One of our favorite conservative state legislators let loose on twitter yesterday:
The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever | via @Telegraph https://t.co/Vs0mcN7cQ6
— Glenn Gruenhagen (@GlennGruenhagen) November 30, 2015
CNN reports this morning in COP21 climate change summit: 'Never have the stakes been so high', but Minnesota state representative Glenn Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe, is having nothing to do with it. Not only did the Sibley County Republican tweet a February climate-denying column from the London Telegraph, he share the piece with House colleagues and their staff, as well as his email list.
In the email, Gruenhagen said:
More proof,that global warming temps have been manipulated and exaggerated primarily for keeping the billions of tax subsidies flowing to the climate scientist. Now the UN in Paris is asking for a $100 billion in tax subsidies for the fraudulent global warming scam.I do believe there are pollution problems in the world but the global warming scam is more about money then fixing pollution problems.Glenn
The subject line comes from the headline The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever, over a February 7, 2015, column by Christopher Booker in the London Telegraph. Booker is sharing widely debunked claims from a blog:
Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming. . . .
Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”. . . .
Nice little echo chamber there, but the claims crumble under scrutiny, like that FactCheck.org published in Nothing False About Temperature Data:
The “report” to which Palmer referred was actually a series of blog posts, written by climate change denier Paul Homewood, which were then highly publicized in two stories by Christopher Booker in the Daily Telegraph in London. Both writers focused on the adjustments made to temperature readings at certain monitoring stations around the world, and claimed that those adjustments throw the entire science of global warming into question. This is not at all the case, and those adjustments are a normal and important part of climate science.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. agency responsible for monitoring national and global temperature trends, has addressed these types of adjustments several times before. NOAA addresses the subject in a Q&A on its website:
Q: What are some of the temperature discrepancies you found in the climate record and how have you compensated for them?
Over time, the thousands of weather stations around the world have undergone changes that often result in sudden or unrealistic discrepancies in observed temperatures requiring a correction. For the U.S.-based stations, we have access to detailed station history that helps us identify and correct discrepancies. Some of these differences have simple corrections.
NOAA maintains about 1,500 monitoring stations, and accumulates data from more than a thousand other stations in countries around the world (many national and international organizations share this type of data freely). There are actually fewer monitoring stations today than there used to be; modern stations have better technology and are accessible in real time, unlike some older outposts no longer in use. The raw, unadjusted data from these stations is available from many sources, including the international collaboration known as the Global Historical Climatology Network and others.
Science is hard, but even Gruenhagen should be able to get it. For those wishing more lively debunking, we recommended HotWhopper's Paul Homewood and Christopher Booker are wrong about global surface temperatures.
PunditFact gave the claim a "Pants on Fire" claim in Fox News host: Climate scientists 'fabricated' temperature data after the claim was repeated by Dana Perino on the channel. Media Matters looked at the conservative frenzy feeding on this one as well.
Here's the the entire email a source on the receiving end forwarded to Bluestem:
From: "Glenn Gruenhagen" <rep.glenn.gruenhagen@house.mn>
Date: November 29, 2015 at 8:16:23 PM CST
To: "All GOP Representatives" <All_GOP_Representatives@house.mn>, "All GOP Staff" <All_GOP_Staff@house.mn>, "All DFL Representatives" <All DFL Representatives.House3PO. LegDom@house.mn>, "All DFL Staff" <All DFL Staff.House3PO.LegDom@house.mn >
Subject: Fwd: The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever - Telegraph
More proof,that global warming temps have been manipulated and exaggerated primarily for keeping the billions of tax subsidies flowing to the climate scientist. Now the UN in Paris is asking for a $100 billion in tax subsidies for the fraudulent global warming scam.I do believe there are pollution problems in the world but the global warming scam is more about money then fixing pollution problems.Glenn
Begin forwarded message:From: "Gruenhagen624@embarqmail.com" <Gruenhagen624@embarqmail.com>
Date: November 29, 2015 at 7:58:58 PM CST
To: "Glenn Gruenhagen" <Rep.Glenn.Gruenhagen@house.mn>
Subject: The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/ globalwarming/11395516/The- fiddling-with-temperature- data-is-the-biggest-science- scandal-ever.html
Gruenhagen's evaluation of sources was taken to task last spring in a Minnesota Public Radio Poligraph analysis,PoliGraph: Gruenhagen climate claim doesn’t hold up. In 2013, Think Progress checked out his conspiracy claims in Minnesota State Rep Calls Climate Change ‘Complete United Nations Fraud And Lie.’
As readers know, Bluestem has been on the Gruenhagen beat for years, most recently with Is Gruenhagen changing his tune on climate change? Check out expert he shared with voters.
In 2014, we covered more of Gruenhagen's strange pseudo-science in other areas in posts like Probably not work safe: a closer look at Bob Frey & Glenn Gruenhagen's anti-anti-bullying bill DVD and HD47A: Creationist candidate Frey opposed to "intelligent design," claimed sun is shrinking. Gruenhagen associate Bob Frey, who was formerly Gruenhagen's campaign committee chair, was defeated in last year's Republican primary.
Photo: Glenn Gruenhagen.
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