Testimony before Congress was based on model hindcast, actual data ignored
Guest essay by Michael Wallace, Hydrologist
Members of the global science and lay communities have begun to learn of the confirmed omission of 80 years of instrumental data from contemporary ocean acidification (OA) scientific products. The missing ~2 million data points comprise a majority of the world’s historical ocean pH measurements. The data was replaced without disclosure, by a model hind cast. The substituted history, known as the FEEL2899 report (1) was itself used as the technical basis for testimony to the US Congress (2). In turn, OA mitigation research funding was augmented, and the regulation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was strengthened and deepened.
This occurrence of a model-replacing-data-without-disclosure has few publicized precedents of this scale. Already some in media have chosen to headline this as a case of „pHraud“ (3). Whatever it is called, a fundamental…