A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.
The report claimed that the 'pause' or 'slowdown' in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world's media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.
But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, 'unverified' data.
It was never subjected to NOAA's rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.
His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a 'blatant attempt to intensify the impact' of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.
More details can be found in his own words here:
They promised to begin an archive request for the K15 datasets that were not archived; however I have not been able to confirm they have been archived. I later learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure, leading to a tongue-in-cheek joke by some who had worked on it that the failure was deliberate to ensure the result could never be replicated.
https://judithcurry.com/2017/02/04/climate-scientists-versus-climate-data/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @08:38PM
Pollution crossing my property lines is violence. Please see my contract enforcer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06 2017, @08:50PM
There is a big difference between contract enforcement being a service provided in the market (like any other service), and contract enforcement being the arbitrary and capricious actions of a violently imposed self-declared monopoly (i.e., "government").
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday February 06 2017, @09:14PM
Oh Really?
To establish a contract both parties need to exchange consideration.
There is no contract in place if pollution crosses my property line.
In the absence of government (and the rule of law), I can not sue. The Defendant would have no reason to enter arbitration with me. They would either ignore me, or hire thugs to silence me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07 2017, @12:23AM
If your interaction is not governed by a well-defined contract, then all bets are off; undefined behavior is a very dangerous domain in which to be operating.