Judicial Watch Sues for Records Between Key Obama Scientists Involved in Global Warming Controversies

By Michael W. Chapman | April 3, 2017 | 1:10 PM EDT


Dr. John Holdren, former director ofthe White House Office of Science andTechnology. (WH.gov)

(CNSNews.com) -- Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Commerce to obtain all records of communications between two top scientists in the Obama administration who "heavily influenced" the government's "climate change policy and its backing of the Paris Agreement," said the government watchdog group in a statement.

The records are being sought because they could shed light on a scandal about alleged misuse of climate data to hype global warming and because the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a component of the Commerce Department, refused to comply with a Feb. 6 FOIA request for the data.

"This new lawsuit could result in the release of emails that will help Americans understand how Obama administration officials may have mishandled scientific data to advance the political agenda of global warming alarmism," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Judicial Watch is seeking all records of communications from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017 between NOAA scientist Thomas Karl and John Holdren, the former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Holdren, as reported by CNSNews.com, has written in support of worldwide wealth redistribution, an end to the auto industry, economic de-development of the United States, and his view that born babies are not yet "human beings."


Thomas Karl, former director of the NOAA section that produces climate data, the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). (Photo: NOAA)

Judicial Watch quotes from a Daily Mail newspaper report about a scandal involving Thomas Karl, who was accused by then-fellow NOAA scientist John Bates of allegedly manipulating global warming data to refute the idea that there has been a pause in global warming since 1998, which apparently would undermine the idea that man-made greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
Dr. Bates, who is highly respected and helped craft the NOAA's internal evaluation procedures, claims the NOAA "breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the U.N. climate conference in Paris in 2015," reported the Daily Mail.
"The report claimed that the 'pause' or 'slowdown' in global warming in the period since 1998 -- revealed by U.N. scientists in 2013 -- never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected," said the report. But Dr. Bates provided "irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, 'unverified' data," and "it was never subjected to NOAA's rigorous internal evaluation process, which Bates devised," reported the Daily Mail.


President Barack Obama at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris, France, December 2015. (AP)

"His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a 'blatant attempt to intensify the impact' of what became known as the Pausebuster paper," stated the report. Bates accused Thomas Karl, the paper's lead author, of "insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximized warming and minimized documentation," said the Daily Mail, "in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy."
The newspaper further reported that Thomas Karl had a "hotline to the White House through his long association with President Obama's science adviser, John Holdren."

In its statement, Judicial Watch also noted that it is suing for records of communications from NOAA officials about their data gathering and methodology used to justify the "Pausebuster" study, documents that had also been withheld from Congress.

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