Breaking News – White House Alters Oil Drilling Safety Report

10 Responses to Breaking News – White House Alters Oil Drilling Safety Report

1. Libby says:

   Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 7:00 pm

   I was going to say fools, but that’s getting old … I’ll say dweebs, instead.

   Do you WANT me to take you seriously?

   Apparently, not.

   Reply
2. Post Scripts says:

   Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 7:44 pm

   What part of the story was not factual? It was an AP story, we didn’t pull it out of our rears.

   Reply
3. Tina says:

   Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 8:00 pm

   By now its also in the Washington Post:

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/10/AR2010111007577.html

   USA Today:

   http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/11/white-house-edited-oil-drilling-report/1

   And even the Huffington Post:

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/10/white-house-altered-offsh_n_781537.html

   among many others.

   So whats the prob? You afraid the constant yammering about the President will cause him troubles, pain, loss of popularity, loss of respect? What?

   And did you give a rats butt about any of that when you were spouting crap about GWB?

   Didn’t think so. Take it up with the AP.

   Reply
4. Tina says:

   Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 8:03 pm

   Jack the significance of this story is that it follows the same pattern of “altering” reports as was found among the AGW science dudes. (They have lost too much respect to be called scientists)

   The President also said he would be making decisions based on science…now we know what kind.

   Reply
5. Post Scripts says:

   Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 8:24 pm

   You’re right Tina, thanks for reminding me.

   Reply
6. Toby says:

   Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 9:48 am

   Those liberals really get nasty (ok nastier) after a beating! LMAO

   Reply
7. Chris says:

   Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 1:00 pm

   I will refrain judgment on this story until I have more evidence. But I hope it isn’t true.

   “Jack the significance of this story is that it follows the same pattern of “altering” reports as was found among the AGW science dudes. (They have lost too much respect to be called scientists)”

   Lost respect among whom? Certainly not the scientific community. They have been cleared of wrongdoing by their peers several times over, and it was found that the accusations against them were made by people who did not understand what they were talking about. If this story does indeed follow the pattern you refer to, then the Obama administration will be found innocent of what they’re being accused of.

   Reply
8. Post Scripts says:

   Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 2:36 pm

   Chris, well that’s an interesting way of looking at it. Did I ask you if your major was law? If it is, I think you made an excellent choice.

   Reply
9. Chris says:

   Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 3:11 pm

   No, I’m an English major, but thanks for the compliment. 🙂

   Reply
10. Tina says:

    Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 4:36 pm

    Chris: “Lost respect among whom? Certainly not the scientific community.”

    Oh really? And what scientific community would that be? the scientific community that believes the scientific method is necessary or thew one that relies on consesus and political force?

    These men have absolutely been discredited for many people regardless the findings of these panels. The entire political movement they supported with sloppy work has also harmed the scientific community. But it isnt just the juvenile (or were they serious?) email correspondence that discredited them and their work. Prominent scientists all over the world have expressed disagreement and disdain for the notion of consensus both before and after the scandal:

    http://www.iceagenow.com/Burt_Rutan_calls_AGW_a_Fraud.htm

    Burt Rutan calls Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) a Fraud
    An engineering approach to the AGW debate

    By Burt Rutan

    Something seriously wrong
    1 Jan 10 – (Excerpts) – “Few significant products are driven to commercialism, validated by claims of the scientific community. Before investing in a new product, those committing funds almost always look to an Engineering Study or Engineering Design Review, rather than using only the claims of Scientists. This is not being done at all, with the AGW-planet crisis issue.
    “One has only to look at the two most notable charts (below) from two United Nations IPCC summary reports, published a decade apart, to realize that something might be seriously wrong. (see charts)

    “The fact that the 2001 hockey stick chart was presented in color in several sections of the 2001 IPCC report, without explaining how the scientists managed to completely eliminate their earlier depiction of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (both are well covered in historical documents as well as scientific analysis is unacceptable behavior. (http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php)
    “Noting that the hockey stick chart was removed in later editions of the IPCC scientific reports supports the conclusion that something is indeed wrong. It was removed because an outside investigation was conducted that resembled a proper engineering review – with a finding of fraud.

    “Specifically, the fraud was identified by showing that the critical data for the chart came from cherry picking just a handful of Siberian trees (tree ring proxy to estimate temperature), without evidence that the researcher applied the proper scientific method. Using all the data or any random selection of 10% of the tree ring data showed no significant correlation of planet warming to human CO2 emissions.

    Fraud not limited to cherry picking
    “The fraud was not limited to the tree cherry picking. The computer code for presentation had been tweaked such that a hockey stick shape is produced even if the data set is developed with a random number generator!
    “The horrific result of this scandal was that the 2001 UN hockey stick chart formed the very foundation of a non-scientific theory that resulted in the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize, a movie Oscar and a best-selling book.

    Why I studied AGW
    “My lifetime work from childhood to the present has been focused on aircraft/spacecraft design and development, with flight-testing being my career specialty. Thus, I have always been challenged to determine the accuracy and meaning of a large amount of disparate data and have often been required to apply those interpretations to development of a product that absolutely must be safe and robust.
    “Four years ago I noticed something troubling about the challenges facing the global warming alarmists. I started my research on anthropogenic (i.e. man-caused) global warming (AGW) because, I found to my surprise, that to claim a catastrophic AGW theory as a proof, the climate scientists thought they only needed to show that human emissions MIGHT cause a fractional-degree global decadal temperature rise, for an earth that generally varies 20 to 40 deg F every 24 hours and varies as much as 80 to 100 deg F every year This seemed to be a Herculean task indeed.
    “Another thing troubled me – those scientists that claimed that warming is human-caused and catastrophic, tended to be the ones who sought out the media to proclaim their views (an unusual behavior for scientists immersed in the proper scientific procedure). The larger group of scientists that did not agree tended to be mute. This, of course gave the media and some politicians an impression that there was scientific consensus, even though it did not exist.

    http://australianconservative.com/2010/10/climate-science-credibility-shredded/

    Lewis resignation is another blow to climate science credibility

    the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. (Hal Lewis)

    In spite of the public pressure to comply with alarmist climate claims, an increasing number of reputable scientists are no longer able to remain silent in the face of such a corruption of science.
    Among the most recent of them is Hal Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California. He is the author of the opening paragraph (above) which formed part of his resignation letter to the American Physical Society after 67 years of membership.
    Given the credentials and status that Professor Lewis holds within the scientific community, his resignation is not an insignificant incident. It comes on top of tens of thousands of scientists, organisations and institutions that have also expressed their concerns about the status and reputation of climate change science.
    Quite simply, the concept that there is a consensus on the science is one of many fabrications undertaken by the alarmists that has now been debunked. Having previously been exposed as misrepresenting evidence, withholding information and operating as a closed shop refusing non-believers admission, their credibility lies in tatters.

    http://www.climatedepot.com/a/3606/Team-of-Scientists-Open-Letter-To-US-Senators-Claim-of-consensus-is-fake

    Team of Scientists’ Open Letter To U.S. Senators: ‘Claim of consensus is fake’
    Plus: Science group ‘reviewing its stance on global warming’ after 160 physicists sign petition

    A GAGGLE IS NOT A CONSENSUS
    You have recently received a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), purporting to convey a consensus of the scientific community that immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe.
    We do not seek to make the scientific arguments here (we did that in an earlier letter, sent a couple of months ago), but simply to note that the claim of consensus is fake, designed to stampede you into actions that will cripple our economy, and which you will regret for many years. There is no consensus, and even if there were, consensus is not the test of scientific validity. Theories that disagree with the facts are wrong, consensus or no.
    We know of no evidence that any of the leaders of the scientific community who signed the letter to you ever asked their memberships for their opinions, before claiming to represent them on this important matter.
    We also note that the American Physical Society (APS, and we are physicists) did not sign the letter, though the scientific issues at stake are fundamentally matters of applied physics. You can do physics without climatology, but you can’t do climatology without physics.
    The APS is at this moment reviewing its stance on so-called global warming, having received a petition from its membership to do so. That petition was signed by 160 distinguished members and fellows of the Society, including one Nobelist and 12 members of the National Academies. Indeed a score of the signers are Members and Fellows of the AAAS, none of whom were consulted before the AAAS letter to you.
    (List oif names follows)

    http://thetruthpeddler.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/scientists-are-abandoning-the-sinking-agw-ship/

    The following are excerpted from the blog post:

    Scientists are Abandoning the Sinking AGW Ship

    I am often asked if there are scientists who have changed their position concerning AGW as a result of examining the evidence. Is there anyone out there with proper credentials who used to sound the AGW alarm but who now say it is largely a bunch of hooey? The list below is not meant to be comprehensive but I think it is somewhat representative of a larger number who are, for whatever reason, hesitant to come out.

    Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is unknown and accused the prophets of doom of global warming of being motivated by money, noting that the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!

    Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a Kyoto house in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocols goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled The Emperors New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.

    Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israels top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

    Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical, Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds, Evans wrote.

    Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself, Murty explained on August 17, 2006. I switched to the other side in the early 1990s when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously, Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

    Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears poppycock. According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that cant be fixed. The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything, Bellamy added.

    Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous global warming, But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation. de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006.

    Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson (recently deceased), the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences) converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms sky is falling man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay? Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News.

    Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics. After that, I changed my mind, Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma, with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, Climate change is real is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural noise.

    Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change, Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his conversion happened following his research on the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.

    Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution, Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies, Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time. We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warmingwith its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economyis based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels, Jaworowski wrote. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time, Jaworowski wrote.

    Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe, Clark said in a 2005 documentary Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What Youre Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change. However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun.

    Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given, Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario, Veizer wrote.

    The collapse of the CCX this week is further evidence of the fraudulant claims about agw:

    http://www.myfoxchattanooga.com/dpp/news/Collapse-of-Chicago-Climate-Exchange-Means-a-Strategy-Shift-on-Global-Warming-Curbs_23474938

    The closing this week of the Chicago Climate Exchange, which was envisioned to be the key player in the trillion-dollar “cap and trade” market, was the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s effort to pass the controversial program meant to combat global warming.
    “It is dead for the foreseeable future,” said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and the Environment with the Competitive Energy Institute, which had fought the measure.
    That assessment was echoed by environmentalists as well.
    “Economy-wide cap and trade died of what amounts to natural causes in Washington,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, which had supported the plan.

    Chris: “They have been cleared of wrongdoing by their peers several times over…”

    Yes there “peers”! that would be the “consesus community” but what did they say about some of the the methods and findings?

    http://environment.change.org/blog/view/climategate_fail_scientist_cleared_of_misconduct_charges

    Penn State University officially cleared Mann yesterday of deviating from standard academic practices.(not scientific method) ** It should be noted that all of these investigations have found that the scienceand scientistsinvolved was not perfect and that mistakes were made. But the reports also state clearly that there was no deliberate wrongdoing.

    The science was not perfect and mistakes were madebut they were willing to overlook that. And no deliberate wrongdoing suggests there was wrongdoingbut the panel was willing to overlook that toowhy?

    Maybe this is why:

    http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP

    Report of the International Panel set up by the University of East Anglia to examine the research of the Climatic Research Unit.

    The Panel was not concerned with the question of whether the conclusions of the published research were correct. Rather it was asked to come to a view (an opinion!) on the integrity of the Units research and whether as far as could be determined the conclusions represented an honest and scientifically justified interpretation of the data.

    Although inappropriate statistical tools with the potential for producing misleading results have been used by some other groups, presumably by accident rather than design, in the CRU papers that we examined we did not
    come across any inappropriate usage although the methods they used may not have been the best for the purpose.

    CRU accepts with hindsight that they should have devoted more attention in the past to archiving data and algorithms and recording exactly what they did.
    At the time the work was done, they had no idea that these data would assume the importance they have today and that the Unit would have to answer detailed inquiries on earlier work.

    They were sloppy because they never figured anyone would see the work? That doesnt follow the scientific method and it isnt the type of work that should invoke claims that agw science is settled. The panel finds the following in the conclusion:

    We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians. Indeed there would be mutual benefit if there were closer collaboration and interaction between CRU and a much wider scientific group outside the relatively small international circle of temperature specialists.

    It was not the immediate concern of the Panel, but we observed that there were important and unresolved questions that related to the availability of
    environmental data sets.

    These men were excused rather than vindicated.

    One of the email messages suggests the general attitude they had toward their work and the agw political cause they championed:

    I cant see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! Phil Jones

    Yuk yuk yuk!

    Chris: “…and it was found that the accusations against them were made by people who did not understand what they were talking about.”

    That’s not entirely true (I’ll post evidence later) but more importantly what about the people who were part of the review board?

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704075604575356611173414140.html

    “The Climategate Whitewash Continues”

    by Patrick Michaels

    (Mr. Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia from 1980-2007, is now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.)

    Now a supposedly independent review of the evidence says, in effect, “nothing to see here.” Last week “The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review,” commissioned and paid for by the University of East Anglia, exonerated the University of East Anglia. The review committee was chaired by Sir Muir Russell, former vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow.

    Mr. Russell took pains to present his committee, which consisted of four other academics, as independent. He told the Times of London that “Given the nature of the allegations it is right that someone who has no links to either the university or the climate science community looks at the evidence and makes recommendations based on what they find.”

    No links? One of the panel’s four members, Prof. Geoffrey Boulton, was on the faculty of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences for 18 years. At the beginning of his tenure, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU)the source of the Climategate emailswas established in Mr. Boulton’s school at East Anglia. Last December, Mr. Boulton signed a petition declaring that the scientists who established the global climate records at East Anglia “adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity.”

    This purportedly independent review comes on the heels of two othersone by the University of East Anglia itself and the other by Penn State University, both completed in the spring, concerning its own employee, Prof. Michael Mann. Mr. Mann was one of the Climategate principals who proposed a plan, which was clearly laid out in emails whose veracity Mr. Mann has not challenged, to destroy a scientific journal that dared to publish three papers with which he and his East Anglia friends disagreed. These two reviews also saw no evil. For example, Penn State “determined that Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community.”

    Readers of both earlier reports need to know that both institutions receive tens of millions in federal global warming research funding (which can be confirmed by perusing the grant histories of Messrs. Jones or Mann, compiled from public sources, that are available online at freerepublic.com). Any admission of substantial scientific misbehavior would likely result in a significant loss of funding.

    It’s impossible to find anything wrong if you really aren’t looking.

    (I highly recommend reading the rest of the WSJ article)

    My apologies for the length of this response. I felt it was necessary.

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