As Climate Gates explodes a conservative researcher with the Competitive Enterprise Institute is suing NASA over its climate change data.
Chris Horner a senior fellow with the competitive Enterprise Institute says NASA have refused to offer climate facts to him and other Climate Change skeptics via the Freedom of Information Act. By keeping the data private NASA shaping climate information and would be forced to explain why their data continually corrected going back to as far as the 1930’s.
“I assume that what is there is highly damaging,” Mr. Horner said. “These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this.”
In 2007 NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934 not 1998 was the hottest year on record(modern history). Later NASA recalculated again and was right 1998 but also found that 2006 tied as hottest years.
Horner the author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism” wants to review the data and the discussions that went into these changes. He’s given NASA until the end of the year or he’ll sue.
This is an same fight that took place at Climate Research Unit, at University of East Anglia, Norwich,UK. Critics have sue to revealed via the UK’s Freedom of Information Laws. However, a hacker broke into the computer system at UEA illegally obtain thousand of e-mails admitting to changing the facts to make it fit to their conclusions and denounce critics.
Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit has stepped down during the investigation.
The CRU also announce in responding to freedom of information law that threw away all data from the temperature models when moved to a new and larger facility in the late 1980’s.
Horner believes that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) was cutting playing fast and loose with their data. GISS is another global warming research facility.
A spokesman for Goddard Institute for Space Studies could not account for the delay in providing the competitive enterprise institute is data But they are working on the request.
“We’re collecting the information and will respond with all the responsive relevant information to all of his requests,” Mr. Hess said. “It’s just a process you have to go through where you have to collect data that’s responsive.”
Mark Hess, public affairs director for the Goddard Space Flight Center was unaware to the situation at the University of East Anglia. Hess could not say if NASA is susceptible to the problems Climate Research Institute is experiencing.
The White House has dismissed the e-mail controversy as irrelevant.
“Several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening. I don’t think that’s anything that is, quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore,” press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters this week.
Republicans in Congress are demanding investigation into the e-mail controversy. They also sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, Wednesday to hold off implementing new regulations until the science of climate change be proven. However some scientists are rallying behind the researchers at Climate Research Unit.
Prof. Michael Mann a global warming scientist at Pennsylvania State University, who is the US leading expert and himself in the center of e-mail controversy. Mann says the e-mail leak set up to put the breaks on the Copenhagen accords.
“They’ve taken scientists’ words and phrases and quoted them out of context, completely misrepresenting what they were saying,” Mr. Mann told AccuWeather.com in an interview, calling it a “manufactured controversy.”
GISS originally listed the hottest years as 1998, 1934, 2006, 1921 and 1931. However, Canadian skeptic Steve McIntyre, who runs ClimateAudit.com. McIntyre questioned the data
GISS rejiggered the list and 1934 was warmest, followed by 1998, 1921, 2006 and then 1931. But since then, the list has been rewritten again so it now runs 1998, 2006, 1934, 1921, 1999.
GISS said it was “minor data processing error” and the top three years remained the same.
Washington Times