As if we didn’t have enough taxpayer dollars to throw down the rat hole, President Hope&Change’s new Ministry of Climate Propaganda—excuse me, Climate Change office, is up and running. Obama’s choice for director of this auspicious entity is a real devotee to hard science (wink wink):
Updated February 22, 2010
New Climate Agency Head Tried to Suppress Data, Critics Charge
By Ed Barnes - FOXNews.com
Thomas Karl, the head of Obama’s new Climate Change office has been criticized for trying to suppress contradictory scientific data on climate change.… Thomas Karl, 58, was appointed to oversee the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, an ambitious new office that will collect climate change data and disseminate it to businesses and communities.
Karl, who has played a pivotal role in key climate decisions over the past decade, has kept a low profile as director of National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) since 1998, and he has led all of the NOAA climate services since 2009. His name surfaced numerous times in leaked “climate-gate” e-mails from the University of East Anglia, but there was little in the e-mails that tied him to playing politics with climate data. Mostly, the e-mails show he was in the center of the politics of climate change decisions. …
This would be the same NOAA that has been exposed as being engaged in surface station manipulation, as reported last week by John Lott at Fox News [h/t James Heiser at The New American]:
... [T]he most damaging report [called “Surface Temperature Records: Policy-Driven Deception?”] has come from Joseph D’Aleo, the first Director of Meteorology and co-founder of the Weather Channel, and Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and founder of SurfaceStations.org.
In a January 29 report, they find that starting in 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began systematically eliminating climate measuring stations in cooler locations around the world. Yes, that's right. They began eliminating stations that tended to record cooler temperatures and drove up the average measured temperature. The eliminated stations had been in higher latitudes and altitudes, inland areas away from the sea, as well as more rural locations. The drop in the number of weather stations was dramatic, declining from more than 6,000 stations to fewer than 1,500.
D’Aleo and Watts show that the jumps in measured global temperature occur just when the number of weather stations is cut. But there is another bias that this change to more urban stations also exacerbates. Recorded temperatures in more urban areas rise over time simply because more densely populated areas produce more heat. Combining the greater share of weather stations in more urban areas over time with this urban heat effect also tends to increase the rate that recorded temperatures tend to rise over time.
Their report provides examples of how the systematic elimination of stations and unexplained adjustments in temperature data caused measured temperatures to rise for Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. Many adjustments change what would have been a drop in temperatures into an increase. Take New Zealand, where D’Aleo and Watts note: “About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming.”
Back to the Fox News article on Karl’s appointment:
According to a school biography published by Northern Illinois University, Karl shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore and other leading scientists based on his work at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and he was “one of the 10 most influential researchers of the 1990s who have formed or changed the course of research in a given area.” …
His appointment was hailed by both the Sierra Club and Duke Energy Company of North Carolina. Sierra Club President Carl Pope said, “As polluters and their allies continue to try to muddy the waters around climate science [typical politically-motivated straw-man argument], the Climate Service will provide easy, direct access to the valuable scientific research undertaken by government scientists and others.” And Duke Energy CEO Jin Rogers said the new office, under Karl, will “spark the consensus we need to move forward.”
But Roger Pielke Sr., a climatologist affiliated with the University of Colorado who has crossed horns with Karl in the past [see below], says his appointment was a mistake. He accused Karl of suppressing data he submitted for the IPCC’s most recent report on climate change and having a very narrow view of its causes. …
“The unconstitutional global warming office and its new Web site climate.gov would be charged with propagandizing Americans with eco-alarmism,” wrote Alex Newman of the Liberty Sentinel of Gainesville, Fla.
On the popular skeptic site “Watts Up With That,” Anthony Watts called the climate.gov site a “waste of more taxpayer money” and charged that it is nothing more than a “fast track press release service.” He wrote that putting Karl in charge was an issue, because he had fabricated photos of “floods that didn’t happen” in an earlier NOAA report.
Unconstitutional is right. Through this agency, presumably with no Congressional oversight, we are probably looking forward to the regulation of your refrigerator, your thermostat, summertime water usage, or anything else they can dream up. Call it climate fascism.
Oh, and here’s an interesting tidbit alluded to in the above piece: Revelations about the NOAA’s “strategic” placement or ignoring of surface stations goes back at least to August, 2007, with the same climate scientists—D’Aleo, Watts, and Pielke—sounding the alarm. At that time, Karl would have been director at the NCDC for a full decade already.
Nearly 2½ years after those initial revelations were made, Karl not only kept his job at the NCDC, but in 2009 was promoted to lead all of the NOAA climate services in 2009. Now, even in light of the newest revelations, he gets yet another promotion from President Hope&Change to lead this untouchable new government black hole.
Welcome to the future, suckers.
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