Former Obama official confirms climate data manipulation by bureaucrats
A former Obama official has confirmed that during the Obama administrations bureaucrats in the federal government routinely misused or tampered with climate data in order to promote the theory that humans are causing global warming.
Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama’s administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion. “What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.
He pointed to a National Climate Assessment in 2014 showing hurricane activity has increased from 1980 as an illustration of how federal agencies fudged climate data. Koonin said the NCA’s assessment was technically incorrect. “What they forgot to tell you, and you don’t know until you read all the way into the fine print is that it actually decreased in the decades before that,” he said. The U.N. published reports in 2014 essentially mirroring Koonin’s argument.
This story does not prove that human-caused global warming is not happening. What it does tell us, as have many other stories previously, is that we can no longer trust the data issued by federal government sources, and that a major housecleaning is necessary in order to make that trust possible again.
Whether Donald Trump is the president capable of doing that housecleaning remains an open question. Some of his actions suggest he is. Some suggest he is not. Overall, he appears a transitional figure who will begin that housecleaning in a relatively superficial way, but lay the groundwork for someone in the future who will push it through with much more success.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
A former Obama official has confirmed that during the Obama administrations bureaucrats in the federal government routinely misused or tampered with climate data in order to promote the theory that humans are causing global warming.
Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama’s administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion. “What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.
He pointed to a National Climate Assessment in 2014 showing hurricane activity has increased from 1980 as an illustration of how federal agencies fudged climate data. Koonin said the NCA’s assessment was technically incorrect. “What they forgot to tell you, and you don’t know until you read all the way into the fine print is that it actually decreased in the decades before that,” he said. The U.N. published reports in 2014 essentially mirroring Koonin’s argument.
This story does not prove that human-caused global warming is not happening. What it does tell us, as have many other stories previously, is that we can no longer trust the data issued by federal government sources, and that a major housecleaning is necessary in order to make that trust possible again.
Whether Donald Trump is the president capable of doing that housecleaning remains an open question. Some of his actions suggest he is. Some suggest he is not. Overall, he appears a transitional figure who will begin that housecleaning in a relatively superficial way, but lay the groundwork for someone in the future who will push it through with much more success.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The ends can always justify the means to anyone in the Left.
(We are all too stupid to understand anything any way)
The null hypothesis remains “no human-caused climate change” and has not been disproven. Disproving that will require trusted data and analysis, whatever “trust” means at this point.
The climatistas never seem to acknowledge any failed predictions. Nor do they want to acknowledge that plants, the base of the global food chain, like warmer weather, longer growing seasons, and more carbon dioxide. Civilization has thrived best in warming periods.
It does bother me that we’ve done far worse to the environment than adding carbon dioxide, but for things that have green favoritism (wind farms, rare earths for battery manufacturing), it all gets swept under the rug while climate change retains political ascendency.
Your last line is too optimistic , IMO.
After 8 years of the Obama-care disaster, and another 10 trillion of added debt (and 4 trillion of FED money printing), not to mention overseas disasters, and unchecked illegal invasions, Trump LOST the popular vote!
Trump is probably a transition to an even more leftist authoritarian state.
The free lunch and the free government monthly check still reign supreme.
And the U.S. economy is a more precarious house of financial cards than most want to acknowledge.
We buy real goods (and some services) produced by the rest of the world, and pay for it with little pieces of green paper that we print and borrow (and can never pay back ,except by more printing and borrowing). Trump thinks “they” are the problem…but we have met the enemy and they is us. WE are out of control. This cannot continue (e.g. the dollar as the worlds reserve currency). The producers of the world will not be taken for suckers forever; and when the music stops it will get ugly (think Detroit).
The United States of America is not what it used to be…not just the greatest country in the world, but in the history of the world. That is now gone forever, and it happened so quickly. A country is only as great as its people.
You, yourself, have warned of the “coming Dark Ages”…I think that is more on the mark.
I truly hope I am completely wrong…but I don’t see it.
Thank God for the U.S. farmer, at least we won’t starve…probably.
The general trend in technology is away from fossil fuels, but there is no material today that is pound for pound as energy rich as fossil fuels, so we are going to be living with them for at least the next 15? to 30? years, depending on how the technology progresses.
So why doesn’t everyone take a chill pill and endeavor to do it in as clean a way as possible until a real viable alternative (and there will be many) presents themselves?
No?
I know what I just posted sounds reasonable and the answer to the question should be, Yes, lets use fossil fuels in as clean a way as possible until we can replace it for the most part with other kinds of technologies.
I of course left out the key ingredient, the political leverage that comes along with it. And that in the end is more what this is about.
“there is no material today that is pound for pound as energy rich as fossil fuels”
How about uranium, thorium, plutonium…
http://www.autoblog.com/2014/07/17/nuclear-powered-atomic-age-classic-cars/
Point, I should have been more specific. I meant abundant, low technology and relatively easy to access power fuel source, pound for pound that is fossil fuel. Oil, gas, coal.
All serious electrical generating, planes, trucks, ships and autos today are all powered by easy to access fossil fuel, although we are seeing some interesting electric models appearing. Its out there but its going to take some more time to show up in a real and substantive way.
In the mean time it is not unreasonable that if fossil fuels are going to be used, and they are, to extract it and burn it in as clean a way as possible. And I believe we Americans are.
But these real and technological discussions are really unimportant to those who use the issue in political terms.
I think even 30 years is way too optimistic a time frame for phasing out fossil fuels; for electricity we would have to either go very heavy nuclear, or have some unforeseen technological breakthrough. Transportation would take even longer to transition.
Even if we met 100% of our energy needs with non-fossil sources, we would still need fossil fuels as feedstock for plastics, fertilizers, etc.
Garry- good stuff.
Cotour– the trend is not away from oil, natural-gas, or coal. We have discovered vast oil reserves just in the past 10 years, not to mention our natural-gas from hydro-fracturing and we have in excess of 100 years of coal.
I’d be interested in knowing why you think we are transitioning away from fossil fuels?
We may not be trending away from fossil fuels so much as new technologies will eventually arrive on the scene that will not be able to be ignored. You must admit that there are many different approaches being refined and worked on as we speak.
And I do not particularly care if we use fossil fuel for the next 100 years, as long as it is extracted, processed and utilized in cleaner and cleaner ways.
I agree that the emphasis should be on preventing pollution, rather than CO2 emissions.
The alternative energy technologies being developed have several fundamental problems. One is that many of them (wind, solar) are dependent on the weather, and require backup power sources (fossil fuel, nuclear) in case their output drops suddenly, so they’re really not replacing traditional power sources (or there are power shortages, see South Australia).
This could be partially solved if there were a way to store generated power, but so far the only solution that seems practical (in some cases) has been to use the power to pump water up to an upstream reservoir, so that it can be used to generate power later via hydroelectric turbines. Of course, this involves generating the same power twice, which is very inefficient.
Large-scale storage batteries have so far been a dud.
Another problem is that the alternative energy solutions are very expensive; anytime a subsidy program is stopped, the supported companies go under (and some of them go under even with subsidies). what the free solar people fail to tell you is that output drops over time, and maintenance costs can be high.
Despite what Bill Nye the fake science guy says, it’s no easy matter to design a better battery, and we would need a game-changing design to have any effect on making alternative energy sources viable on a large scale.
Solar has its place; it’s perfect for remote locations with low power needs (say to charge a phone in an area far from the grid). Replacing conventional power sources is a whole different ballgame.
I’m less worried about CO2 emissions than I am about eventually running out of petroleum, coal, etc.; not only for energy, but as feedstocks for plastics, fertilizers, etc. Fortunately, new discoveries of deposits and new techniques for extraction (led by fracking) have pushed our reserves way beyond my lifetime.
I continue to believe that the whole climate change hysteria is an attempt at (1) de-industrialization, led by the extreme earth-first whackos (2) redistribution of wealth, led by Marxists.
I wish we would keep an eye on the real prizes, one of which is preventing pollution.
I have posted about this work on the Rossi ECAT here several times:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2017/01/31/rossi-vs-ih-et-al-rossis-team-publishes-daily-valuation-of-energy-multiple-for-1-year-e-cat-plant-test-claiming-cop-63-139/
And Rossi seems to be on to something genuine, testing has been going on for several years now. Hoax? Does not look that way to me at the moment, looks like a unique phenomenon of the materials involved. What are the odds that some technology like this would allow individuals to generate their own electricity or as part of a net work at some point? I think it is more likely than less likely.
And there are some very interesting storage systems being worked on, how long will it be until there are real breakthroughs that will not be able to be held back? The trend IMO is for it to really begin to encroach on fossil fuel use. Its not going away anytime soon.
And then there are things like this magnetic motor:
https://youtu.be/Q2JTwbIpf6o
Relatively low tech and its appears to be putting out power.
Or this: https://youtu.be/mHW6b1aFPfU
Lots going on, someday it will not be able to be held back to what ever degree that it will make a difference.
I’m not sure “hoax” is the right word, but ECAT and the magnetic motor (note that the patent relates not to a magnetic motor but a torque converter) both remind me of cold fusion somehow. Maybe I’m wrong and they’re real breakthroughs, but I need convincing.
We keep watching.
Garry– good stuff.
Cotour– referencing the “magnetic engine,” This has nothing to do with a “magnet powered electric generator,” which would be a perpetual motion machine.
Over my ability to explain it and I only skimmed his Patent real quick– he’s invented a novel torque converter, and not a generator. (and his Device is plugged into his wall socket.)
Think rubber-bands, in the form of magnetic fields. There’s just no net energy produced.
Referencing electrical storage; there’s always a dead-weight loss when converting between energy sources, or between storage modes, it’s unavoidable. (But we have increased efficiency tremendously since 1970. When Nixon gave us the EPA.)
In Michigan we have a “pumped storage” plant near Lundington, Mi. (built in 1969-73) During off-peak periods & at night, they use electricity to pump water uphill to storage lagoons. During the day they reverse the process to generate peak-load supply and even out the variable demand on our nuke reactors and the deficiencies of grid connected solar/wind.
(You guys in NY have the “Robert Moses” pumped storage facility, connected to the hydro plant(s) at Niagara Falls.)
correction– it’s the “Lewiston Pump-Generating Plant” at the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses_Niagara_Power_Plant
Wayne, thanks for articulating several points that I glossed over; you compensated well for my laziness/haste.
We should continue to pump and burn fossil fuel even after it has become worthless as an energy source due to future technologies. Because it has such good effects on the climate. The entire Earth is now greening thanks to humans having raised the CO2 concentration by a third. Wild life is flourishing and harvests are increasing so fast that a smaller agricultural area is feeding a growing world population that eats better and better (more meat).
We know now that increased CO2 levels don’t affect the temperature. If it did it would be another bonus, staving off the ice age and making the vast arctic land areas more lively and useful.