Former Obama Official: Bureaucrats Manipulate Climate Stats To Influence Policy
By CHRIS WHITE – The Daily Caller
A former member of the Obama administration claims Washington D.C. often uses “misleading” news releases about climate data to influence public opinion.
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.…
Watch: Princeton Physicist Dr. Will Happer criticizes ‘March for Science’: ‘It is sort of a religious belief for them’
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Physicist: ‘March For Science’ is deeply misguided, unethical – Trying to get money for left-wing activists & pretend it’s money for science
…Climate Marches Aren’t About Science — They’re About Trump
Organizers promised that hundreds of thousands would participate in an April 22 March for Science planned for hundreds of cities worldwide and an April 29 People’s Climate March in Washington, DC.
These events have no more to do with science or climate change than do UN programs or the Paris climate treaty. Their own leaders make that perfectly clear.
A climate website asserts that marchers intend to mark President Trump’s 100th day in office “with a massive demonstration that shows our resistance is not going to wane.” They intend to “block Trump’s entire fossil fuel agenda,” with Berkeley-style tantrums and riots, most likely.
A science march website says this is “explicitly a political movement, aimed at holding leaders in science and politics accountable” for trying to “skew, ignore, misuse or interfere with science.”
That pious language really means they intend to allow no deviation from climate cataclysm doctrines.
It means everyone must accept claims that fossil fuel emissions, not powerful natural forces, now govern Earth’s climate; any future changes will be catastrophic; despite growing wealth and technological prowess, humanity will somehow be unable to adapt to future fluctuations; and mankind can and must control the climate by regulating emissions of plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide, regardless of costs.
Equally revealing, former UN climate convention director Christiana Figueres has said the UN goal is to “intentionally change the economic development model” that has reigned since the Industrial Revolution.
“Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection,” former IPCC mitigation group co-chair Ottmar Edenhofer has stated. It is about negotiating “the distribution of the world’s resources.”
AFL-CIO: ‘Unionized Scientists March in Protest of Attacks on Science and Jobs’ – Oppose Budget Cuts
Of all the attacks on our civil society, the attacks on evidence-based science pose perhaps the greatest existential threat. Decisions being made about climate science and environmental protection at this critical time will shape the future of our planet.
Advances in research are produced by the twin pillars of dedicated scientists and an activated citizenry who demand that the best science be applied to today’s most pressing problems. Because scientists produce the facts that expose the lies currently being purveyed, the tip of the spear is pointed at the heart of science-based policy and research.
But the imminent threat also presents an extraordinary opportunity for the scientific community to unify around a message of resistance, one in which organized labor has a critical role to play. Unionized scientists are well-positioned to fight back against the false narratives being pushed by the administration and to advocate collectively for continued funding of crucial basic research. Science professionals need a workplace free from fear of corporate power and political malfeasance influencing their results. We are the protectors of truth and facts, and in that way we all are in service to the public. With scientific integrity, we speak truth to power.
Budget cuts are the beginning of the attack. For example, the Donald Trump administration is proposing a 31% cut in funding and 21% cut in workforce at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on top of less-heralded budget cuts over the past three years. Such low funding levels have not been seen since the 1970s, prior to the enactment of most of our national environmental laws. Enforcement is also targeted, crippling the EPA’s ability to protect human health.
Wash Post: After ‘whacking’ EPA budget, Trump’s EPA chief is seeking a 24/7 security detail
By Brady Dennis
The Trump administration has proposed whacking the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by nearly a third, eliminating thousands of employees and scrapping dozens of programs, including climate-change research and cleanup efforts in the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay.
But a detailed budget plan obtained by The Washington Post last week includes a request to add positions within the agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance “to provide 24/7 security detail” for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
Pruitt’s predecessor, Gina McCarthy, had what was known as “door-to-door” protection — essentially from her residence each morning until she returned at night, according to Liz Purchia, a communications director at the EPA in the Obama administration. She said security officers typically would leave McCarthy once she was at her office. Previous EPA administrators have had similar arrangements.
On a handful of international trips, McCarthy did receive 24/7 protection, depending on the threat level of a country, as determined by the State Department, Purchia said. But that was the exception rather than the rule. And if McCarthy was in Washington over the weekend, her security detail would not be with her unless she had an official event.
So why the need for additional resources to protect Pruitt around the clock?
That remains unclear. The EPA did not immediately offer comment Wednesday about the reasoning behind the request. It also remains unclear whether Pruitt himself sought the full-time security detail.
Myron Ebell, who led the EPA transition for the Trump administration but has since returned to his role at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told E&E News this year that it would make sense for Pruitt to receive increased protection.
“I think it’s prudent given the continuing activities by the left to foment hatred and the reported hostility within the agency from some unprofessional activists,” Ebell said at the time.
[New EPA documents reveal even deeper proposed cuts to staff and programs]
Pruitt undoubtedly has been a polarizing pick to lead the EPA, given his legal attacks on the agency during the Obama years. His confirmation has triggered public protest from activists and environmental groups, but broad praise from Republicans on …
EPA staffers billed taxpayers $15,000 for gym memberships
http://us.blastingnews.com/news/2017/04/epa-staffers-billed-taxpayers-15000-for-gym-memberships-001622409.html
The Las Vegas EPA division was caught doling out free gym memberships to employees, paid for by your tax dollars.
Despite #epa staffers complaining about President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cuts, it still didn’t stop them from charging taxpayers $15,000 for gymmemberships. Receipts obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show the Las Vegas Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) division purchased one-year “Super-Sport” 24 Hour Fitness memberships for 37 employees worth $399.99 a year.
The freeloading employees work at …
‘Blindingly stupid’: Soros-funded LA Times report mocked for blaming 1989 Exxon Valdez spill on global warming
A report blaming the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in part on global warming has generated more ridicule than alarm, renewing scrutiny over the role of liberal foundations in keeping the fading #ExxonKnew social-media campaign alive.
The article, “The role a melting glacier played in Exxon’s biggest disaster,” earned a few hat tips from the environmental movement after appearing Thursday in the Los Angeles Times, but the taunting from climate-catastrophe challengers has been merciless.
“Blindingly stupid,” “climate change fan fiction,” “irrelevant” and “ridiculous” were among the insults hurled at the report, written by students from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project.
“Anyone who has ever followed the story knows that the only ice responsible for the Exxon Valdez spill would be the ice cooling the captain’s many cocktails that night,” said Katie Brown of Energy in Depth, which is funded by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “But for anti-Exxon campaigners, no alternate theories (or should we say alternative facts?) are too outrageous to publish.”
Not lost on critics were the project’s funders: left-of-center philanthropies, including those backed by the Rockefeller family and billionaire George Soros, that have made no secret of their support for climate advocacy and antipathy toward the fossil-fuel industry.
A disclosure at the end of the article said that the foundations “have no involvement in or influence over the articles produced by project fellows in collaboration with the Los Angeles Times,” but not everyone was buying it.
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Roy W. Spencer, meteorologist and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was also dubious, calling it “quite a stretch to blame the disaster on human-caused global warming.”
“Glaciers naturally flow to the ocean and calve. As long as it snows on them, gravity makes them flow to the ocean — no global warming required,” Mr. Spencer said in an email. “Even if calving increased in the 1980s, the warming in Alaska that abruptly started around 1980 was due to a shift in a natural climate cycle called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), not the result of a slow warming trend due to humans.”
By the article’s logic, “anyone can blame basically anything that happens to them on climate change. Did you avoid a puddle when you hit that telephone pole? Sue Exxon!”
Enviro-Funded Report Ties Exxon Crusade To Largest Oil Spill In History
Climate scientists believe the LA Times is taking a leap of faith
Source: Enviro-Funded Report Ties Exxon Crusade To Largest Oil Spill In History…
Fake News: #ExxonKnew Campaign In LA Times Claims ‘Global Warming’ Caused 1989 Exxon Valdez Spill – Point By Point debunking
How irrelevant and desperate has the #ExxonKnew campaign become? Well, they’re now claiming that global warming caused the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, and that Exxon should have known it would happen. The claims were made in yet another article written by graduate students at the Columbia Journalism School, which was published today in the Los Angeles Times.
The article – fit more for The Onion than the LA Times – claims that ExxonMobil had evidence that the Columbia Glacier was calving due to climate change, but allowed one of its tankers to put itself in the way of the icebergs anyway.
Anyone who has ever followed the story knows that the only ice responsible for the Exxon Valdez spill would be the ice cooling the captain’s many cocktails that night. But for anti-Exxon campaigners, no alternate theories (or should we say alternative facts?) are too outrageous to publish.
For background, this is the LA Times’ latest installment of a series authored by graduate students at the Columbia School of Journalism, who were bankrolled by wealthy anti-fossil fuel foundations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) and Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF). The school’s dean, Steve Coll, also wrote an anti-Exxon book, Private Empire, while serving as President of the New America Foundation, which – surprise! – is also funded by the Rockefellers.
And yes, this is the same group that was criticized last week by a federal judge who said the Columbia School of Journalism and InsideClimate News (which is also funded by the Rockefellers and wrote its own anti-Exxon series) were “trying to pursue the same climate change policy agendas” as the attorneys general who have launched investigations into ExxonMobil.
Now why would the LA Times, which presumably wants to be seen as an objective news outlet, print such obviously paid-for (and ridiculous) “journalism”?
Perhaps it has to do with money. Recall that the LA Times failed to disclose that the original #ExxonKnew series it published in late 2015 was funded by the Rockefellers. It only did so months after other news outlets discovered the lack of disclosure. Even the Columbia Journalism Review said not disclosing this funding was a mistake, noting “the rollout after publication was botched. While this particular misstep occurred on the most contentious of stories, the question of when and how to disclose funding for such