Author Archives: RaulBrooks

The White House Won’t Deny the Facts of Latest Russia Scandal But Says It’s False Anyway

by RaulBrooks Posted on May 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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On Monday, the Washington Post set off a political firestorm when it reported that President Donald Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in their White House meeting on May 10. Current and former US officials told the Post that the disclosure jeopardized a valuable source of intelligence on ISIS. The paper quoted one official as saying that Trump had “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

On Monday evening, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster read a confusing statement to the press that appeared to deny the Post’s report. “The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false,” he said, adding that “at no time—at no time—were intelligence sources or methods discussed.” Multiple news outlets soon pointed out that McMaster’s verbal gymnastics seemed to be a classic “nondenial denial.” That is, McMaster appeared to be denying information that wasn’t actually reported by the Post in the first place. The Post had not claimed that “intelligence sources or methods” were discussed; the paper had simply reported that the information discussed could be used to discern intelligence sources or methods.

Trump, for his part, appeared to muddy the waters further Tuesday morning when he took to Twitter to defend his actions. Unlike McMaster, Trump didn’t even purport to dispute the Post‘s reporting:

Later Tuesday, McMaster appeared before the press yet again in an attempt to clear up the situation. Asked about his Monday claim that the Post story was “false,” McMaster said, “I stand by my statement that I made yesterday.” But he then went on to suggest that he wasn’t actually claiming the facts in the story were wrong. Rather, he said it was the “premise” of the article that was false. According to McMaster, “What I’m saying is really the premise of that article is false—that in any way the president had a conversation that was inappropriate or that resulted in any kind of lapse in national security.”

In other words, McMaster wasn’t disputing any of the details in the Post‘s report; he was simply saying the president’s actions were somehow appropriate. McMaster refused to say whether or not the information the president shared with Lavrov and Kislyak was classified. But he repeated several times that Trump’s decision to share the material was “wholly appropriate.”

And why does McMaster think Trump’s statements to the Russians were appropriate? Because, McMaster seemed to imply, the president can decide to share whatever he wants. “As you know,” he said, “it is wholly appropriate for the president to share whatever information he thinks is necessary to advance the security of the American people. That’s what he did…He made the decision in the context of the conversation, which was wholly appropriate.”

McMaster added that Trump wasn’t even aware that the information apparently came from a sensitive intelligence source:

So there you have it: The Post story is “false” because Trump’s statement’s were “appropriate,” and Trump’s statement’s were “appropriate” because he’s the president.

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The White House Won’t Deny the Facts of Latest Russia Scandal But Says It’s False Anyway

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Here’s the Latest Climate Science "Scandal"

by RaulBrooks Posted on February 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This article was originally published by Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The latest salvo in the War on Reality comes from the UK paper the Telegraph, which is a safe haven for some who would claim—literally despite the evidence—that global warming isn’t real.

The article, written by Christopher Booker (who flat out denies human-induced global warming), is somewhat subtly titled “The Fiddling With Temperature Data Is the Biggest Science Scandal Ever.” In it, Booker claims that climate scientists have adjusted temperature readings from thermometers in Paraguay to make it look like the temperature is increasing, when the measurements off the detectors actually show the opposite. The theme of the article is that scientists “manipulated” the data on purpose to exaggerate global warming.

This is nonsense. The claim is wrong. The scientists didn’t manipulate the data, they processed it. That’s a very different thing. And the reason they do it isn’t hard to understand.

Imagine you want to measure the daily temperature in a field near a town. You want to make sure the measurements you get aren’t affected by whether it’s cloudy or sunny—direct sunlight on the thermometer will increase the temperature you measure—so you set it up in a reflective box. Look: Right away you’ve adjusted the temperature, even before you’ve taken a measurement! You’ve made sure an outside influence doesn’t affect your data adversely. That’s a good thing.

So you start reading the data, but over time someone buys the property near the field, and builds houses there. Driveways, roads, houses leaking heat…this all affects your thermometer. Perhaps a building is erected that casts a shadow over your location. Whatever: You have to account for all these effects.

That’s what scientists do. That’s what scientists did. They examined the data from these thermometers all over the world, and tried to minimize the impact of outside influences. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to trust the data.

How you correct the data is important, of course, and this is where the second claim comes in: Scientists manipulated the data specifically to make it look like global warming is stronger than it really is.

Ah, but we know that’s not true! A few years ago, an independent group at Berkeley Earth took that same temperature data and re-examined it, processing it in a different way. Guess what they found?

Yup. The planet’s warming up, and pretty much just as the other scientists had said. You can read more about this in an excellent article by Neville Nicholls, who is an expert in how meteorological measurements need to be adjusted in this way. There’s more at the “…and then there’s Physics” blog and at Real Sceptic, and Skeptical Science has an article debunking this as well.

A graph is worth a thousand words. Here are the results of the Berkeley research compared with various other groups:

The recalibrated temperatures by the Berkeley group (black) versus various other groups. In the past, measurements are less certain, but in modern times they converge and all trend the same way. Berkeley Earth

As you can see, there’s virtually no difference. As long as the measurements are processed properly they show what we know, what we’ve known, for quite some time: The world is warming up, and it’s warming up rapidly.

So, far from being “the biggest science scandal ever,” this isn’t even a scandal at all, and is in fact how science works. You can’t just take raw data off a detector and claim it’s real; if you do so, then at best you’d be fooling yourself, and at worst you’d be trying to fool others. And that’s certainly not how science works.

Originally posted here:  

Here’s the Latest Climate Science "Scandal"

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