#'so the defendant wrote stories about [redacted] is that correct'

[fitzrove]

Watching a true crime video about a satanic panic adjacent murder case and bgldlfldöf at the trial, in addition to the evidence that's actually relevant (in my opinion), they're going over so much evidence as proof of the perpetrator's problematic goth lifestyle (books, music, non-violent hobbies, pictures on the walls...). I better not kill anyone because it'd all get blamed on crown prince rudolf 😂😭💀💀💀💀

[laughingcatwrites]

First: thank you to everybody who has shared your own stories in the comments and reblogs. I hope that reading these gives those currently struggling hope. And for everybody who has commented about how they weren't lucky enough to have their parents accept them, I hope that you have found a safe community that loves you as you are and that you are in a better place now than you were then.

Now: Mildly amusing follow-up with a surprise twist! Details, including kiddo's gender, are still redacted and some things have been altered to be more generic in order to protect privacy.

A couple of months ago, I was speaking with my coworker about his kid, and he spoke about how he thought maybe his kid would never come out to him and how sad that made him that kiddo didn't feel safe with him. (Imagine the saddest puppy-dog eyes ever on André the Giant to understand the sheer force of understanding-but-still-devastated misery coming off of this poor guy.)

To which I asked: But you just told me you kid is dressing in their preferred presentation in front of you?

Him: Well, yeah, but that's just at home? And they've been occasionally dressing like this for ages.

Me: And they weren't surprised or upset when you started using their preferred name.

Him: No, but I saw somebody else use it first on something kiddo shared with me and I wanted kiddo to know that it was okay that I knew the name and that I wasn't going to hate them for it.

Me: And when kiddo went with you, their dad, to an event, they dressed in their preferred gender and used their preferred name and pronouns. And corrected people who got them wrong. And you knew this because they did it in front of you.

Him: Well yeah, but it could have been a coincidence. Maybe they forgot I was there.

Me: And they showed you the letter about their gender and presentation that they wrote to somebody who made a comment about their appearance. That you defended kiddo for.

Him: I know!!!! (Sadness clearly intensifying as the point continues to fly over his head.) Kiddo is coming out to other people but not me! Kiddo hates me and is never going to trust me!

My dude, my friend, my beloved coworker who is apparently blessed in understanding everything except teenagers, your kid is so far out of the closet with you that they are one band short of a Mardi-Gras parade encircling you to announce their presentation. They haven't come out to you verbally because they don't need to. They trust you and have let you be a part of the process from almost the very beginning and you, my friend, were so convinced they were just bad at hiding things that you completely blinded yourself to this truth.

As a reminder that good exists out there, a coworker recently confessed to me that he found out his child is questioning their identity (kid's gender redacted for this post). The kid is keeping it from him, so he can't say anything to them or show that he knows, but he's doing his best to get mentally prepared and educated so that he'll be ready whenever his kid does feel comfortable enough come to him.

For context, this guy is a big, bulky middle aged dude who loves sports and typical outdoor "manly" activities. As his coworker and friend, I know he's a kind and sweet teddy bear of a person, but his kid probably views him as a stern, authoritarian figure, the way most teenagers view their parents. His family lives in a conservative area, so I'm sure between that, their dad's looks and interests, and the fact that their dad is a Figure of Authority, the kid is worried that they won't be accepted.

But you know what? When he found out about his kid, the first thing he did was reach out to his closest queer friend and ask for resources for parents of questioning children. His biggest fears are that his kid will be bullied or discriminated against and won't feel comfortable enough to be themself. His second action was to find himself a mentor in another parent who went the same situation (kid coming out in a conservative town). The other person is preparing him for some of the struggles his kid may face and the fights he may need to take on as a parent to make sure his kid is safe and treated well.

Something I want to emphasize for people focused on language as the primary method of allyship is that when we spoke, he used some outdated terms and thoughts about gender and sexuality. That does not make him bad. These were the terms and thinking used about questioning teenagers when he was growing up and he never needed to learn more current ones. But now that he does have that need, he's throwing himself in head first because that's his kid and he's darn well going to make sure that his kid feels welcomed and has a safe place to be themselves even if they never come out to him.

[pittarchives]

John Hammond and Martha Glaser: A Cold Correspondence

This post was written by Adam Lee, graduate student, Jazz Studies.

Erroll Garner famously won a lawsuit against record production titan Columbia Records in the early 1960s, which allowed him to launch his own label Octave records. While the details of this lawsuit have been covered by news outlets such as Variety (The True Story of Erroll Garner, the First Artist to Sue a Major Label and Win), the fallout of this suit would continue to echo throughout history in the form of a feud between Garner’s manager Martha Glaser and Columbia Records producer John Hammond.

John Hammond was a scion of the Vanderbilt family through his mother and by the 1930s had become one of the most influential promoters and producers of jazz, acting as a patron to such jazz legends as Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Benny Goodman (who became his brother-in-law in 1942). He is often lauded for his staunch stance against racism through his promotion of jazz in a time in which it was considerably less common to find white people of status working to promote Black artists. Not all jazz artists would receive Hammond’s full support, however, as is made clear with his lukewarm response to Erroll Garner’s work.

Hammond was the producer working for Columbia when the events that led to Garner’s lawsuit came about, and later would become involved again in a Garner reissue project in 1975. Martha Glaser, writing on behalf of Garner, wrote to Hammond expressing her disdain for the way Columbia, and thus Hammond himself, was handling this project in the last few years of Garner’s life.

Image from folder “Correspondence from John Hammond,” Erroll Garner Archive, 1942-2010, Box 1, Folder 62, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Glaser writes that Garner and she were reluctant to be involved in a Columbia production, understandable from their previous contentious relationship, but initially thought that Hammond would be supportive of the project: “It was with considerable trepidation that we got into the PLAY IT AGAIN, ERROLL project, because of past experiences at Columbia. However, with your reassurance, and Jim Brown’s support, we thought there would be no problems.” Clearly, there were problems and Glaser had no reservations expressing her feelings later in the letter writing: “We are most dismayed that our good friends at Columbia have so little regard for Erroll or myself, that we can’t reach them, or get a reply.” The venom in her language is clear, the Columbia producers are no friends of theirs.

Image from folder “Correspondence from John Hammond,” Erroll Garner Archive, 1942-2010, Box 1, Folder 62, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Several years later, after Garner’s passing, Glaser and Hammond got into another conflict via letters sent between them. We do not have every record in the archive of this correspondence, but by looking at the letters we do have we can extrapolate some of the content, and it is increasingly hostile. The conflict seems to begin with Glaser’s objection to a quote in George Goodman Jr.’s June 28, 1981 article about Miles Davis titled  ”Miles Davis: I Just Pick Up My Horn And Play.” In the article, Goodman attributes a statement to Hammond (which Glaser notes is not written as a quote, but more as a statement of fact): “To John Hammond, the authoritative critic and jazz patron credited with the ‘discovery’ of such greats as Bessie Smith and Louis ''Satchmo'' Armstrong, Mr. Davis is the only major performer of his generation who broadened rather than contracted the appeal of jazz music.” Glaser vehemently objects to this characterization, and overtly questions Hammond on it in a letter dated the next day, June 29, 1981: “Whether it accurately states your opinion, I can’t tell – but I certainly wonder about it.” Glaser goes on to contradict the assertion that only Davis expanded jazz appeal, referring to Garner’s public success with scathing and sarcastic language: “… if he was ‘contracting’ the appeal of jazz, then I wonder who all those people were in all those SRO audiences through the world for all those years…,” and “Indeed, he was sock box office…despite the heavy-handed treatment of CBS Records, and the subsequent results. I can fill you in, but I am sure you know much of what happened.” Obviously Hammond knows what happened, as he was the head of A&R (Artists and Repertoire) for CBS/Columbia Records at that time.

Image from folder “Correspondence from John Hammond,” Erroll Garner Archive, 1942-2010, Box 1, Folder 62, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Hammond’s response is dated July 16, 1981 and specifically refutes the Goodman article for the Times, attempting to redirect the ire against him to the Times itself saying, “Why the Times is so sloppy in its music coverage and quotes is beyond belief.” While he could have continued to play diplomat, he instead doubles down on the conflict and writes some very specifically cruel things about Garner and Glaser “…the greatest mistake he ever made was in leaving CBS for purely financial reasons. When I came back there in the very late fifties, I did my best to patch things up, but I must say that I found both you and Erroll greedy, to say the very least.” He follows this with an attack on Glaser alone: “Unfortunately, the nit-picking that went on by you (acting on behalf of Erroll) left you with very few friends in the company. When I tried to sign Erroll in the mid-sixties, I was warned that if I did, I would probably suffer another heart attack and was ordered to cease and desist my efforts.”

Images from folder “Correspondence from John Hammond,” Erroll Garner Archive, 1942-2010, Box 1, Folder 62, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Glaser counters the attacks directly: “’Greed’ was not the reason for the litigation. It was at a great sacrifice – including a financial one – that Erroll was pressed into this litigation by some substantial violations of his contract.” Ever the stalwart defender of Garner, Glaser accuses Hammond of hiding this opinion from Garner behind a smiling face: “I wish you had told Erroll, at the time, or in the almost 20 years subsequent to the litigation, that you thought he and I were motivated by ‘greed’. This might have put a different face on how he reacted to the entire situation, and to you, since he always said – ‘Don’t put John in the middle’, and was concerned about your well-being.” Glaser continued to take issues with Hammond’s specific phrase “nit-picking,” and notes the implications of such language: “I sometimes wonder where such an appellation might be sexist. When a man works as hard and carefully as I have to maintain quality standards, he is considered to be on top of things.” The jarring final statement is loaded with a sarcastic feel, like Glaser is writing pleasantries because these things are included in letters by practice but not by meaning: “I hope we can talk one day. In the meantime, thank you for your attention and response. Wishing you the best with your new enterprises. Sounds most exciting.”

Image from folder “Correspondence from John Hammond,” Erroll Garner Archive, 1942-2010, Box 1, Folder 62, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

To this letter we do have Hammond’s response, dated September 19, 1981. And once again, venomous statements are bookended with pleasantry. Hammond first apologizes about the greed comment, but by the third paragraph he outright tells Glaser that Garner would have been more financially and professionally successful if they had stuck with him and Columbia Records.

(Above) Images from folder “Correspondence from John Hammond,” Erroll Garner Archive, 1942-2010, Box 1, Folder 62, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.   

The final document in this record appears to be a draft of a letter typed by Glaser before the final version dated September 9,1981. While this document does not have a date, it does follow many of the same points of the dated letter and responds point by point to Hammond’s July 16, 1981 document. This draft has numerous redactions and corrections, and the language in it is much stronger than the one that eventually replaced it, (including one parenthetical where Glaser notes “have to change this” after expressing that Hammond’s letter was “character assassination.”) And it is perhaps for the best that it wasn’t sent, but in it we can see the rage that Glaser had for Hammond and the industry, and the vigor by which she was ready to protect Garner’s reputation and status. This draft letter too shows some significant insight into the things that Glaser thought were important, but (in contrast with the final letter) chose to hold back, almost certainly as a result of professional considerations. She writes “That Mr. Garner, a Black – jazz – artist – with a female manager – in those pre-consciousness raised days – both in the fields of race and sex – had the audacity to go up against a major corporation to defend his artistic rights – apparently didn’t sit well with the corporate heads. It was a ‘first’ and they made it clear he had to be broken and punished. Surely, you were aware of that.”

All in all, through these letters, we can see the conflict between Glaser and Hammond, and the not-so-subtle attempts by both of them to conceal resentment and animosity. Hammond’s position of power and reputation in the industry allowed him to feign magnanimity, but Glaser had neither the luxury nor the desire to sugar coat her arguments, although we can see from the differences in her brutal draft letter from her significantly more (but not entirely) diplomatic final letter version that she did take these things into consideration. In the end, Glaser once again proved that she would stand up for Garner against even industry giants like John Hammond, in a way that was uniquely her own.

Works Cited

Erroll Garner Archive, 1942-2010, AIS.2015.09, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System.

Goodman, George. "MILES DAVIS: 'I JUST PICK UP MY HORN AND PLAY'." The New York Times. June 28, 1981. Accessed April 27, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/28/arts/miles-davis-i-just-pick-up-my-horn-and-play.html.

Ouellette, Dan. "The True Story of Erroll Garner, the First Artist to Sue a Major Label and Win." Variety. December 02, 2019. Accessed April 27, 2021. https://variety.com/2019/music/news/the-true-story-of-erroll-garner-the-first-artist-to-sue-a-major-label-and-win-1203413083/.

[ombreecha]

Since you’re ok with us asking questions, I would like to know how you feel about people defending /redacted/ and saying that the people who spoke up are lying? I’m just saddened that this issue is creating a divide against the creators (the opinion from retsuden just gaslighted the fire. I feel like it’s not the real issue and they’re just avoiding the real problem). And tbh it’s getting really toxic that some readers have noticed it as well (including me) It’s hard to support writers like that

I think that’s honestly normal and to be expected. When someone goes under fire like this they and their supporters will do whatever they can to devalue and discredit the people that dared to speak out and openly about their experiences.

While I can’t comment for anyone else I knew once I posted that they’d be trying to do damage control and discredit me. The problem is their entire narrative and agenda with me has always been about discrediting me, who I am, what I stand for, and managing the public’s opinion of me.

With that in mind—what do I even have to lose at this point?

The answer? I don’t. I had nothing to lose at this stage. I had essentially been outcasted well before now. They had already sought to isolate me from anyone they could. All this does for me is open the door for people who were told this false narrative about me my side of the story.

Another thought too—If the people coming out lied and there was no truth to what we spoke why would you immediately block people and private your twitter account?

Wouldn’t you attempt to publicly give your own side of the story? Why are you hiding if I’m just making shit up?

Because there is truth to what people are saying. I don’t think anyone thought we’d eventually speak up and out about how we’ve been treated, and now the opposing side is scrambling to try and keep the narrative they’ve worked so hard to maintain going.

At the end of the day you’re correct. This has nothing to do with the novel. This has to do with how we as individuals, creators or not, have been treated by Day, and their crew. Keep in mind I’m not blaming all of them. Some of them have never done anything as far as I know but Day, and Irene? Absolutely. A few select others? Definitely, but not nearly the amount of Day and Irene.

The divide sadly existed before we spoke up, but I have hope this can lessen the divide. It’ll never go away because I doubt we can ever really find common ground with everything that’s happened. Coexist tho? Absolutely because that’s what adults do. We don’t have to like each other we just have to tolerate the others existence.

I am sorry though this has caused a toxic environment for all of the readers. Understand tho you can read Days work. It won’t offend me. You can support me and still enjoy their work. You can disagree with me and still enjoy my work. You can stay neutral. This isn’t your fight and you shouldn’t feel bad one way or the other. We wrote and did art for you as a community to enjoy. You’re not betraying anyone by enjoying those works. You don’t have to pick a side.

While Day has obviously made it clear that you can’t possibly enjoy both of our works without it being some kind of betrayal to them—I don’t feel that way. Please enjoy the content you enjoy. I’ll never force or ask anyone to make a choice like that. It’s wrong to ask anyone to do that.

[narcisbolgor-blog]

Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON Rep. Lamar Smith(R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when anarticleappeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data, Smith pounced. In a press releasetitled Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technologyaccused the federal agency yet again of playing fast and loose with data and the Obama administration of pushing its costly climate agenda.

In the article, which hasreceived widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes thathigh-level whistleblower John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAAs National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the biggest scientific scandal since Climategate. The federal agency, Rose writes, breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published a sensational but flawed reportthat exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karland published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smiths committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. TitledMaking EPA Great Again and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.But the chairman couldnt help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) should redact the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didnt expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey,when he asked whether Holts association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E Newsin which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mails account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was, Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times.

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism,is not the making of a big scandal.

This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency, he said. Theres nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.

Smith fired back: I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that hes said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science's decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a studythat it saysconfirmsthe accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade or witch hunt, as some have called it to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobils suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giantsgo-to First Amendment defensein the process.

Later during Tuesdays hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science.

If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence the best understanding at the time of what its going to be. Not some fringe idea, he said. Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldnt think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of whats happening to temperatures in our globe.

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December.

More From this publisher : HERE

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Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal was originally posted by 11 VA Viral News

[nebris]

Here are 11 crucial things Nancy Pelosi gets wrong about impeachment

At one point, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to pursue impeachment could certainly be defended as both politically and constitutionally prudent, even if President Trump had clearly committed impeachable offenses. Waiting for Robert Mueller’s final report (even in redacted form) before moving forward was a defensible, deliberative position.

But that time is gone, and Pelosi’s position no longer makes any coherent sense. “Trump deserves impeachment — so let’s defeat him at the ballot box” is not a sound argument, especially from an institutionalist perspective. There’s also no guarantee it will work, as Adam Jentleson, former chief deputy to Sen. Harry Reid, points out at GQ: Remember how Democrats cleverly chose not to fight for Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination, relying on defeating Trump in 2016 instead?

Pelosi is arguably the most effective Democratic legislative leader of the modern era. But we’re in the postmodern era now, an era of worldwide democratic backsliding, and the very existence of our own democracy is up for grabs. Pelosi isn’t the only one making fundamental mistakes in how she thinks about impeaching Donald Trump, but she’s definitely the most important one.

When Trump fired FBI director James Comey — the act that triggered the Mueller investigation — Aziz Huq, co-author of a worldwide study on the subject, wrote “This is how democratic backsliding begins,” explaining that:

[T]he road away from democracy is rarely characterized by overt violations of the formal rule of law. To the contrary, the contemporary path away from democracy under the rule of law typically relies on actions within the law. Central among these legal measures is the early disabling of internal monitors of governmental illegality by the aggressive exercise of (legal) personnel powers.

This description, derived from more than three dozen examples in more than two dozen countries, aptly characterized the Comey firing, but it applies just as well — and more urgently — to Trump’s far-reaching battle against impeachment, and against congressional oversight more broadly. Pelosi’s failure to grasp the nature of the struggle we’re in is the root misunderstanding in the crisis facing us.

If one ignores the threat of democratic backsliding, then it could be rational, pragmatic and even principled to be guided by fears of a political downside to impeachment, and to view everything through that lens. But that’s a threat one cannot ignore: Even if you view the argument in Pelosi’s terms, the political downside of refusing to impeach is potentially far greater than the downside of impeachment itself.

There are more immediate downside costs as well, as Jentleson’s bluntly-titled GQ article, “The Political Costs of Not Impeaching Trump” reminds us. “Being in the minority limited our options for overcoming McConnell’s blockade” of the Garland nomination, Jentleson writes. “But whenever we started to contemplate more aggressive tactics, they were dismissed on the theory that the upcoming election would sort everything out. Why rock the boat, we told ourselves.”

In other words, Trump was far behind Hillary Clinton in the polls, so why bother fighting McConnell? Democrats would surely get their Supreme Court nominee eventually. We know how that worked out: McConnell’s outrageous move proved crucial in creating just enough support for Trump to win the election. “Republicans wielded their power while we hoped for the best. And the course of history was altered forever.” That could happen again, Jentleson argues:

The decision not to impeach is not a decision to focus on other things, it is a decision to cede power, control, and legitimacy to Trump. Trump is not a master chess player, he just bluffs his opponents into forfeiting their moves — and that is exactly what he is doing to House Democrats.

Ignoring this downside is the fundamental mistake on which everything else is premised, but it’s hardly the only one. There are at least 10 other things that Pelosi and others get wrong about impeachment. Correcting those mistakes can go a long way toward clearing the air.

Most important, Pelosi believes that the American people don’t support impeachment, and that pursuing it will prove disastrous for Democrats. She’s focused on the downside of impeaching, while ignoring the downside of not doing so. This is clearly her overriding concern, and it’s fundamentally mistaken. But it can’t be tackled alone. We need to consider the whole constellation of misperceptions that surround that one and help reinforce it. These can be broken down into six false arguments against moving forward with impeachment and four arguments that are being ignored.

Of those six false arguments, Pelosi managed to squeeze half of them into a the space of just a few sentences a month ago: 1) Trump wants impeachment, and is deliberately luring Democrats into it; 2) Impeachment will divide the nation, and 3) We don’t have enough facts to know whether impeachment is warranted.

“Trump is goading us to impeach him. That’s what he’s doing,” Pelosi said. “Every single day he’s just like taunting, taunting, taunting, because he knows that it would be very divisive in the country but he doesn’t really care. Just wants to solidify his base,” she said. “So we can’t impeach him for political reasons. And we can’t not impeach him for political reasons. We have to see where the facts take us.”

There’s a superficial plausibility to all three claims, so it’s important to realize how wrong they are, and why. Trump loves to goad people, no question. If Democrats were to impeach him, he’d certainly use it to rile up his base, playing the victim card to the hilt. These undeniable facts are just pieces of the whole claim Pelosi advances. But when looked at as a whole, their plausibility quickly starts to crumble.

Mistaken Argument 1: Trump wants impeachment

This part of Pelosi’s claim was immediately challenged on Twitter, Although she has continued to express this view, right through her appearance with Jimmy Kimmel last week. It’s plausible primarily because constant battles with “liberal” foes is one thing Trump has delivered for his base. After Trump blew up the infrastructure talks, the AP went so far as to report Pelosi’s charge as a background fact: “Trump has been betting the future of his presidency on trying to goad Democrats into impeaching him …”

Pelosi’s questionable claim was quickly becoming conventional wisdom, but the very next day, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake offered a more straightforward explanation for Trump’s explosive reaction: “Trump really doesn’t want people digging into his finances and potentially obstructive actions, and he’s willing to do just about anything to try to stop them.” Given Trump’s decades-long history of obsessive secrecy and legal stonewalling, this explanation has a great deal going for it.

Last week, Trump vividly showed the world just how wrong Pelosi’s claim really was. After Mueller broke his silence with a brief public statement at the Justice Department, there was a sharp uptick in calls for Trump’s impeachment. If the president wanted to goad Democrats into taking the plunge, it would have been the perfect moment. Instead, he did the exact opposite — changing the subject completely, as Elaina Plott noted at the Atlantic.

“Whenever a negative story comes around, his instinct is to pivot to immigration or trade,” a senior campaign adviser told her. That’s exactly how Trump responded, with a new announcement of immigration-linked tariffs on Mexican imports. “By the end of a week in which the lies of the White House’s representation of the Mueller report became more apparent than ever,” Plott writes, “reporters, pundits, and the stock market were all responding instead to Trump’s latest attempt to curb immigration at the southern border.”

So it should now be clear to everyone that Trump is not trying to bait Democrats into impeaching him. Rather, as he said himself, he sees impeachment as “a dirty, filthy disgusting word.” As Heather Digby Parton argued here at Salon last week, “The last thing he wants is to be like O.J. [Simpson], a man acquitted by a biased jury, walking around in a world in which almost everybody knows he’s guilty.”

Mistaken Argument 2: Impeachment will divide the nation

Pelosi’s claim that “it would be very divisive in the country” can only be considered a bad joke. The country is already divided, perhaps to an extent not seen since the Civil War. The question isn’t whether Democrats are going to divide the public, but whether they’re going to inform and educate it, to the extent that is possible. Trump’s base, which is too small to re-elect him on its own, doesn’t needsolidifying. In fact, as the recent town hall held by Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., made clear, Trump’s base has been shielded from any knowledge of the Mueller report.

“I was surprised to hear there was anything negative in the Mueller report at all about President Trump. I hadn’t heard that before,” one Trump-supporter said. “I’ve mainly listened to conservative news and I hadn’t heard anything negative about that report and President Trump has been exonerated.” Impeachment hearings will only erode the support of people like this.

On the other hand, it’s Democrats who need to solidify their base by not demoralizing them all over again. This is a difficult task for the Democratic Party because of its coalitional nature, as described by Matt Grossmann and David Hopkins in “Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats” (Salon review here.) But the facts are overwhelmingly on their side, which leads us to Pelosi’s third mistaken claim.

Mistaken Argument 3: We don’t have enough facts

Pelosi’s third claim was expertly presented as common sense: “We can’t impeach him for political reasons. And we can’t not impeach him for political reasons. We have to see where the facts take us.” OK, that sounds reasonable — except that we already have more than enough facts to warrant impeachment. We even have enough to warrant criminal indictments. As the recent statement signed by hundreds of former federal prosecutors states, “The Mueller report describes several acts that satisfy all of the elements for an obstruction charge.”

The problem isn’t a lack of sufficient facts. It’s a lack of sufficient understanding of the facts that are already known.  Of course there are still many missing facts that we ought to have, and should still seek to get. But we already have enough facts to warrant impeachment. That bar has clearly been met.

In fact, there are whole slew of other impeachable offenses Trump has committed, as Lawfare managing editor Quinta Jurecic wrote recently at the Atlantic. Those include the pardon of Joe Arpaio, Trump’s instructions to Border Patrol officers to disobey the courts in turning back asylum seekers, his  demand that the Postal Service double Amazon’s shipping rates and multiple abuses of power, that speak to the “democratic backsliding” described by Huq.  Expanding impeachment hearings to cover these abuses would allow Democrats to drive home the sweeping nature of Trump’s attempted power grabs and how far they depart from established American norms and traditions. It’s not facts that are lacking here. It’s backbone. It’s political will.

Mistaken Argument 4: Impeachment will hurt House Democrats in swing districts next year

This argument is premised on a number of false assumptions: That impeachment will necessarily be seen as partisan; that public opinion won’t change in response to new information; that everyone who voted for Trump in a swing district is part of Trump’s base; that voters will punish a principled stand, rather than respect it (see, for example, the standing ovation Amash received at his recent town hall); and that members of Congress can’t articulate fact-based, nonpartisan arguments for impeachment, just to name some of the most obvious ones.

We’ve already seen initial evidence, both from Amash and from a few swing-district Democrats, indicating that all these assumptions are questionable at best. “We were getting about two to one in terms of the number of calls opposing impeachment and telling us to stop the investigation,” Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., told Chris Hayes last week. “Now we’re getting three or four to one saying, we need to be moving forward. This is getting too out of hand.” Hill is a self-described moderate who narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Steve Knight last fall.

Another newly-elected California Democrat, Rep. Katie Porter — who unseated GOP incumbent Mimi Walters in an Orange County district Democrats had never won — said she had seen “a real turning point” at her town hall, NBC reported. “Porter told voters here that while she did not run for office to impeach the president and never mentioned it on the campaign trail, ‘I will not shirk my duties if the time comes.’”

Democrats must certainly conduct a careful deliberative process along the lines of the Watergate hearings, as one participant in that process, former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, has argued. “Rather than dividing the country, the impeachment process brought it together — most Americans agreed that more important than any president or party were the rule of law and the Constitution,” Holtzman writes. “Nixon was permanently disgraced — and the Committee’s work has never seriously been challenged.”

The key to this success was a transparently fair process, and swing-district representatives like Hill and Porter can play important leadership roles in advocating for such fairness and transparency, with little political risk — provided that Democrats not only deliver such a process, but vigorously defend it as well.

Mistaken argument 5: Impeachment will distract from the Democratic agenda  

This argument is bizarre, since people are already distracted from the Democratic agenda. As I wrote here recently, “Democrats can legislate all they want, for example, but Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and the media will simply continue to ignore them.” The House has now passed 157 bills, but the press is easily distracted by the latest Trump tweet — such as the one the last week in which he claimed House Democrats had gotten nothing done, and only wanted a do-over of the Mueller investigation. It’s hard to fathom how impeachment could change that one iota.

Impeachment would give the Democrats a chance to shape the media narrative for a change — something to which they seem allergic. It would also substantially advance their legislative agenda, first by hampering Trump’s destructiveness in the short run, and second by laying the groundwork for reparative legislation in the future.

Mistaken Argument 6:  The people don’t want impeachment

There are two main reasons this is a mistaken argument:1) It’s irrelevant. What people say they want right now is not indicative of what lawmakers should do. Nor does it tell us what people will want in the future, once they are better informed. If a full congressional investigation and presentation of the facts to the public still results in significant opposition to impeachment, then that becomes a relevant consideration. Congress could choose a resolution of censure, for example, to respect the will of the people on the one hand while maintaining the principle of responsible oversight on the other. But to make any such decision in advance — based on public opinion shaped by disinformation and outright deception — is cowardly and irresponsible.

2) It’s based, consciously or otherwise, on the example of Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which was personally experienced by Pelosi and many other Beltway Democrats, but which is vastly different from the Trump situation. Clinton was a popular president with an abundance of policy ideas who kept working on the people’s business regardless of the ongoing investigations against him, which were drenched in partisanship from start to finish. Trump is a chronically unpopular president, with virtually no policy ideas at all, who has flatly refused to do anything unless all investigations cease. No valid conclusions whatsoever can be drawn from this comparison.

Current levels of support for impeaching Trump and likely future developments are best understood by the example of Richard Nixon, as argued by Sidney Blumenthal at Just Security. Furthermore, drawing on a partisan breakdown of poll numbers, Greg Sargent argues that the Nixon case suggests that “big shifts among independents are possible and show that a substantially larger percentage of independents now support impeachment hearings than at the outset in Nixon’s day.”

Princeton historian Julian Zelizer adds an important point about the importance of congressional investigation in driving public opinion. There was a significant jump in support for impeachment after the House Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings on Nixon, and another jump after it approved articles of impeachment.

“It’s clear from the data that impeachment proceedings provided the jolt that shook the public, among independents in particular,” Zelizer told Sargent. “An independent by nature is not going to make a quick decision. Impeachment proceedings and then the approval of articles of impeachment are what ended up moving independents. … This wasn’t Congress waiting on the public. It was the other way around — Congress provided guidance to the public.”

Ignored Argument 1: An impeachment inquiry is primarily about informing the public

We already have enough publicly known facts to reach a conclusion on impeachment — which was not the case at the beginning of the Watergate investigation. That’s attested to by the letter from federal prosecutors referenced above. But the publicly-known facts are not yet known widely enough for the kind of public consensus that occurred with Watergate. While the inquiry should certainly strive to uncover all the facts it possibly can, the primary focus should be on informing the public of what’s already known, and doing so in a way that’s transparently fair.

Ignored Argument 2:  There’s a serious potential downside for Republicans, even if Trump is acquitted by the Senate

The House impeachment inquiry will just be the first act. If carried out properly, it should convince a majority of the public that Trump should be impeached. At that point, an impeachment resolution can be drafted and voted on. No one should be influenced in any way by the threat that the Senate would not convict. Rather, Republican senators should be influenced by the knowledge that their votes to condone Trump’s abuses of power will be held against them by a significant portion of the public. As Elizabeth Holtzman points out, “Improbably, impeachment proved to be a political bonanza for the Democrats, resulting in massive victories in the 1974 Congressional elections. Democrats had acted responsibly, while Republicans were seen as tied to a lawless president.”

Ignored Argument #3: House Democrats’ primary need is to demonstrate their seriousness

Donald Trump is a master of delay, as well as deception and denial. Democrats cannot let that prevent them from mounting the kind of public inquiry that’s required. As noted above, there’s already an abundance of evidence, so the primary aim should be presenting it in a compelling manner — and using the pressure that generates to press for full release of all information. This includes bringing pressure for all witnesses to appear.

Democrats should also seriously consider the full range of potential impeachable offenses, described by Jurecic at the Atlantic and others, and go through a winnowing process to end up with the strongest, most comprehensive and most comprehensible set of charges. They should not overreach or go on a fishing expedition: Charges that seem imprecise, overly legalistic or poorly substantiated should be abandoned. But they also must not ignore the serious and dangerous abuses of power Trump has engaged in with reckless abandon. There should be no wild punches, and no punches pulled.

Ignored Argument 4: Democrats have no reason to wait

Democrats are right to insist on getting the unredacted Mueller report from Attorney General William Barr, right to insist on hearing from all the key witnesses, and right to insist on seeing all the relevant documents, including Trump’s financial documents and tax returns. But they don’t have to wait on any of that to get started with impeachment proceedings. They can set the agenda, and the pace. It’s their show.

As former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega tweeted, “Dems should assume people DON’T know what’s in the Mueller report. Dems should assume, because it’s true, there’s no shared narrative about facts covered by the report, treat the public as a blank slate & start from scratch, just as a prosecutor does in a trial.”

On Monday, House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler’s announced that hearings on the Mueller report will begin on June 10, with testimony from former U.S. attorneys and legal experts, including Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean. That was a welcome step forward. “Given the threat posed by the President’s alleged misconduct, our first hearing will focus on President Trump’s most overt acts of obstruction,” Nadler’s statement said.

But the vagueness of the proposed timeline undercuts the message of seriousness. “In the coming weeks,” Nadler’s statement continued, “other hearings will focus on other important aspects of the Mueller report.” That is not the kind of take-charge message that Democrats need to send on a constant and consistent basis. It’s suffused with the kind of maybe-we-will, maybe-we-won’t vagueness that Pelosi is clinging to, ignoring the obvious downside of being seen as a bunch of ditherers and prevaricators — which is exactly how Democrats have been perceived for years. The time for dilly-dallying is over. It’s time to step up.

A final thought on strategy

There’s no doubt that Nancy Pelosi is a savvy politician. One could argue that she does have a coherent strategy: Slow-walking the impeachment process, on the theory that voting actual articles of impeachment out of the House is less important than extended, thorough public hearings that expose the level of Trump’s corruption. But if that’s the case, she’s sowing confusion now, as with Nadler’s vague promise of future hearings, or the various reports that she and Nadler disagree on how to move forward.

That also neglects what may be the shrewdest political calculation of all: Putting Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senate in the position of acquitting a president the House has calmly and deliberately proven to be a criminal. To repeat Adam Jentleson’s formula, “The decision not to impeach is not a decision to focus on other things, it is a decision to cede power, control, and legitimacy to Trump.” Surely Nancy Pelosi is too smart to do that.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/here-are-11-crucial-things-nancy-pelosi-gets-wrong-about-impeachment/

[viralhottopics]

Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON Rep. Lamar Smith(R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when anarticleappeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data, Smith pounced. In a press releasetitled Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technologyaccused the federal agency yet again of playing fast and loose with data and the Obama administration of pushing its costly climate agenda.

In the article, which hasreceived widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes thathigh-level whistleblower John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAAs National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the biggest scientific scandal since Climategate. The federal agency, Rose writes, breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published a sensational but flawed reportthat exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karland published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smiths committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. TitledMaking EPA Great Again and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.But the chairman couldnt help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) should redact the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didnt expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey,when he asked whether Holts association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E Newsin which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mails account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was, Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times.

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism,is not the making of a big scandal.

This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency, he said. Theres nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.

Smith fired back: I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that hes said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a studythat it saysconfirmsthe accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade or witch hunt, as some have called it to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobils suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giantsgo-to First Amendment defensein the process.

Later during Tuesdays hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science.

If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence the best understanding at the time of what its going to be. Not some fringe idea, he said. Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldnt think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of whats happening to temperatures in our globe.

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December.

Read more: http://huff.to/2k42HhT

from Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

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New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/02/08/huffington-post-rep-lamar-smith-tried-to-make-a-big-deal-out-of-a-fake-climate-scandal-8/

Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/02/08/huffington-post-rep-lamar-smith-tried-to-make-a-big-deal-out-of-a-fake-climate-scandal-7/

Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/02/08/huffington-post-rep-lamar-smith-tried-to-make-a-big-deal-out-of-a-fake-climate-scandal-6/

Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

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Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

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Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

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Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/02/08/huffington-post-rep-lamar-smith-tried-to-make-a-big-deal-out-of-a-fake-climate-scandal-2/

Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

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Huffington Post: Rep. Lamar Smith Tried To Make A Big Deal Out Of A Fake Climate Scandal

WASHINGTON ― Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a longtime denier of mainstream climate science, is convinced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cooked its books on climate change.

So when an article appeared Sunday in the British tabloid The Daily Mail with the headline, “Exposed: How World Leaders Were Duped Into Investing Billions Over Manipulated Global Warming Data,” Smith pounced. In a press release titled “Former NOAA Scientist Confirms Colleagues Manipulated Climate Records” and a series of posts to Twitter, the chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology accused the federal agency ― yet again ― of playing “fast and loose” with data and the Obama administration of pushing its “costly climate agenda.”

In the article, which has received widespread backlash, journalist David Rose writes that “high-level whistleblower” John Bates, a retired scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, had exposed the “biggest scientific scandal since ‘Climategate.’” The federal agency, Rose writes, “breached its own rules on scientific integrity” when it published a “sensational but flawed report” that “exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.”

The 2015 study, led by NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and published in the journal Science, found that an apparent slowing trend, or hiatus, in the rate of global warming from 1998 to 2012 was the result of its own biased data. The agency corrected its analysis to account for differences between ships’ measurements and those of more accurate at-sea buoys, which increased the estimated rate of warming over the previous 15 years.

On Tuesday, Smith’s committee hosted a hearing that had nothing to do with NOAA, at least on the surface. Titled “Making EPA Great Again” and stacked with industry lobbyists, most of whom agree with Smith on climate change, the purpose was to discuss how the Environmental Protection Agency can “pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science.” But the chairman couldn’t help but take advantage of the opportunity the Daily Mail story created, quickly switching gears to blast NOAA for its alleged deception.

Smith said the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) “should redact” the NOAA study.

Scott J. Ferrell via Getty Images

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has a history of attacking federal climate scientists. 

Smith clearly didn’t expect the response he received from AAAS Chief Executive Rush Holt, a former member of Congress from New Jersey, when he asked whether Holt’s association was committed to thoroughly investigating Bates’ claims.

Holt pointed to an article Tuesday in E&E News in which Bates appeared to take issue with the Daily Mail’s account and backtrack on the interpretation that he wrote about in a lengthy blog post published Saturday (the apparent genesis of the Daily Mail piece).

“The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” Bates told E&E, according to The New York Times. 

Holt told Smith that the Daily Mail story, which has received widespread criticism, is “not the making of a big scandal.” 

“This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency,” he said. “There’s nothing in the paper, the Karl paper, that at our current analysis suggests retraction.”

Smith fired back: “I encourage you to talk to Dr. Bates, because everything I have read that he’s said about the Karl report suggest to me that NOAA cheated and got caught.”

Kris Connor via Getty Images

Rush Holt, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, defended the journal Science’s decision to publish the NOAA study in 2015. 

What Smith has failed to acknowledge is that last month independent researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that it says confirms the accuracy of the Karl paper, further eroding the go-to argument among climate deniers.

The GOP congressman, who has received $697,747 in donations from the oil and gas industry since 1989, has been on a years-long crusade ― or “witch hunt,” as some have called it ― to discredit all-but-universally accepted climate science. In 2015, after NOAA published its study updating the global temperature record, Smith harassed agency scientists, issuing subpoenas to obtain communications related to their analysis. He has also gone after seemingly everyone looking into Exxon Mobil’s suppression of climate change research, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, often parroting the oil and gas giant’s go-to First Amendment defense in the process.

Later during Tuesday’s hearing, Holt revisited the Karl-Bates dispute and spoke to the importance of promoting and protecting science. 

“If you want to be on the right side of any issue, you would do well to go with the evidence ― the best understanding at the time of what it’s going to be. Not some fringe idea,” he said. “Scientists are always poking around the periphery trying to find new understanding, but we shouldn’t think that that is the center of gravity. Take the climate change issue we are talking about this morning. This is an internal dispute about a detail of how you might measure land temperatures or water temperatures. It is not a departure from the general understanding of what’s happening to temperatures in our globe.”

And what is happening is abundantly clear: Global temperatures are spiraling toward the 1.5 degree Celsius aspirational warming limit agreed to during the historic climate change agreement in Paris last December. 

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link