Republicans Cite Tabloid Story in Attacking NOAA Climate Science, Story Falls Apart within Days, Republicans Double Down
(Washington, DC) – On Sunday, Chairman Smith issued a press release making accusations against former NOAA climate scientists based on an article in the British tabloid The Daily Mail. This tabloid article made reference to accusations by Dr. John Bates, recently retired principal scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, regarding the “Karl study”, a climate study that showed that the rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than that seen during the latter half of the 20th Century. The study also refuted the notion that there has been a slowdown or "hiatus" in the rate of global warming in recent years. Since the study’s release, at least four other independent studies have confirmed its results.
The tabloid article claimed, “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,” referring to NOAA.
However, yesterday, E&E Daily published a story after interviewing Dr. Bates which says, “[Dr. Bates] had a significantly more nuanced take on the controversy…He specified that he did not believe that they manipulated the data upon which the research relied in any way. ‘The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,’ he said.” Moreover, in a Monday AP interview, Dr. Bates stated that there was “no data tampering, no data changing, nothing malicious.”
In spite of this, at the Committee’s Organizational Meeting and at the Committee’s EPA hearing, Chairman Smith reiterated the claims made in The Daily Mail and attacked NOAA, saying, “NOAA, has deceived the American people by falsifying data to justify a partisan agenda.” He also said, “The Committee will continue our investigation of NOAA’s refusal to provide the Committee with responsive documents on this subject.”
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said, “It seems as though the Chairman has rushed to judgment on Dr. Bates’ claims, especially since those claims seem to be rapidly shifting. Such haste does a great disservice to the dedicated scientists at NOAA and does not reflect well on this Committee.
“However, perhaps the most salient takeaway of all this is that regardless of whether this whistleblower’s claims have any merit, it does not alter the facts of climate change. The Karl study is not the bedrock of climate science. Study after study for years and years has confirmed that the basic facts according to science are the world is warming, the warming is caused mostly by humans, and there are significant risks associated with this warming. We have to move past efforts to create scientific controversy on individual climate studies and instead focus on finding solutions to addressing the threat of climate change.”
At the EPA hearing, Dr. Rush Holt, former Member of Congress and current CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), was asked about the Karl study. He said, “This is not the making of a big scandal. This is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency. What is most important is not that there is internal disagreement within NOAA on how to handle this. A number of other studies, including in one of AAAS’s other publications, Science Advances, have replicated the work and come up with the same conclusions…There doesn’t seem to be anything that suggests there are problems with that work and most importantly, even Mr. Bates says this does not change the policy relevant conclusions about climate change.”
Below are relevant links on this issue:
Climate Science & Data Management
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