Watchdog accuses Biden administration of pushing 'misleading and inaccurate claims' in climate report



A nonpartisan government watchdog group has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Commerce, requesting an investigation into possibly unethical and unscientific practices at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The watchdog is specifically concerned with NOAA's Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters tracking project, also know as the Billions Project, which has kept track of weather-related disasters since 1980. As the name would suggest, the project focuses on disasters that supposedly result in losses of $1 billion or more.

According to Protect the Public's Trust, those behind the Billions Project may be responsible for "scientific integrity violations" as well as "misleading and inaccurate claims about the Project's dataset."

This is especially troubling because the Billions Project is greatly impactful. It has been cited by the U.S. Global Change Research Program as a "climate change indicator"; its data was referenced last year as evidence that "extreme events are becoming more frequent and severe" in the same federal program's "Fifth National Climate Assessment"; and its results have reportedly been cited in nearly 1,000 articles.

Protect the Public's Trust noted in its April 3 letter to NOAA science integrity officer Cynthia Decker and to Roderick Anderson, the acting inspector general of the U.S. DOC, "Though cited as evidence of climate change effects, the Billions Project does not utilize climate data. The Project's dataset only collects and reports economic data about disaster losses."

Since it relies upon economic data, PPT noted that the Billions Project "cannot distinguish the effect of climate change as a factor on disaster losses from the effect of human factors like increases in the vulnerability and exposure of people and wealth to disaster damages due to population and economic growth."

The PPT alleged that the project:

  • employs opaque methods to calculate losses from individual disaster events that "result in drastically higher loss estimates than those reported by other institutions at NOAA";
  • uses "undisclosed non-traditional costs in its calculations [which] can mislead and misinform the public about the relevant scale of the disaster losses reported in the Project's dataset";
  • adds and removes disaster events from the dataset without so much as an explanation;
  • adjusts its loss data "beyond what inflation-adjustments require and does so for unexplained reasons";
  • "'scales up' loss data based on various factors without disclosing the methodology for its calculation or the baseline data"; and
  • appears to use inconsistent calculation methods over time.

The PPT stressed that the "national conversation on climate change and disaster-response should not be tainted by inaccurate, misleading, and self-serving scientific analysis."

"The American public has every right to expect, even demand, that the scientific research funded by their tax dollars is conducted under the most rigorous standards of integrity, transparency, and quality," said PPT director Michael Chamberlain in a statement.

"This is especially true when that research is used to underpin decisions that affect nearly every aspect of their lives — from the cars they drive, to the foods they eat, to how those foods are prepared. Despite the fact the Billions Project is being used to affect precisely these types of decisions, the principles of scientific integrity, transparency, and quality appear to be severely lacking in its work," added Chamberlain.

Just the News reported that the study by Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. referenced in the PPT complaint raised similar concerns earlier this year.

Pielke, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, underscored in the pre-print of his forthcoming paper that "public claims promoted by NOAA associated with the dataset and its significance are flawed and misleading. ... Similarly flawed are NOAA's claims that increasing annual counts of billion dollar disasters are in part a consequence of human caused climate change."

NOAA responded in January to this line of critique, telling Just the News that "the methodologies of the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product are laid out in Smith and Katz, 2013, a peer-reviewed publication, and follow NOAA’s Information Quality and Scientific Integrity Policies."

Chamberlain found the spokesman's response to be "of the 'you'll just have to trust us' variety. While they may call themselves 'scientists,' that's not how science works."

The Billions Project concluded in its last annual report that there were 28 weather and climate disasters in 2023, "surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020, tallying a price tag of at least $92.9 billion. The project claims that the U.S. has sustained 378 weather and climate disasters each resulting in at least $1 billion in damages or costs since 1980. These allegedly add up to $2.69 trillion.

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Climate scientist admits to leaving 'out the full truth' about wildfire causes in order to get published in top scientific journal, reveals the tricks other alarmists play to get ahead



The esteemed scientific journal Nature published a scholarly article last week about alleged empirical relationships between supposedly man-made climate change and wildfire growth risks, quantified using machine learning. While the article advanced the usual conclusions about climate change predisposing certain regions — in this case, California — to wildfire conditions, the lead author then did something quite unusual.

Patrick T. Brown, lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of the Climate and Energy Team at the Breakthrough Institute, publicly admitted Tuesday that, like other scientists keen to have their work published, he "left out the full truth" in order to push "a narrative [he] knew the editors would like."

Brown's admission and corresponding explanation appear to suggest that those keen to "follow the science" may oftentimes be left filling their heads with alarmist agitprop rather than meaningful insights into the workings of the natural world.

Zeroing in on climate science in particular, Brown stressed that it "has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve."

Brown noted on X after the publication of his article, "I am very proud of this research overall. But I want to talk about how molding research presentations for high-profile journals can reduce its usefulness & actually mislead the public."

The climate scientist flatly admitted in a polished version of his revelations in Bari Weiss' Free Press, "I wanted the research to be published in the highest profile venue possible. ... When I had previously attempted to deviate from the formula, my papers were rejected out of hand by the editors of distinguished journals, and I had to settle for less prestigious outlets. To put it another way, I sacrificed contributing the most valuable knowledge for society in order for the research to be compatible with the confirmation bias of the editors and reviewers of the journals I was targeting"

The climate scientist explained in his scholarly piece how he had elected not to "quantify" the most impactful factors behind the causes and exacerbation of wildfires, namely poor forest management and human ignitions.

Citing scientific analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America years before climate alarmism hit its latest fever pitch, Brown retroactively underscored that over 80% of wildfires in the U.S. are started by human beings.

Just as with the hundreds of wildfires that ravaged northern Spain earlier this year, arsonists are believed to be responsible for the Greek wildfires that have killed at least 20 people. Seventy-nine arson suspects had been arrested in connection with the wildfires as of Aug. 25, reported the BBC.

ABC news reported Sunday that the largest wildfire in Louisiana history, which has destroyed tens of thousands of acres and has yet to be fully contained, was similarly the result of arson, according to the state's Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

Human ignition is not always the product of eco-terrorists and other such criminal lunatics. Sometimes, it is simply the result of incompetence.

TheBlaze previously detailed reports indicating the wildfires in Maui were most likely the result of the failures of Hawaiian Electric to maintain its equipment, to deal with the known and documented threat of fuel buildup in the form of flammable vegetation, and to pre-emptively shut down its power lines ahead of high-wind warnings.

Brown highlighted various articles concerning the Maui wildfires in various mainstream publications such as Bloomberg and the New York Times, which hyped climate change as a factor over human error and malfeasance.

"So why does the press focus so intently on climate change as the root cause?" wrote Brown. "Perhaps for the same reasons I just did in an academic paper about wildfires in Nature, one of the world's most prestigious journals: it fits a simple storyline that rewards the person telling it."

To reap the reward, the climate researcher knows "his or her work should support the mainstream narrative."

This entails in part that scientists entertain the possibility that expensive and bureaucratic "policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions," might serve as viable remedies contra concrete and practical measures.

The climate scientist also noted a couple other tricks of the trade when it comes to fearmongering over the specter of climate change:

  • downplay meaningful actions that could simultaneously counter the impact of so-called climate change and assuage the public's concerns;
  • "focus on metrics that will generate the most eye-popping numbers" as a means to sensationalize, even if that's at the expense of relevance or actionable information; and
  • "always assess the magnitude of climate change over centuries, even if that timescale is irrelevant to the impact you are studying" — and when doing so, ignore technological and/or societal changes that have taken place over that time.

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