by Ann Purvis
Heartland Institute

After fighting a request for information for several months, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) responded to a subpoena from Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

In June 2015, NOAA published a study in the journal Science claiming newly recalibrated temperature data adjusted to reflect temperatures taken from ship engine intake valves showed, contrary to all other data sets, there had been no pause in rising temperatures during the current century…

David Schnare, general counsel of the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, which has sued several federal agencies in recent years to force the disclosure of information they used to formulate regulations, criticized NOAA’s reluctance to comply with Smith’s request.

“NOAA’s refusal to disclose the public records sought by Congress demonstrates two problems in this nation today,” Schnare said. “First, alarmist climate scientists have replaced independent, unbiased science with a policy agenda. Second, this fact would be exposed if their actual informal communications became public.

“The Freedom of Information Act and congressional oversight are intended to allow the public to see how government works,” Schnare said. “The NOAA administrator violates both the spirit and the letter of the law when refusing to open to view public records that document whether or not NOAA scientists are biased in their work.”

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