The oldest method of fraud is the classic merchant’s trick of “putting finger to the scale,” in days before pre-packaging. Buy a pound of grain? Watch the seller’s hands, make sure they’re clear of the measurement device …
Some climate scientists might have been engaging in similar rigging of measurement, in this case of the sea’s much-prophesied rise, as FoxNews.com reports:
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters — or about the thickness of a fingernail — every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.
So, instead of putting a finger on the scales, they’ve put a fingernail’s worth of bias to the data.
The scientists say they have to offset for other factors in the land-sea ratios, and, for all I know, they are correct. But in the context of the “global warming” debate it doesn’t look so good, especially when what we hear from climate change alarmists includes scant talk of complex, offsetting factors. Indeed, in that light, the repeated fingernail addition looks like a piling onto the data, to make the evidence match the prophecy.
Ideally, scientists would not ever dumb down their opinions — or skew their forecasts — to the point where we become suspicious of every complexity they add to their models.
But, as we have learned, we don’t live in an ideal world.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Fingernail Adjustment”
Lib/prog fudge factor:
Multiply by zero and then add the number to give the results you want.
As exemplified in Operation Fast and Furious, where over 2000 guns were allowed to be smuggled across the border and in to the hands of the drug cartels. An initial study to show how big a problem that unrestricted gun sales were in the US failed to find this as a significant problem in illegally purchased and smuggled weapons reaching the Mexican cartels. The existing system was overridden at the direct orders of the ATF and a river of guns was allowed to flow out of the US and into the hands of the Mexican underworld. Hard to justify cracking down on gun sales in the US if there is no documentable problem with those sales because the existing system does a great job of preventing them from getting into the wrong hands.
Was that their intent? Certainly has to be considered out of all of the possible idiotic justifications for such poor decision-making from the ATF. And Mr. Holder claimed no awareness of this issue even weeks after the story broke in the media. For someone who is supposed to be competent, he shows a marked ignorance of what is going on in a department that he is charged with supervision of.
Perhaps he has reached his Peter Priciple and is not up to the job. Or he prevaricates. Could go either way.
RE: Holder- but if the AG were not African-American AND A REPUBLICAN, can one imagine what the media would be saying?
And calling for Special Prosecutors up the butt.
And calls for the AG to resign.
The real problem with the ‘fingernail’ adjustments, is that they represent only the tip of the iceberg of massive data fraud by scientists who are connected to research money & to political movements.
The ‘solutions’ proposed for Climate Change, all amount to massive political change that undermines the free market. In short, their goals destroy the freedoms of average everyday human beings by denying them freedoms & by restricting every aspect of life.
All of the political solutions proposed, are socialist. These people are selling soft (for now) communism. One day, their sales pitch will be broadcast as, demands!
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