Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Dog Catching

Surely the tragically uninformed among us could use some perspective on these innocuous comments by Trenberth: "We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't"; "we are (not) close to knowing where energy is going or whether clouds are changing to make the planet brighter."

Trenberth, lead author of the 1995, 2001 and 2007 assessments of climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtains approximately 95 percent of his funding through the federal government, via the National Science Foundation.

Well, soon after my request was fired off, I was informed by NCAR's counsel that the organization is, in fact, not a federal agency -- because its budget is laundered through the National Science Foundation -- and thus is under no obligation to provide information to the public.

taxpayers should be able to hold government-funded scientific institutions to the same level of accountability to which they hold their local dog pounds.