A former member of the Obama administration spoke with the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The former Obama official explained how DC uses misleading news releases about climate data to help manipulate the public's opinion.
Per the Daily Caller:
Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama’s administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion.
“What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.
He pointed to a National Climate Assessment in 2014 showing hurricane activity has increased from 1980 as an illustration of how federal agencies fudged climate data. Koonin said the NCA’s assessment was technically incorrect.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came forward with a report that concluded that there “is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century” and current data shows “no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century.”
He also added that press officers work with scientists within agencies like the National Oceanic Administration (NOAA) and NASA often are responsible for crafting press releases that can be very misleading.
Koonin is not alone in these claims. House lawmakers with the Committee on Science, Space and Technology recently started an investigation into NOAA after a whistleblower said a landmark global warning study was rushed out by agency scientists to influence policymakers.
The committee's chairman is Rep. Lamar Smith. He said the committee will "move forward as soon as possible" when requesting NOAA to submit documents from a 2015 subpoena that had to do with potential climate data tampering.
Koonin served under Obama from 2009 to 2011. He continued on to talk about the politicization of science. He said that the ethos of science should be to "tell it like it is." You're a scientist and it is your responsibility to put the facts on the table."
He described the actions of NASA and NOAA as problematic. This is because the data from these organizations appears in newspapers and helps form public opinion.
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