Retired NOAA Scientist Disputes Agency’s Study Denying Global-warming Hiatus

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Britain’s The Mail on Sunday published a report on February 5 that the NOAA violated its own rules on scientific integrity when it published a flawed report geared to influence world leaders at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015. The British newspaper cited Dr. John Bates, a retired principal scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, as the whistleblower who reported the agency’s false report.

The article in the Mail stated:

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 [former UK Prime Minister] David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The NOAA’s report, noted the Mail, claimed that the pause or slowdown in global warming in the period since 1998 — a phenomenon revealed by UN scientists in 2013 — never existed. In fact, reported the scientists, world temperatures had been rising faster than members of the scientific community expected. The NOAA launched its report disputing the findings of the UN scientists with a “public relations fanfare,” noted the Mail, and it was publicized by the world’s media and cited repeatedly by politicians and policymakers.

Bates provided the Mail on February 5 with what the paper described as “irrefutable evidence” that NOAA’s climate report was based on misleading, “unverified” data.

Bates maintained that the paper was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process — which Bates had himself devised. The respected climate scientist told the Mail that his intense objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he described as a “blatant attempt to intensify the impact” of what became known as the Pausebuster paper. The Mail report continued:

In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data — the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) — of “insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximized warming and minimized documentation … in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”…

Official delegations from America, Britain and the EU were strongly influenced by the flawed NOAA study as they hammered out the Paris Agreement — and committed advanced nations to sweeping reductions in their use of fossil fuel and to spending £80 billion every year on new, climate-related aid projects.

NOAA claimed in its report that global warming was worse than previously thought. The information was published to coincide with the Paris climate change conference in 2015, where the world leaders in attendance agreed that wealthy nations should grant $100 billion a year in extra “climate-related” aid to the developing world, that nations should agree to set a limit for maximum temperatures of 2 degrees C above the level in pre-industrial times, and that 40 percent of CO₂ emissions would be cut in EU nations by 2030.

In addition to his disclosure to the Mail, Bates received thanks from members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, which reported his findings in a press release on February 5. In that release, committee members responded to Bates’s statements about NOAA’s 2015 climate change study (known as “the Karl study”).

The committee’s press release quoted Bates’s assertion that the Karl study was used “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”

From the Mail’s report, we can presume that among these “international deliberations” was the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The release included a statement by the committee’s chairman, Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who said:

I thank Dr. John Bates for courageously stepping forward to tell the truth about NOAA’s senior officials playing fast and loose with the data in order to meet a politically predetermined conclusion. In the summer of 2015, whistleblowers alerted the Committee that the Karl study was rushed to publication before underlying data issues were resolved to help influence public debate about the so-called Clean Power Plan and upcoming Paris climate conference….

Now that Dr. Bates has confirmed that there were heated disagreements within NOAA about the quality and transparency of the data before publication, we know why NOAA fought transparency and oversight at every turn. Dr. Bates’ revelations and NOAA’s obstruction certainly lend credence to what I’ve expected all along — that the Karl study used flawed data, was rushed to publication in an effort to support the president’s climate change agenda, and ignored NOAA’s own standards for scientific study.

Environment Subcommittee Chairman Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) added:

I commend Dr. Bates for bringing to light the corrupt practices used by his former colleagues and hope this serves as a deterrence to anyone thinking of manipulating science to serve their own political agenda. I applaud Chairman Smith and the Science Committee’s efforts to provide the necessary oversight to ensure the American people have the best information possible.

The New American has published many articles detailing the frauds and misrepresentations of those who maintain that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming, or AGW, is a potentially devastating crisis that can be averted only by suspending most industrial activity. The reader may wish to review some of the related articles listed below to gain greater insight into the political agenda behind the false alarms broadcast by these “global warming” doomsayers.

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