The Republican head of the House science committee is fighting to obtain documents from the Obama administration on a controversial global warming study, as the agency that produced it locks down internal records despite a subpoena.
The report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claims to refute prior studies showing the rate of global warming had flattened in recent decades.
Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, a global warming skeptic who questioned the data, issued a subpoena on Oct. 13 for the agency to “compel production of documents and communications relating to adjustments of historical temperature data.”
But the chairman of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology complained this week that the agency still is only providing some of the documents.
“The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made,” Smith said in a statement. “NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda.”
The NOAA says it has provided all necessary documents and data as well as multiple in-person briefings — but made clear it does not plan to provide the private communications of scientists due to a long-standing practice in the scientific community of keeping such information private in order to encourage open discussion.
