NOAA Scientists Falsely Accused of Manipulating Climate Change Data
A tabloid used testimony from a single scientist to paint an excruciatingly technical matter as a worldwide conspiracy.
Alex Kasprak,
Published 8 February 2017
On 4 February 2017, the British tabloid Mail on Sunday (and the Daily Mail‘s online site) published an article by David Rose — a longtime proponent of climate change conspiracy theories whose analyses the scientific community widely regards as flawed and deceptive — alleging that scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) used misleading data in order to rush publication of a groundbreaking climate study and thereby “dupe” world leaders:
All these claims of malfeasance used the testimony of a single scientist, upset with how more senior scientists dealt with data acquisition and archiving, to paint an excruciatingly technical matter as a worldwide conspiracy. Rose made no effort to contact Karl or other members of the team (according to Karl), and outside of Bates’ conversation with him, Rose provided no corroborating evidence or relevant background for his assertions.
Despite these discrepancies, the story gained additional traction when Texas representative Lamar Smith, chair of the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, tweeted the flawed narrative and issued a press release about it:
NOAA sr officials played fast & loose w/data in order 2 meet politically predetermined conclusion on climate change
While Karl et al might reasonably be criticized for having been less than rigorous in their data documentation, their findings have been independently verified, contrary to allegations that the authors manipulated data to reach a desired conclusion:
What David Rose fails to mention is that the new NOAA results have been validated by independent data from satellites, buoys and Argo floats and that many other independent groups, including Berkeley Earth and the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre, get effectively the same results.
Rose’s claim that NOAA’s results “can never be verified” is patently incorrect, as we just published a paper independently verifying the most important part of NOAA’s results.
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