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Letter: Climate facts matter

In July 2015, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration led by Tom Karl determined the 18-year-long pause in rising temperatures never occurred. NOAA therefore claimed temperatures had in fact continued to rise at an alarming rate. They now had their silver bullet.

NOAA’s new claim was contrary to the warming pause previously accepted by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In November 2015, President Obama, with NOAA and Karl’s new data, pushed for a more stringent Paris Climate Agreement with little doubt that global warming is truly an existential threat.

Recently, NOAA’s new claims were shown to be based on data that couldn’t be verified, and didn’t meet NOAA’s own standards for transparency and documentation. On Feb. 3, 2017, John Bates, the caretaker of NOAA’s climate archives who won a Gold Medal in 2014 for his extraordinary work in creating a system to verify, check and preserve all NOAA’s documents, admitted that in the rush to influence the Paris climate negotiations that Karl failed to run their data through NOAA’s verification software and then, in an incredible instance of “the dog ate my research papers,” lost the data. Their computer supposedly crashed without storing their research data on a backup, as well as on NOAA’s central archive.

This revelation came after the U.S. House of Representatives committee that funds NOAA had previously asked for Karl’s research documents. Both Karl and NOAA refused. NOAA then refused a formal subpoena.

Bates belatedly confirmed Karl and his team constantly had their “thumb on the scales” to push the warming narrative. Karl retired from NOAA in 2016. Bates is no longer the caretaker of NOAA’s archives.

Today, the 2015 Paris Agreement is built on a foundation of deception. Sadly, scientists pointing our Karl’s fraud were vilified and their reputations smeared. On Feb. 14, the House committee reopened its stalled investigation. The silver bullet has melted, and not because of global warming.

Floyd Diemoz 

Glenwood Springs

Editor’s note: For a different perspective on this issue, see http://www.snopes.com/2017/02/08/noaa-scientists-climate-change-data/.


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