SOS Forests

Global Warming Jackanapes

Hot off the wire: debunked and defrocked former Washington State Climatologist Philip Mote has been hired by Oregon Goober Ted Chokeandgagme to head a new political office of “climate change”. From the Capitol Press [here].

Climate expert hired for Oregon research institute

CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) - Washington state climate scientist Philip Mote, who helped write major reports on global warming, will head an Oregon research institute focused on climate change.

Mote, Washington’s state climatologist, will lead the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute. The institute is at Oregon State University but is shared by the statewide university system.

Mote will be a professor in OSU’s College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences [COAS].

Mote has led research on climate changes in the Pacific Northwest and was a lead author of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received a Nobel Prize.

The institute will support Oregon’s new Global Warming Commission, created by Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

The perceptive Rogue Pundit (the best eclectic blog in Oregon) reported this travesty [here]:

Scientific Integrity Not Required

January 06, 2009

Almost two years ago now, there was an embarrassing public battle at the University of Washington’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences over the snowpack reduction in the Northwest (previous blog here). Supposedly, the snowpack had been cut in half since 1950. However, a couple of professors got studying the data and found that was overstated. First, they noted that using 1950 as the baseline was cherry picking, because the previous decade had been unusually snowy. Going back to a more normal 1940, the reduction in snowpack today is 10-15 percent. And, there has been little change in the snowpack over the last 30 years.

That revision didn’t sit well with one of their compatriots-Philip Mote, whose career had been propelled in part by his claims of a dramatic decrease in the snowpack here in the Northwest. The Department chair had to mediate the squabble and do some damage control. He published a revised number regarding the snowpack reduction…30 percent since 1945. Yet Mote not only kept on citing a higher number, but tried to suppress the dissenting views of his colleagues-none of whom can be called skeptics of climate change. Yikes.

Guess where the discredited Philip Mote has gotten a new job?

Washington state climate scientist Philip Mote, who helped write major reports on global warming, will head an Oregon research institute focused on climate change. …

The institute will support Oregon’s new Global Warming Commission, created by Gov. Ted Kulongoski.

In Obama and Biden’s Plan for Science and Innovation, their lead bullet is:

Restoring integrity to U.S. science policy to ensure that decisions that can be informed by science are made on the basis of the strongest possible evidence.

OSU and the Governor obviously aren’t on board with that goal

Lack of integrity is an understatement!!! Mote’s snowpack “trend” was an utter farce. Rather than a create a linear regression using all the data points, he selected “desired” endpoints and drew a straight line between those. In-your-face junk science! Complete bias! Pick any two other endpoints and you get a completely different trend line, including rising trends!

For an example of the proper way to construct linear trend lines, see No Trend In Idaho Snowpack Over the Last 75 Years [here].

Mote fouled his nest at UW. All his coworkers had grown weary of him. He probably took a significant cut in pay to be “rescued” by Teddy the Dork.

Two years ago Mote and Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor squared off in The Great State Climate Debate [here]. Taylor won hands down. That so angered Teddy the Dork that he declared “Taylor is not my State Climatologist,” reached down into Oregon State University, and cut Taylor’s funding. The Oregon Climate Service [here] got squeezed like a lemon. The COAS dean, Mark “the Jerk” Abbott, refused to even speak to Taylor. So Taylor took early retirement.

Now the Dork and the Jerk have hired the second-rate, mousy, cheating, junk scientist Mote? With our money? What a travesty!, another in a long line of travesties perped by the Dork and the Jerk.

By the way, we are experiencing record or near record snowpacks again this year, as well as record cold. What do you know? The PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) rules, there is no global warming (the Earth has been cooling for the last ten years), and Warmer Is Better anyway.

What a sorry state has befallen our sorry state. We elected a jackanape for goober. He has fouled state government and our university. He has promoted catastrophic fire (Ted ran on the platform: “Healthy forests stink, they just stink”). He has promoted the tearing down of dams. He has proposed tax hike after tax hike that subsequently have had to be voted down by overwhelming popular majorities in statewide initiatives. He has sought to dismantle Oregon’s initiative process as a result. He appointed child rapist Neil Goldschmidt to the Board of Higher Education and Goldschmidt’s (3rd) wife to the Economic and Community Development Commission. Our economy has been among the worst in the nation, as judged by indicators such as unemployment rate and business bankruptcies.

Ted has been the worst governor in Oregon history, bar none. And the beat goes on…