NOAA hiring outside experts to
review ‘Pause-Busting’ global warming study by Michael
Bastasch, 2/14/17
The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is bringing in outside
experts to review a 2015 study accused of being rushed by scientists who wanted
to influence U.S. and international policymakers.
“In
the interest of maintaining the highest standards of transparency,
accountability, and scientific integrity, we are in the process of engaging
independent outside parties to review this matter,” a NOAA spokesman told
Politico.
Dr.
John Bates, the former principal scientist at the National Climatic
Data Center in Asheville, N.C., accused
NOAA scientists of putting a “thumb on the
scale” to get results that debunked the so-called “pause” in global warming
since 1998.
Bates
said former NOAA scientist Tom Karl and his colleagues manipulated scientific
guidelines and methodologies to rush out a 2015 study before it had gone
through proper data quality checks in order to support President Barack Obama’s
agenda and influence United Nations delegates meeting in Paris later that year.
Bates
also accused Karl of keeping his “thumb on the scale” to “maximize warming and
minimize documentation,” and suggested the study’s authors had made decisions
to get a predetermined outcome.
NOAA
officials previously told
The Daily Caller News Foundation they
would “review” Bates’s allegations, and confirmed to Politico Sunday they would
bring in outside experts to examine Karl’s study. No further details were
given. “We will release further details as they are finalized,” the NOAA
spokesman said.
House
Republicans on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology used Bates’s
whistleblowing to reinvigorate their investigation into the Karl study, but
some scientists, science organizations and environmentalists have come to
Karl’s defense.
Karl’s
defenders argued the “pause-busting” study has stood up to scientific scrutiny
and was independently verified in 2016. Karl’s former NOAA colleague, Thomas
Peterson, said
the study was expedited once agency
officials “realized the significance it could have.”
Peterson
said NOAA abided by agency rules, but admitted if the study had jumped through
all the data quality checks and archiving Bates said it avoided, the study
would have delayed publication “for at least 2 years.”
Bates
never formally raised concerns to NOAA officials, but he told TheDCNF he spoke
“off the record with several folks to express concerns” as well as with NOAA’s
“scientific integrity officer.”
Jeremy
Berg, editor-in-chief of the journal Science, which published the Karl study in
June 2015, stood behind the study. They have no
plans to retract it. This article originally appeared
in The Daily Caller
http://www.cfact.org/2017/02/14/noaa-hiring-outside-experts-to-review-pause-busting-global-warming-study/
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