US Government Has History of Breaking Law over Satellite Failures

Satellitegate US Agency Faces Courtroom Climate Showdown

By John O'Sullivan
Wednesday, October 6, 2010

The controversy over ‘Satellitegate’ heats up as NOAA faces a court appearance for refusing to release evidence that would show whether one or more US satellites exaggerated global warming temperatures.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a federal agency focused on reporting the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere. When the story first broke NOAA bizarrely announced it would withdraw satellite ‘images’ from its archives, but failed to state whether reams of cooked data had also been withdrawn.

An official US Government statement last July confirmed that the NOAA-16 earth orbiting satellite used to measure surface temperatures suffered failure due to a “degradedâ€