Was Data Manipulated in a Widely Cited 2015 Climate Study?
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In an article that appeared online in The Mail on Sunday, a British tabloid, the journalist David Rose described “astonishing evidence” that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States had “rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris agreement on climate change.”
“Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data,” the article’s headline read.
Mr. Rose, who has made climate-related claims in the past that did not hold up to scrutiny, said a “high-level whistle-blower,” John J. Bates, a recently retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had told him that the agency “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” in publishing the study in June 2015.
According to Mr. Rose, the study, which refuted earlier work that suggested global warming had slowed in the first decade of this century, “was aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders” at the talks in Paris in December 2015 that led to the agreement by more than 190 nations to set limits on carbon emissions.
After Mr. Rose’s article was published, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and its chairman, Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, wrote about it on Twitter.
Dr. Bates also accused Dr. Karl of misusing the process. “We find Tom Karl’s thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming and minimize documentation,” he wrote.
Do the claims have merit?
Climate scientists, some of whom had worked on the data sets, voiced support for the work of Dr. Karl and the other researchers. In a post on the blog of the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units at Maynooth University, Peter Thorne, who worked on the data but left NOAA before work began on the paper itself, disputed much of what Dr. Bates said.
Dr. Bates, Dr. Thorne wrote, was not involved in the data work and had misrepresented “the processes that actually occurred.” Dr. Thorne also disputed the idea that Dr. Karl had his “thumb on the scale.” Dr. Karl only used the data — he was not personally involved in the refinements, Dr. Thorne wrote. “At no point was any pressure bought to bear to make any scientific or technical choices.”
In an interview on Monday with E&E News, Dr. Bates appeared to distance himself from some of what he wrote in the blog post, and from the way his criticisms were portrayed in the Mail on Sunday article.
“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data,” he said, “but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was.”
Climate Home, a nonprofit site based in London that offers news and analysis, also weighed in on one of the central contentions of Mr. Rose’s article, that the publication of the NOAA paper had “duped” policy makers into adopting the Paris accord. The site contacted representatives to the talks from 10 countries; none said that the paper had any influence.
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