Truth or politics?

It was gratifying that an Idaho House panel has approved new K-12 science standards that strike key references to climate change caused by human behavior.

Dr. John Bates, who formerly led America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate-data records program, has shown irrefutable evidence that the scientific data that NOAA used to verify climate warming trends was politically manipulated for the United Nations’ 2015 Climate Change Conference.

“They had good data from buoys,” he told the Daily Mail. “And they threw it out and ‘corrected’ it by using the bad data from ships [a natural warming source]. You never change good data to agree with the bad, but that’s what they did so as to make it look as if the sea was warmer.” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, is now praising Bates for “courageously stepping forward.” In other words, neither all scientists nor politicians are convinced there is proof for human-caused climate change.

And this explains why President Trump has ruffled the feathers of many environmentalists. Bates wrote that he finds “great irony” in the fact that climate change advocates are now up in arms about President Donald Trump advising political appointees to review all the scientific data found by scientists at the EPA before it can be cleared for publication. This is long overdue.

Reviewing and scrubbing out bad data may not be politically correct in some circles but it certainly restores integrity to science.

Maureen Paterson

Priest River