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Mr. Smith does not deny climate change science, he is a skeptic, not the same. As a congressman, he is afforded the roles of his position to investigate corrupt

by Agustus 11y ago

Mr. Smith does not deny climate change science, he is a skeptic, not the same. As a congressman, he is afforded the roles of his position to investigate corruption or suspicions of corruption, which in this case includes an agency using taxpayer dollars avoiding the release of information to a committee. The NOAA situation is one where the agency should openly share data with the committee and Mr. Smith would go away, by stonewalling, the agency does not help the cause of science or dissipate suspicion of obfuscating results.

coldpie 11y ago
"""It was inconvenient for this administration that climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades. The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made. NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda.""" http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-doubles-down-accuses-noaa-scientists-of-doctoring-results/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-doubles-d... Fffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttttttttttttttt
- creshal 11y ago
  > NOAA provided Rep. Smith with all the data, methods, and explanation he requested but has refused to hand over the communications of its scientists, which it regards as protected. I'd better hope so.
  - Agustus 11y ago
    Ridiculous, a government agency with individuals paid for by the American tax payer is not willing to release to the American public internal communications.
  - tertius 11y ago
    Why? We don't allow this in business, why should we allow this in the government? Think Steve Jobs asking a VP to show his reasons for obfuscating the reasons for sales figures reported over a period and then adjusted. VP: Sorry, that's confidential. In this situation, I'm paying the administrator (that person that governmental agencies are accountable to) to make sure those agencies aren't obfuscating their own reasons. I demand answers, whether those answers lead nowhere is inconsequential.
    - mturmon 11y ago
      That's not the correct analogy. The House has oversight to be sure money is not wasted, but not to monitor all dialogue between scientists. For a summary of what's going on, better than I can do here, see this letter from another member of the House science committee: http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.house.gov/files/Ranking%20Member%20Johnson%20Letter%20to%20Chairman%20Smith%20on%20NOAA%20Subpoena.pdf http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...
      - Agustus 11y ago
        The letter does not help the situation: * The letter says: "In your various demand letters you noted the scientific study in question was of some consequence, and could potentially have an effect on policy decisions. However it should be emphasized that the issue in question is a scientific research study, not a policy decision by a Federal agency. As such, this is not an area of delegated legislative authority by Congress to the Executive (unless you are proposing that Congress should somehow legislatively overrule peer-reviewed scientific findings.)* First, Mr. Johnson, cutely tries to defer that science is not going to be used in a policy manner. Right now, the President of the United States is engaged with making policy decisions from scientific studies, so his premise is flawed to begin with. Also, all of the pushes for climate change agendas feed from scientific studies. Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference to legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show crowd's jokester attitude. Third, the last line from the paragraph says that "you have not articulated a legitimate need for anything beyond what NOAA has already provided" plays into my argument from before about a government agency obfuscating. One could argue that the obfuscation is to hold a checks and balance, but then why is a legislature member worried about what the executive branch is doing? The executive branch should be defining what it will fulfill in FOIA requests and why. Also, the entire letter points to my earlier discussion that while one can have the data, the models, and the methodologies, the reasoning behind the change appears to be left off and NOAA is not helping the concern with the agency when it does not come out with this. Even if they came right out and said, look, we used an incorrect number of significant digits, that is why our models appeared misleading before, it would be a quick story, make the rounds on skeptic sites, and then could move forward. So, why obfuscate?
- Agustus 11y ago
  You have an agency that releases an update to its modeling capabilities, from which based on the update, a change is made to the forecast that eliminates a political hat upon which an argument is being made. If you release the model, the data, the before and after results, and all of the information, you do not know why and what prompted the change. Internal machinations what they are, the previous Michael Mann situation where we have people admitting: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Nothing externally hinted at any issue, but when an internal machination occurs, the public facing data may not be enough. As an aside, please stop downvoting me for these posts, I am not trying to defend for or against climate change, just pointing out that a reason for suspicion could exist. If you disagree with my internal machination comment, please witness EPA and Pebble Mine, Lois Lerner and her IRS hijinks, and the former Secretary of State on the origins of the Benghazi attack, all of which were forward facing items that looked fine, but internal machinations showed suspicious activity.
  - coldpie 11y ago
    Meanwhile the globe is already 1C warmer than it was before industrialization as Lamar Smith faffs about with emails and is doing everything in his power to cast doubts on the fact that we need to do something about this, much less should already have implemented stronger emissions standards 30 years ago. We're already past the point of "too late," climate science is about damage control now while Smith pisses around denying anything's wrong in the first place. It's time to dig your head out of the sand and move forward. What's Smith doing about that, I wonder? I more-or-less agree with your points about downvotes.
    - tertius 11y ago
      You mention the "it's already too late" meme. Where do you get this? I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out. I'm sincere in asking.
      - 11y ago

by Agustus 11y ago

coldpie 11y ago

"""It was inconvenient for this administration that climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades. The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made. NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda.""" http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-doubles-down-accuses-noaa-scientists-of-doctoring-results/ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-doubles-d... Fffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttttttttttttttt

creshal 11y ago
> NOAA provided Rep. Smith with all the data, methods, and explanation he requested but has refused to hand over the communications of its scientists, which it regards as protected. I'd better hope so.
- Agustus 11y ago
  Ridiculous, a government agency with individuals paid for by the American tax payer is not willing to release to the American public internal communications.
- tertius 11y ago
  Why? We don't allow this in business, why should we allow this in the government? Think Steve Jobs asking a VP to show his reasons for obfuscating the reasons for sales figures reported over a period and then adjusted. VP: Sorry, that's confidential. In this situation, I'm paying the administrator (that person that governmental agencies are accountable to) to make sure those agencies aren't obfuscating their own reasons. I demand answers, whether those answers lead nowhere is inconsequential.
  - mturmon 11y ago
    That's not the correct analogy. The House has oversight to be sure money is not wasted, but not to monitor all dialogue between scientists. For a summary of what's going on, better than I can do here, see this letter from another member of the House science committee: http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.house.gov/files/Ranking%20Member%20Johnson%20Letter%20to%20Chairman%20Smith%20on%20NOAA%20Subpoena.pdf http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...
    - Agustus 11y ago
      The letter does not help the situation: * The letter says: "In your various demand letters you noted the scientific study in question was of some consequence, and could potentially have an effect on policy decisions. However it should be emphasized that the issue in question is a scientific research study, not a policy decision by a Federal agency. As such, this is not an area of delegated legislative authority by Congress to the Executive (unless you are proposing that Congress should somehow legislatively overrule peer-reviewed scientific findings.)* First, Mr. Johnson, cutely tries to defer that science is not going to be used in a policy manner. Right now, the President of the United States is engaged with making policy decisions from scientific studies, so his premise is flawed to begin with. Also, all of the pushes for climate change agendas feed from scientific studies. Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference to legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show crowd's jokester attitude. Third, the last line from the paragraph says that "you have not articulated a legitimate need for anything beyond what NOAA has already provided" plays into my argument from before about a government agency obfuscating. One could argue that the obfuscation is to hold a checks and balance, but then why is a legislature member worried about what the executive branch is doing? The executive branch should be defining what it will fulfill in FOIA requests and why. Also, the entire letter points to my earlier discussion that while one can have the data, the models, and the methodologies, the reasoning behind the change appears to be left off and NOAA is not helping the concern with the agency when it does not come out with this. Even if they came right out and said, look, we used an incorrect number of significant digits, that is why our models appeared misleading before, it would be a quick story, make the rounds on skeptic sites, and then could move forward. So, why obfuscate?
Agustus 11y ago
You have an agency that releases an update to its modeling capabilities, from which based on the update, a change is made to the forecast that eliminates a political hat upon which an argument is being made. If you release the model, the data, the before and after results, and all of the information, you do not know why and what prompted the change. Internal machinations what they are, the previous Michael Mann situation where we have people admitting: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Nothing externally hinted at any issue, but when an internal machination occurs, the public facing data may not be enough. As an aside, please stop downvoting me for these posts, I am not trying to defend for or against climate change, just pointing out that a reason for suspicion could exist. If you disagree with my internal machination comment, please witness EPA and Pebble Mine, Lois Lerner and her IRS hijinks, and the former Secretary of State on the origins of the Benghazi attack, all of which were forward facing items that looked fine, but internal machinations showed suspicious activity.
- coldpie 11y ago
  Meanwhile the globe is already 1C warmer than it was before industrialization as Lamar Smith faffs about with emails and is doing everything in his power to cast doubts on the fact that we need to do something about this, much less should already have implemented stronger emissions standards 30 years ago. We're already past the point of "too late," climate science is about damage control now while Smith pisses around denying anything's wrong in the first place. It's time to dig your head out of the sand and move forward. What's Smith doing about that, I wonder? I more-or-less agree with your points about downvotes.
  - tertius 11y ago
    You mention the "it's already too late" meme. Where do you get this? I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out. I'm sincere in asking.
    - 11y ago