Several years ago during an election campaign in the fiefdom of Saanich BC, the Chief Administrative Officer was disparaging of a candidate for mayor, the CAO was saying things to staff.
The candidate became the new mayor, beating the incumbent in the election.
New mayor had a discussion with the CAO, who unfortunately had a golden parachute clause in his contract.
Future contracts are apparently written better for the municipality.
Let’s hope transparent explanations for any adjustments or homogenization of raw data is forthcoming.
Your “hope” is accurate, but incomplete. Adjusting raw data can be an important scientifically accurate tool, PROVIDED the adjustments are noted, reproduceable, and complete. The raw data and final data must be readily available and comparable. The so-called “scientists” at NOAA and NASA have generally failed at this for decades, in my opinion.
Exactly! Scientists use this info in studies of various things, mostly on a local or regional basis. If the data has been changed from the original raw data in order to meet some other requirement, i.e. homogenization, these scientists need to know this in order to accurately assess what is happening.
Studies of local phenomena that have used modified data to reach a conclusion should be withdrawn and redone with raw data.
Another iffy dimension to homogenization which is highly likely concerns station moves. A station move for good reason, like encroachment of city development influencing temperature is necessary. One should set up the new station and run both for 5 years to “homogenize” and I believe they once did this. But, I noticed that in every case without exception that temperature records questioned for showing cooling in the face of the hype on warming, the reply by Stokes and others was always, “yeah, but there was a station move”.
I began to suspect that station moves had become a degree of freedom exploited by fiddlers. Attention to this as a tool for enhancing warming where stations stubbornly are cooling should be considered in the big reset that has to occur.
Do you know that in antitrust cases against corporations where colluding on price fixing, predatory prices and other unfair trade practices is suspected, that a meeting having taken place between two corporations CEOs in an industry is sufficient evidence for a guilty finding. If there is an opportunity to do so, that is enough to assume things were rigged. Like highly incentivized climate alarmists, bottom line business men are tempted all the time.
Great first impression Numbnuts.
Yeah. It’s best to be absolutely certain that one is truly irreplaceable before testing that quality out upon the boss.
“Prohibits fabrication, falsification and manipulation of research data..”
Headlines quoted clash.
The problem has been is that the G’ment climate agencies have been altering the raw data.
For political reasons.
Maybe the reason is not political. Maybe it is for another reason(s). The fact that certain politicians also see a pork barrel that needs emptying annually, does not make any agency “partisan”. They may simply be greedy.
The “trick” tried was to get the incoming guy to agree not to tamper with data (reverse changes already implemented) so they can say correcting it was a political act.
Tony Heller has provided excellent presentations on the adjustments made. NASA is changing the temperatures to line up the temperature with CO2 concentration. That will be very difficult from this year because no stretch can paper over the drop.
I suspect the real reason is an agenda that is larger than one political party. This level of science scam is international.
+1
This why we need a Free Press, First Amendment and amnesty for whistle-blowers.
Eric,
The heading is misleading as well as the news story. McLean was not fired. He is a former NOAA Corps officer and now as a civilian, one of the Assistant Administrators that run NOAA’s main offices. He oversees the Office of Ocean and Atmospheric Research, a position in which he has done an outstanding job. For many years. He was asked not long ago to also serve as the Acting Chief Scientist. In that role, he sent that email that should have been responded to with just a “Thanks for the information!” There was no demand to adhere to any agenda. It was just a heads up of the agency’s science integrity policy.
In this case, Noble comes across as a petty, thin-skinned, political appointee that has no place in a government agency. Removing him from an acting position is really a meaningless gesture which McLean more than likely welcomed. Now he can go back to doing his real job.
Thanks for clarifying. The BS gets deeper and deeper.
McLean as a lawyer had NO business as NOAA chief scientist. Plenty of qualified PhDs there to fill that role.
No doubt Craig McLean is probably happy that he can go back to counting fish now, which is NOAA’s less well known job. Career government GS jobs like he has are supposed to be easy 9-5 M-F affairs, with plenty of paid time-off and sick days, with a great pension and healthcare into retirement and no political drama.
Joel, you re right that McLean was “a lawyer” in that he had a Juris Doctor degree. He started out with a BA (not BSc) in Zoology and worked on oceanographic related issues for NOAA. Then something changed, as he went back to school and got the JD. Reading his biography it becomes more activist and less sort of a scientist as his career goes along. The final chapter, for now, clearly shows he had become an environmental activist. My interpretation is that he became a swamp creature who attempted to control the narrative of a new supervisor in inappropriate ways, which met resistance.
“My interpretation is that he became a swamp creature who attempted to control the narrative of a new supervisor in inappropriate ways, which met resistance.”
That’s my impression, too. He was putting Trump Climate Deniers on notice not to manipulate the NOAA manipulated data in order to disprove the Human-caused Climate Change claim.
+1
Career government GS jobs like he has are supposed to be easy 9-5 M-F affairs, with plenty of paid time-off and sick days
Plenty of on-line porn viewing during working hrs too.
Do you often send your boss e-mails questioning his/her professional integrity? I’m fairly confident that you wouldn’t get a “Thanks for the information” from your boss if you did that, and might find yourself getting fired (and if you are in private industry that would be real fired, not government fired aka reassigned.)
The e-mail “telling” his boss about the policy quite obviously was a veiled insult reminding him that McLean was really in charge and that he shouldn’t try to change what the man intended to do in his job as acting Chief Scientist. And he did send a follow up e-mail asking on what authority he offered this “reminder”. And was told “It’s my job as Chief Scientist.”… which given that he was talking to his BOSS screams crazy train. That is when he fired him. Blatant insults and insubordination aren’t normally tolerated by a new boss.
“Do you often send your boss e-mails questioning his/her professional integrity?”
And being published in newspapers all over the world no less.
In any companies I worked in, including NGOs, small companies and large corporations, this would be grounds for immediate dismissal. You would also have big problems being hired afterwards, as admitting to conflicts with your higher ups is a black mark on any job interview. And people do ask former employees for opinion.
Sending such an email is corporate sabotage – and no matter how much skilled a sabotager is, firing him will only improve a company.
“Do you often send your boss e-mails questioning his/her professional integrity?”
Nobody with any sense does. Unless you have a bigger agenda, like virtue signalling to your fellow Alarmists.
Da K: An email like that to new bosses is an insolent inférence that because they are Trump appointees they have the clear intention to screw the data for political purposes.
Your certainty that this fellow has done a wonderful job needs more than your “feelings” in this area. What would you say about Karl’s creating a pretext and paper to get rid of the 18yr pause in temperature. He had argued when it was already pausing for 15 years that only after 17yrs would it cast doubt on the theory. When it went 18, he Karlized it out of existence as his last act before retirement – took one for the team so to speak.
Those of we critics and sceptics who are concerned scientists, engineers and statisticians have been following and critiquing the bad science, statistical chicanery and politically serving manipulations of the temperature and other atmospheric
and oceanic records around the world. NOAA and GISS of NASA are among the most culpable. Climategate emails released by an insider should have put an end to this agenda driven malpractice.
The game is basically up for these guys and life support for the Paris ‘agreement and other UN néomarxiste ambitions has basically been unplugged. If the US stands down, the world stands down.
“Those of we???” Those of US–because the pronoun is an indirect object. If you are uncertain of the grammar, I recommend you stick to colloquial expressions. Uneducated mistakes are more socially acceptable than half-educated mistakes.
mikesmith — shouldn’t there be a “space” between mike and smith? Also it is normal convention to capitalize the first letter of proper names.
Sorry mike, your wrong. It’s probably a bit complicated for you and it’s my fault. I added “Those of” afterwards for precision. Sometimes writing quickly we paint ourselves into a grammatical corner. It is the subject. Take off the “Those of” and re-read and the subject becomes clear (I hope). Also try: “We critics have been following and critiquing…
I’m not an American by the way. Your error wouldn’t make you so foolish had you been more polite about it.
Bullshit man! He deserves what he’s got. You don’t patronise your boss y sending him whatever policies. That not his job.
You need to be informed of the posting policy on WUWT, no abusive language allowed.
You’re welcome.
I have family members that work for NOAA, Da’Kat’s take doesn’t match their opinions.
NOAA has a long history of fudging the numbers and McLean was in implying that a Trump appointment would NEED to be told not to fudge the numbers the wrong way.
Really? I would have done the same, or at least had the guy in for a lesson on chain of command.
NOAA acting chief scientist Craig McLean is saddened by the fact that all that data manipulation he oversaw is going away. Hurts.
We need a “Like” button! 🙂
Dr Maue is a great choice, solid data guy.
Mike,
I do agree with you on this one. He will be a much better fit for Chief Scientist than McLean.
BTW, should clarify that on my earlier post I’m not defending the data manipulators. However, those are not on McLean’s shop.
I agree. Bringing integrity back to NOAA climate data. I hope Ryan can get a 4 year tenure there to start cleaning house on the government Climate Charlatans.
Is there a way of unwinding the alterations to the datasets to better reflect reality, or are the datasets forever corrupted with their past politically-motivated manipulation?
As I stated above, it’s not just the data base, but the studies based on invalid data. Lots and lots of unwinding! Maybe more than can be admitted to by government employees. It would sure make the stuff hit the fan.
Lol@ur momisugly: Most data sets can be restored, perhaps except for Australia’s (BOM) and New Zealands (NIWA) where data may have been destroyed . There are ways to corroborate world data sets by comparing their raw data sets. When you do you learn that the far flung stations record the major world temperature events. For example Capetown, South Africa (and as it turns out, all of sub Saharan Africa longterm records look strikingly similar in pattern). Capetown:
United States:
Reykjavik Iceland:
Canada Greenland, Paraguay, Ecuador are all similar in the raw temp form (ie. as recorded by observers)
The guy sent his boss an email warning him not to falsify data. So, he was accusing the boss of even thinking about falsifying data. What an insult. In fact, it’s insubordination and sufficient grounds for immediate dismissal.
Yes, a color judgement that normalizes adversity. I’m surprised their bigotry didn’t evolve through protests, which seems to be the preferred means to occupy, intimidate, and cancel anyone who resists kneeling to the consensus.
Background on McLean, BA in Zoology to Lawyer to NOAA’s top scientist under the Obama Admin. So who is the political appointee here?
His bio:
Craig N. McLean was named January 21, 2015, to head the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He’s responsible for the agency’s research laboratories, climate program, National Sea Grant, and ocean exploration.
McLean was born August 21, 1957, and grew up on the Passaic River in Rutherford, New Jersey, at a time when the Passaic was too polluted to swim in. He began taking diving lessons at the age of 14 and soon performed decompression diving in order to explore deep-ocean shipwrecks. He worked on dive boats on weekends and when one client filmed the dumping of sewage, McLean took an underwater camera and recorded a sewage barge as it dumped a load on top of him.
He earned a B.A. degree in Zoology in 1979 from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While at Rutgers, he gained his first experience with the NOAA, sailing on a ship that was investigating sludge dumping and its effect on public health.
After college, McLean worked for a diving company for two years and helped create a nonprofit marine education program for urban students. He then joined the NOAA Commissioned Corps. He began what was to become his almost 25-year association with the Corps as a deck officer and diving officer on a hydrographic survey ship, mapping nautical charts. He then worked at the National Marine Fisheries Service, specializing in developing sustainable fish harvesting strategies. He was executive officer on the Albatross and captain of the NOAA’s largest fisheries ship, the 225-foot Gordon Gunter. He was also deputy director of the National Marine Sanctuaries Program.
McLean returned school to become a lawyer, earning his Juris Doctor from the Quinnipiac College School of Law in Hamden, Connecticut, and did additional studying at George Washington University, the University of Maryland, and Georgetown University Law Center.
As an attorney, McLean practiced marine resource law for NOAA, and provided legal advice in the NOAA General Counsel’s office. He prosecuted violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. He was also the lawyer and deputy for the National Marine Sanctuary System.
In 2001, McLean was chosen to be the founding director of the NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration. In 2003 and 2004, he directed NOAA expeditions to study the sunken remains of the R.S.S. Titanic.
In 2006, McLean was named deputy assistant administrator for programs and administration of NOAA’s OAR. He subsequently served in NOAA as executive officer of the National Ocean Service. Beginning in April 2010, McLean was OAR’s acting assistant administrator.
As a lawyer, he knew exactly what he was doing as well as the probable outcome. There is no doubt in my mind that this was a piece of politically motivated mischief by one of the swamp critters.
Drain the swamp.
McLean is an accomplished scientist. For a balance, this should be followed by background on Noble–
” Erik Noble, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Washington, DC
Dr. Erik Noble is the Senior Policy Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where he is the White House lead for data and Earth observations policy. He is a co-chair of the interagency U.S. Group on Earth Observations and co-lead for the cross-agency priority goal of Leveraging Data as a Strategic Asset. Prior to joining OSTP, Dr. Noble served as a Senior Policy Advisor for NOAA and the Acting Chief of Staff of NASA. Erik briefly worked as a data science professional in the financial industry and as a Post-Doc Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor in atmospheric science at the City College of New York before joining the government. He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the University of Colorado while conducting numerical modeling research at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. He also earned an M.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado and a B.S. in Meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University.”
“McLean is an accomplished scientist…
(I’m actually belly laughing at that one… so …LOL)
Consensus science and government agendas value lawyer-scientists.
Real science… not so much.
(Thanks for catching that, Joel.)
My take so far is that this email was a ruse to try to protect the present manipulated data-set, and make Noble into ‘just a political appointee’ who could be accused of ‘falsifying’ already-falsified data if he tried to get them back to the real measurements. Noble saw through it–quite possibly because he’s an atmospheric scientist and not a lawyer with an Arts degree in Zoology–whatever that is, possibly someone who draws detailed pictures of a virus for which there are actually only fuzzy poor-resolution real SEM images?
Len: Good catch, BA and not a BS in Zoology. As a retired lawyer with an undergrad BS degree In Ch E, I understand your point. The science is more difficult for a BS. However, McLean was not required to do science in his position, just give legal advice (which he did). The problem is that he did it for no apparent reason, unsolicited. Obviously with the presumption that the new leadership would make changes McLean would not like and with the implication that it would involve unethical acts. I would probably have canned his @ss like Noble did.
Thanks for this data on Dr Nobel’s background.
Anyway, I don’t see anything here but the confirmation that Dr Noble is more trained as a scientist particularly in the field of data and atmospheric science than McLean, a lawyer with a BA in zoology.
My personnal take on this is that, as a French engineer (Ecole Centrale de Paris), I can hardly believe that one with such a poor scientific background as McLean got hired as a chief scientist of any French administration without a political agenda in mind.
Anyone appointed to a politically sensitive position will have his/her political suitability considered as the prime criterion. A few relevant professional qualifications may be desirable, even necessary, but the powers-that-be want someone ‘reliable’.
I have no doubt that Mr McLean seemed adequately qualified at the time.
Remember that the same could then be said of Dr. Noble.
According to his bio, McLean began as an activist and served as an ocean-going pollution cop. He later became an activist lawyer in the Deep State.
How does a lawyer with no atmospheric science background become chief scientist of NOAA?
Good at counting fish I suppose. NOAA’s less well-known job.
RMS Titanic – Royal Mail Ship.
McLean was forced to step down from his role after emailing new Trump appointees about the agency’s ethics policy, according to a NYT report
…
intriguing and substantial hockey stick shaped data manipulations over the years, a practice which apparently continued on Craig McLean’s watch
Follow my religion… So, McLean is a bigot, probably Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, politically congruent. Here’s to mitigating progress.
A 0.75 degree adjustment upward of the temperature record above the raw data is more than a fudge or even adjustment. It is a hockey stick sized fabrication intended to keep the whole wonky show on the road..
McLean subscribes to diversity dogma (i.e. color judgment and exclusion), and as a diversitist, he colored people following his ideological bent, notably in the manner of a Rainbow spectrum, exclusive of black, brown, and taking gay pride in the shredded remains of white. This is a progressive condition in the workplace, in our society, which cannot be tolerated, let alone normalized.
Not about the e-mail. In September, McLean complained that he didn’t like a press release:
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting chief scientist said in an email to colleagues Sunday that he is investigating whether the agency’s response to President Trump’s Hurricane Dorian tweets constituted a violation of NOAA policies and ethics. Also on Monday, the director of the National Weather Service broke with NOAA leadership over its handling of Trump’s Dorian tweets and statements.”
…
“As a result, McLean told his staff that “I am pursuing the potential violations of our NOAA Administrative Order on Scientific Integrity.””
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/09/09/noaas-chief-scientist-will-investigate-why-agency-backed-trump-over-its-experts-dorian-email-shows/
So, a non-scientist, appointed bureaucrat criticised the agency’s actions by other officials above his pay grade, kicked off an even greater public controversy, and is replaced in position (not a job loss, but a loss of status that could have caused his resignation) by someone which a degree, with whom McLean (and the author’s editor) doesn’t agree with on policy. Just another day in the swamp.
A political bureaucrat isn’t entitled to both his public facing position and a vociferous contrary ( to the prevailing wind ) opinion. Sorry. Maybe if he was a real scientist…
“…according to a NYT report…”
There’s the problem.
In recent correspondence with Environment Canada regarding their criteria for Heat vs Cold alerts, the responder indicated in the exchange that “Globally, heat causes more deaths than cold.”. Since this contradicted what I had been told by other sources, I went looking for a source and found it in a paper that described the differences between NOAA indicating heat caused more deaths and the CDC indicating that cold caused more deaths. The two being at exact odds with each other. The paper pointed to the different databases used and criteria used in each. The NOAA seemed to use a source that included newspaper stories in its data collection. I also saw the Lancets publication of a study of 13 countries and over 74 million deaths which also came to the “cold causes more deaths”..That was my first indication that the NOAA is probably pushing an agenda.
Nowhere was it stated that employees couldn’t REMOVE politically based mal-adjustments by previous AGW zealots.
What puzzles me is that according to the CV quoted by Joel O’Bryan, McLean had experience as a deck officer /cum diving officer, but apparently gained no marine qualifications enabling him to serve as Master of a ship. Perhaps the NOAA is exempt from the normal requirements of the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW)?
“points out that, by their own now AWOL published numbers (see top of page), NOAA’s temperature records have been subject to some intriguing and substantial hockey stick shaped data manipulations over the years, a practice which apparently continued on Craig McLean’s watch.”
1. That is from one of the ancient versions of USHCN.
2. the methods used to make those adjustments are no longer used, replaced ages ago
3. USHCN is not used in global climate records ( since 2014 )
4. USHCN is not an official record anymore.
Jesus you guys are bad skeptics
Stephen Mosher still doesn’t know when to stop lying, I destroyed Nick Stokes lie over this very thing 3 years ago, you were there, you saw it. Stokes suddenly stopped replying when I showed the FTP link showing it was still being used and updated every day.
There is evidence that it is still being used to this very day, straight from the NOAA website:
“U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN)
The U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data are used to quantify national- and regional-scale temperature changes in the contiguous United States (CONUS). The USHCN is a designated subset of the NOAA Cooperative Observer Program (COOP) Network with sites selected according to their spatial coverage, record length, data completeness, and historical stability. ”
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/land-based-station-data/land-based-datasets/us-historical-climatology-network-ushcn
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Data Access
“U.S. HCN version 2.5 monthly data are available via ftp. Users are requested to cite the version number and timestamp of the dataset when USHCN v2.5 data are used for analysis (as well as Menne et al. 2009). Please see the “readme.txt” file in the v2.5 directory for information on downloading and reading the v2.5 data. Information about the processing of the USHCN v2.5 data is provided in the status.txt file. U.S. HCN Version 2 monthly data will continue to be updated through 2012 and will be available in static form thereafter; however, users are encouraged to make the transition to Version 2.5 as soon as possible.”
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ushcn/introduction
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FTP Link, that shows it is being updated EVERY SINGLE DAY!
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2.5/
They added some more bits of data and renamed it ClimDiv.
But as you say, USHCN still exist, even if mosh is ignorant of the fact.
And the data manipulations STILL CONTINUE.
At least they don’t use “regional expectations” like the WORST data does.
Question as always with mosh is……
Is he DELIBERATELY LYING ?
or just grossly ignorant !
Or both.
His reputation is now such that his comments are meaningless and irrelevant.
The more he lies, the more it has to be the former (or both). I find it hard to believe anyone can be “just grossly ignorant” on the scale of the drive-by English Major.
There is no such thing as 120 years of 50 million recordings from 1200 stations “becoming unofficial” or “ancient.” Instead, the USHCN RAW is the gold standard for answering the question “has there been any abnormal warming.” And … there has not:
http://theearthintime.com
Meanwhile, the “FINAL” of the USHCN is not direct measurement; it is a model, consisting of a temperature reconstruction from temperature measurements!!
Unless you can tell me that NOAA rewound the clock, went back to 1880 and established 2400 global weather stations with more “quality control” than USHCN and GHCN RAW, your dismissal of the true yardstick equates to the murder of history.
The mutilation of USHCN began in the HansenMann year of 1989, and includes the repression of 400 stations that had been reporting for 100 years. They have not stopped recording the temperature; they have simply been “officially” disappeared.
I hope the new Trump people can force NOAA to gather the blacklisted data from those 400 stations and restore them to USHCN.