Grande Michael Novak Faleceu Hoje. Tive o Prazer de Conhecê-lo Pessoalmente. Gênio.

Michael Novak, o gênio, o grande amigo de João Paulo II e de Ronald Reagan, o defensor do capitalismo dentro da Doutrina da Igreja, o enorme formador de opinião dentro e fora dos Estados Unidos, faleceu hoje, para minha tristeza.

Ele tinha muito ainda a nos ensinar.

Tive o inesquecível prazer de conhecê-lo pessoalmente, de trocar ideias sobre capitalismo e a Igreja, e de, o que mais orgulho, de vê-lo debater um artigo meu. Obviamente, não perdi a oportunidade, e pedi para ele autografar o livro dele que tenho.

Inesquecível.

Aqui vai minha homenagem e condolências a família, que ele tanto amava e sempre mencionava sua esposa em suas palestras.

Rezemos por ele. Descanse em paz, grande Michael Novak, o mundo sentirá muito sua falta.

Vejam texto da Catholic University.

Catholic University Remembers Michael Novak as Influential Thinker, Prolific Writer, and Beloved Mentor

^{Photo by Patrick G. Ryan — www.snarkinfested.com}

(Washington, D.C.) Michael Novak, groundbreaking author, philosopher, theologian, and faculty member of Catholic University’s Tim and Steph Busch School of Business and Economics since last August, is remembered at the University as one of the country’s most influential thinkers and a mentor to business students and faculty, among many others.

Novak, who died Feb. 17, 2017, at the age of 83, joined The Arthur and Carlyse Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship last year as a distinguished visiting fellow. He taught Special Topics in Management and gave a series of lectures on campus on the topic of human ecology.

Novak, whose 1982 book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism changed the public conversation about the benefits of capitalism, was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1994, and served as Ambassador to the UN Commission on Human Rights in 1981 and 1982.

Novak studied at Catholic University in 1958 and 1959 and had lectured at the University several times prior to last year’s appointment. University President John Garvey remembered him as “a man of great intellectual honesty.”

“Unlike some scholars, Michael Novak made it a point to reflect on new and different topics, always with a fresh and dynamic perspective,” Garvey said. “We are immensely grateful that he could end his academic life as he began it, as a member of our community.”

Andreas Widmer, director of The Arthur and Carlyse Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship, recalled Novak as a mentor and described him as the “founding father” of the discussion about the intersection of faith and economic activity.

“My colleagues and I have been touched by his kindness and humility. He was quick to encourage others and was generous with his time,” Widmer commented. “You would never have known from working with him that this was a man who had counseled popes and changed the course of history. It meant so much to me this past year to have Michael, who has long been a mentor and friend, beside me as a colleague at Catholic University.”

In a 2014 address at Catholic University Novak described the University as “a sacred place” and talked with fondness about the faculty members he had studied under, among them Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, Monsignor Robert Trisco, Rev. Gene Burke, Monsignor Joseph Fenton, and Rev. Francis J. Connell.

Upon his appointment to Catholic University as a visiting fellow, Novak commented on the University’s commitment to promote Catholic Social Doctrine as a means to human flourishing.  “If, as a teacher you want to reach the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, many of whom are poor, where better to be?”

In 2006, Novak and his wife, Karen Laub-Novak, established two scholarship funds to support philosophy graduate students, one in his name for students working on the intersection of philosophy and religion or public policy and one in her name for students interested in the philosophy of beauty.

The author of more than 50 books who was highly regarded for his religious scholarship and intellectual independence, Novak shared his insights into the spiritual foundations of economic and political systems and the moral ideals of democratic capitalism in syndicated columns and innumerable lectures, articles, and commentaries.

Novak wrote on topics as varied as capitalism, human rights, labor union history, sports, peace, families, and the role of churches in a pluralistic world. His books have been translated into every major Western language, as well as Bengali, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.

He considered his greatest honor to be that Pope John Paul II called him a friend, as did Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan.

The son of Michael J. Novak and Irene Sakmar, Novak was born on Sept. 9, 1933, in Johnstown, Pa. Discerning a call to the priesthood, Novak entered Holy Cross Seminary of the Congregation of Holy Cross at Notre Dame at the age of 14. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., graduating summa cum laude in 1956.

Later he earned a Bachelor of Sacred Theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, graduating cum laude in 1958. He then transferred to Catholic University, where he studied for two semesters, forming a lifelong attachment to the University.

He taught at Harvard, Stanford, Syracuse, Notre Dame, and Ave Maria universities and was awarded 27 honorary degrees, including one from Catholic University in 2015.

In his name, the Acton Institute, a Michigan-based think tank, created the Novak Award, which honors outstanding scholarly research concerning the relationship between religion, economic freedom, and the free and virtuous society.

Three Catholic University professors have been recipients of the award: Andrew Abela in 2009, then an associate professor of marketing and founding dean of the school of business and economics, who now serves as University provost; Catherine Pakaluk in 2015 who joined The Busch School faculty a year later as an assistant professor of economics; and Maximillian Torres in 2003 who joined the faculty as associate professor and director of management in 2014. 

To read Novak’s biography, visit http://michaelnovak.net/biography/.

Mais um Caso de Cientistas Manipulando Dados para Provar Aquecimento Global

O vídeo acima apenas explica muito por cima o caso. O jornal Daily Mail foi bem mais detalhista, sobre como a organização Administração Oceânica e Atmosférica dos Estados Unidos (NOAA) manipulou os dados para convencer políticos do mundo todo que há aquecimento global no planeta durante os Acordos de Paris.

Vejam abaixo, parte do que disse o Daily Mail, leiam todo o artigo clicando aqui.:

Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data 

- The Mail on Sunday can reveal a landmark paper exaggerated global warming

- It was rushed through and timed to influence the Paris agreement on climate change

- America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration broke its own rules

- The report claimed the pause in global warming never existed, but it was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data

By David Rose for The Mail on Sunday

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.

His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a ‘blatant attempt to intensify the impact’ of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.

His disclosures are likely to stiffen President Trump’s determination to enact his pledges to reverse his predecessor’s ‘green’ policies, and to withdraw from the Paris deal – so triggering an intense political row.

In an exclusive interview, Dr Bates accused the lead author of the paper, Thomas Karl, who was until last year director of the NOAA section that produces climate data – the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) – of ‘insisting on decisions and scientific choices that maximised warming and minimised documentation… in an effort to discredit the notion of a global warming pause, rushed so that he could time publication to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy’.

Dr Bates was one of two Principal Scientists at NCEI, based in Asheville, North Carolina.

A blatant attempt to intensify paper's impact 

Official delegations from America, Britain and the EU were strongly influenced by the flawed NOAA study as they hammered out the Paris Agreement – and committed advanced nations to sweeping reductions in their use of fossil fuel and to spending £80 billion every year on new, climate-related aid projects.

The scandal has disturbing echoes of the ‘Climategate’ affair which broke shortly before the UN climate summit in 2009, when the leak of thousands of emails between climate scientists suggested they had manipulated and hidden data. Some were British experts at the influential Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

NOAA’s 2015 ‘Pausebuster’ paper was based on two new temperature sets of data – one containing measurements of temperatures at the planet’s surface on land, the other at the surface of the seas.

Both datasets were flawed. This newspaper has learnt that NOAA has now decided that the sea dataset will have to be replaced and substantially revised just 18 months after it was issued, because it used unreliable methods which overstated the speed of warming. The revised data will show both lower temperatures and a slower rate in the recent warming trend.

The land temperature dataset used by the study was afflicted by devastating bugs in its software that rendered its findings ‘unstable’.

The paper relied on a preliminary, ‘alpha’ version of the data which was never approved or verified.

A final, approved version has still not been issued. None of the data on which the paper was based was properly ‘archived’ – a mandatory requirement meant to ensure that raw data and the software used to process it is accessible to other scientists, so they can verify NOAA results.

Dr Bates retired from NOAA at the end of last year after a 40-year career in meteorology and climate science. As recently as 2014, the Obama administration awarded him a special gold medal for his work in setting new, supposedly binding standards ‘to produce and preserve climate data records’.

Yet when it came to the paper timed to influence the Paris conference, Dr Bates said, these standards were flagrantly ignored.

The paper was published in June 2015 by the journal Science. Entitled ‘Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus’, the document said the widely reported ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ was a myth.

Less than two years earlier, a blockbuster report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which drew on the work of hundreds of scientists around the world, had found ‘a much smaller increasing trend over the past 15 years 1998-2012 than over the past 30 to 60 years’. Explaining the pause became a key issue for climate science. It was seized on by global warming sceptics, because the level of CO2 in the atmosphere had continued to rise.

ome scientists argued that the existence of the pause meant the world’s climate is less sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought, so that future warming would be slower. One of them, Professor Judith Curry, then head of climate science at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said it suggested that computer models used to project future warming were ‘running too hot’.

However, the Pausebuster paper said while the rate of global warming from 1950 to 1999 was 0.113C per decade, the rate from 2000 to 2014 was actually higher, at 0.116C per decade. The IPCC’s claim about the pause, it concluded, ‘was no longer valid’.

The impact was huge and lasting. On publication day, the BBC said the pause in global warming was ‘an illusion caused by inaccurate data’.

One American magazine described the paper as a ‘science bomb’ dropped on sceptics.

Its impact could be seen in this newspaper last month when, writing to launch his Ladybird book about climate change, Prince Charles stated baldly: ‘There isn’t a pause… it is hard to reject the facts on the basis of the evidence.’

Data changed to make the sea appear warmer 

The sea dataset used by Thomas Karl and his colleagues – known as Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperatures version 4, or ERSSTv4, tripled the warming trend over the sea during the years 2000 to 2014 from just 0.036C per decade – as stated in version 3 – to 0.099C per decade. Individual measurements in some parts of the globe had increased by about 0.1C and this resulted in the dramatic increase of the overall global trend published by the Pausebuster paper. But Dr Bates said this increase in temperatures was achieved by dubious means. Its key error was an upwards ‘adjustment’ of readings from fixed and floating buoys, which are generally reliable, to bring them into line with readings from a much more doubtful source – water taken in by ships. This, Dr Bates explained, has long been known to be questionable: ships are themselves sources of heat, readings will vary from ship to ship, and the depth of water intake will vary according to how heavily a ship is laden – so affecting temperature readings.

Dr Bates said: ‘They had good data from buoys. And they threw it out and “corrected” it by using the bad data from ships. You never change good data to agree with bad, but that’s what they did – so as to make it look as if the sea was warmer.’

ERSSTv4 ‘adjusted’ buoy readings up by 0.12C. It also ignored data from satellites that measure the temperature of the lower atmosphere, which are also considered reliable. Dr Bates said he gave the paper’s co-authors ‘a hard time’ about this, ‘and they never really justified what they were doing.’

Now, some of those same authors have produced the pending, revised new version of the sea dataset – ERSSTv5. A draft of a document that explains the methods used to generate version 5, and which has been seen by this newspaper, indicates the new version will reverse the flaws in version 4, changing the buoy adjustments and including some satellite data and measurements from a special high-tech floating buoy network known as Argo. As a result, it is certain to show reductions in both absolute temperatures and recent global warming.

The second dataset used by the Pausebuster paper was a new version of NOAA’s land records, known as the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), an analysis over time of temperature readings from about 4,000 weather stations spread across the globe.

This new version found past temperatures had been cooler than previously thought, and recent ones higher – so that the warming trend looked steeper. For the period 2000 to 2014, the paper increased the rate of warming on land from 0.15C to 0.164C per decade.

In the weeks after the Pausebuster paper was published, Dr Bates conducted a one-man investigation into this. His findings were extraordinary. Not only had Mr Karl and his colleagues failed to follow any of the formal procedures required to approve and archive their data, they had used a ‘highly experimental early run’ of a programme that tried to combine two previously separate sets of records.

This had undergone the critical process known as ‘pairwise homogeneity adjustment’, a method of spotting ‘rogue’ readings from individual weather stations by comparing them with others nearby.

However, this process requires extensive, careful checking which was only just beginning, so that the data was not ready for operational use. Now, more than two years after the Pausebuster paper was submitted to Science, the new version of GHCN is still undergoing testing.

Moreover, the GHCN software was afflicted by serious bugs. They caused it to become so ‘unstable’ that every time the raw temperature readings were run through the computer, it gave different results. The new, bug-free version of GHCN has still not been approved and issued. It is, Dr Bates said, ‘significantly different’ from that used by Mr Karl and his co-authors.

Dr Bates revealed that the failure to archive and make available fully documented data not only violated NOAA rules, but also those set down by Science. Before he retired last year, he continued to raise the issue internally. Then came the final bombshell. Dr Bates said: ‘I learned that the computer used to process the software had suffered a complete failure.’

The reason for the failure is unknown, but it means the Pausebuster paper can never be replicated or verified by other scientists.

The flawed conclusions of the Pausebuster paper were widely discussed by delegates at the Paris climate change conference. Mr Karl had a longstanding relationship with President Obama’s chief science adviser, John Holdren, giving him a hotline to the White House.

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