News Brief by Kip Hansen — 5 March 2024 — 600 words/3 minutes
This is a true story.
Two guys in Colorado took advantage of certain type of crop insurance, as explained by U.S. Attorney Cole Finegan: ”One way the United States Department of Agriculture supports farmers and ranchers is by providing federal funding for crop insurance programs that pay indemnities when there is less than the usual amount of precipitation.” [ source ]
BBS news reports:
“The scheme was designed to benefit Jagers [and a fellow named Esch] through his crop insurance, the Rainfall Index Annual Forage Insurance Plan, which is one of several agriculture subsidies administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Federal Crop Insurance Program.
Federal crop insurance is typically sold through private insurance companies who are subsequently reimbursed by the federal government. The Rainfall Index plan covers annual crops and “is focused on the amount of precipitation, not on actual crop production,” as described by prosecutors in a case document. “This means that a farmer can receive a payment when precipitation is below the historical normal level even if the relevant farmland suffers no loss in productivity.”
In Colorado, this deals with “forage” — as in Annual Forage Insurance Program : “Historically, the term forage has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also used more loosely to include similar plants cut for fodder and carried to the animals, especially as hay or silage.” [ wiki ]
Paying indemnities means the US government pays farmers if it doesn’t rain enough – rainfall below average – based on the local rain gauges at Automated Surface Observing System stations regardless of actual crop yields. For these ranchers, if there is less rain, there will be less forage for their cattle, which means less growth, which means less weight when sold, which means less profit. At least that’s the idea.
It is as hard to make it rain less as it is to make it rain more.
But it was apparently easy to make it look like it rained less. Just jigger the rain gauges at the local ASOS.
“The group allegedly damaged rain gauges located in Springfield, Ordway, La Junta, Walsh, and Ellicott, Colorado, and others in Syracuse, Coolidge, and Elkhart, Kansas. Wires were cut, funnels to rain collectors were filled with silicone, holes drilled or punched in collectors, parts of collectors were disassembled, and objects such as cake pans or pie tins were placed over the gauges during rainstorms.” [ CBSNews ]
The US Attorney’s Office gives this version:
“The conspirators used various means and methods to tamper with the rain gauges. Mr. Esch covered gauges in southeastern Colorado with agricultural equipment and used other means as well, such as filling gauges with silicone to prevent them from collecting moisture, cutting wires on the gauges, or detaching and then tipping over the bucket that collected precipitation. Mr. Jagers typically used an agricultural disc blade to cover up a rain gauge in Lamar, Colorado. This tampering created false records making it appear that less rain had fallen than was the case.” [ source ]
To you and I, this might seem like a lot of work for a bit of crop insurance money – not so, the two were sentenced to sentenced to “pay a combined $3.1 million in restitution”.
Bottom Line:
Those are some real climate crooks.
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Author’s Comment:
Any time the government gives away money, there are some people out there who figure out a scam to get some of that money illegally.
“An Associated Press analysis found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding.” [ source ]
And yes, that means that the climate data, at least for precipitation in those areas, is not reliable for that specific time period.
Thanks for reading.
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U.S. GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM (USGCRP)
Global change encompasses a wide range of planetary- and regional-scale changes in the Earth’s natural and human systems. These changes involve atmospheric and ocean circulation and composition, the water cycle, biogeochemical cycles, land and sea ice, biological diversity, marine and terrestrial ecosystem health, resource and land use, urbanization, economic development, and more…
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That link is a few years old but you can get an idea of how many $Billions are being spent on the various aspects of “Climate Change” You can bet there are other scammers just as industrious as Jagers and Esch trying to pry loose big chunks of all that money.
“You can bet there are other scammers just as industrious as Jagers and Esch trying to pry loose big chunks of all that money.”
Like the promoters of wind and solar and the Universities that churn out drivel used to excite fear and keep the gravy train coming?
You kinda got to hand it to those guys. They were pretty resourceful.
True but only $3.1million? Absolute amateurs alongside Al Gore and the climate scammers of the big leagues!
technically ==> Yes, that is technically right. America has always been the land of opportunity . . . . $280 BILLION in fraudulent Covid claims….
They got caught because they were lazy and greedy, and in the end stupid.
They left evidence by using silicone, rather than a squirrel/birds nest material. They probably went out during the day, rather than the night rainfall events, to cover the gauges.
Passive/smart would have gotten them 70% less, but they would have been able to keep it.
DomM ==> Read the whole story, better yet, several versions of it….someone turned them in for the reward.
Amateur fraudsters are usually caught by their stupidity. Like telling someone untrustworthy about their schemes. Very much like sending a email to a colleague about hiding the decline…
Looking at the article, they and 2 unnamed others were doing the tampering but they can’t have been the only ones benefitting from this, surely? Wouldn’t other farmers in the area, seeing published low rain figures, put in claims as well? Wonder if they’ll be told to pay it back?
Next time NOAA wants to issue a press release showing increased drought conditions due to “global warming”, they will be sure to utilize the altered gauges to juice the results.
After all, they aren’t positive on what date the actual instrument damage first occurred.
pillage ==> No definite indication that the damaged weather stations have been repaired, or that other weather stations are being regularly inspected for sabotage.
I was just posting humorous snark.
I am hoping your serious reply is actually being addressed by the powers that be.
me too….
I fear you (and even we) hope in vain.
Don’t worry. All the intentionally altered data the stations provided will average out with the ones that weren’t.
doonman ==> CliSci “Magic of Averages”.
That’s funny! But it is the logic that climate “scientists” use.
Apparently the farmers involved are also skilled climate scientists. They have mastered the art of creating climate history out of nothing.
Andy ==> “the art of creating climate history out of nothing.” A necessary attribute for a certain types of climate scientist.
Yes, and no intent to slander the real climate scientists who do real science. Unfortunately the “market” is heavily slanted to propaganda.
There is at least 1 method of determining rainfall without using a rain gauge. My neighbor was (he’s now retired) selling a service to high water usage irrigation businesses (like golf courses). He used software that looked at publicly available doppler radar data to calculate rainfall over the specific land area. The software would automatically reduce irrigation when the radar indicated sufficient rain. His fee was a percentage of the water savings. He gave no indication of how accurate this information was, but similar methods could provide an indication of maintenance needs at rain gauge sites.
If they lived somewhere that got hit by a hurricane, they could say, “yeah we were hit by a hurricane, but all we got was the eye…”. And say it with a straight face!
johnesm ==> My wife and I sat out Hurricane Irene in North Carolina one year,on our sailboat. The “eye” thing is real, and real spooky. Blasted by hurricane winds from one direction and then….nothing, calm and blue sky directly above….then wham! wind from the other direction.
We were very fortunate to have found a tiny marina which made a wonderful hurricane hole, just north of Beaufort in the ICW.
My folks live in Durham, so they’re safely inland, but I have to give the Iron Stomach Award to the folks on the Outer Banks living in those houses up on stilts. As Austin Powers would say, “that’s not my bag, baby”…
In a good stiff 175 mph breeze, do those houses on stilts quake and roll and shake and pitch and plunge and yaw and shimmy just a like a boat on the high seas?
Climate pikers. How about ‘stealing’ real US government climate dollars?
Ivanpah $660 million Concentrated solar
Solyndra $539 million. CIGS PV
A123 $249 million. nanoLiFeP battery
Heck, even Proterra at only $10 million was 2.6x more.
Rud ==> So far, nobody beats the pandemic fraudsters….
True. It took Biden less than a year to create the massive opportunity.
Winners of the Michael E Mann award for novel methods of data gathering…
strat ==> Good one!
Government allocating subsidies is probably the least desirable form of help. My concern is where were the people responsible for monitoring and maintaining these sites? Looks like more crappy government work.
Bob ==> Yes, I’ll have to look into the question of site inspection and maintenance….is it done regularly, on a schedule? Done only when data is checked programmatically or manually? Only when data looks problematic? Is it done at all?
Why must you repeat yourself?
One way the United States Department of Agriculture supports farmers and ranchers is by providing federal funding for crop insurance programs that pay indemnities when there is less than the usual amount of
precipitationperspiration.
Fixed it.
oeman50 ==> Cute. Farming is hard work, as is ranching. Smaller farms are harder work for less profit. Most of the farmers, dairymen and shepherds I knew in the Mohawk Valley of New York also held other full-time jobs out of necessity. Very few managed with just their farm income. The shepherd was the only exception — he had little local competition.
When I worked at Ft Polk, LA many of my co-workers had farms. It was fun to watch the guy hurry home in order to fertilize a pasture before dark. Or another guy that always brought his Rocky Mountain oysters in for lunch.
Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to just “homogenize” the actual data?
Seems like a lot of trouble physically tampering with the collection gear.
Cultists manipulate all climate data constantly, with no fingerprints left behind: they just tamper with the actual readings.
Voila! Drought insurance pay-offs with no risk!
All of this was worth my $6 this month.
Being a former recipient in/of/with the farm subsidy crowd for 15 years, I feel more empowered managing my operation (wheat) this year after ending participation in the whole affair. Choices offer little comfort and considerable time with the numerous big-brother-like socialized dictates. In return for just a few dollars received, one loses control piecemeal, more or less, of their farm operation, while also tasked with monitoring more for government’s interests than my own depending on which of the hundreds of programs offered by the local farm service agency. I don’t recall a “precipitation” offering as this, but we’re far from Colorado. Maybe a spoof.
Fodder for falsification?
Here are the customary temperature/time plots for 45 “pristine” stations in Australia. My hope was that their trends and wriggles would all match, but they do not.
There is mild smoothing of these plots. There are wriggles everywhere. Some match up in time with others; some mismatch. The wriggles should be all natural variation, except when there is evidence from the Hand of Man at work.
The removal of these wriggles would simplify the calculation of trends. We could then ask why trends differ from station to station, especially over such a wide range. Natural variation seems a complicated pictorial fabric draped over the map.
Problem – I do not know what causes many (any?) of the wriggles. Some agree in time with events in the sparse metadata, particularly station relocations. It would be interesting to remove the disagreements, using a process that could earn the scientific name of “homogenization”, but that would verge on dishonesty when one removes a bump simply because it is there, This is especially so when nobody knows how much of the bump to remove.
Oh, but wait, now I think about it, this is what our Bureau of Meteorology has done to form a data set known as ACORN-SAT. This set is now being sent globally to assist in the creation of devices like Global Land Surface Temperature.
Geoff S
We can take it as a given the records will never be corrected, or even asterisked.