In Paris, representatives from nearly 200 countries are discussing how to fight climate change. But in Washington, some congressional leaders continue to wage a battle over climate science itself.
In a series of letters and public statements, Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has accused the Obama administration and federal researchers of manipulating global warming research to pursue, as he put it on Tuesday, the administration’s “suspect climate agenda.”
Supporters of the scientists and officials in question accuse Smith, in turn, of starting a sweeping investigation that is intended to quash solid science for political ends.
The ranking Democratic member of the science committee, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas, wrote a letter to Smith on Nov. 19 calling the inquiry an “ideological crusade” premised on “baseless conspiracy theories.” She added, “Your ‘investigation’ appears to have less to do with uncovering waste, fraud or abuse at a federal agency, and more to do with political posturing intended to influence public opinion ahead of a major international climate conference.”
Smith responded that Johnson’s characterization of his investigation was “inaccurate and misleading” and said that she placed her “political allegiance to the administration ahead of the committee’s institutional interests.”
Smith has focused on a paper published this year about a supposed “hiatus” in global warming for much of the past two decades. The pause, the researchers found, did not actually occur. The paper, produced by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, found that when adjustments were made to compensate for inconsistent historical methods of measuring temperature, especially those involving seawater, the hiatus largely disappeared.
The finding was politically resonant: The hiatus, which was noted in a report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has long been cited by those who dispute the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
In a hearing on Tuesday challenging the administration’s role in the climate talks, Smith said NOAA’s employees “altered historical climate data to get politically correct results in an attempt to disprove the 18-year lack of global temperature increases.”
Among other complaints, he has argued that the paper was rushed into print to help the administration pursue its goals in regulating power generation and making the case for climate change action in Paris.
The letters from Smith began soon after the paper, titled “Possible Artifacts of Data Biases in the Recent Global Surface Warming Hiatus,” was published in June in the peer-reviewed journal Science. Smith later sent a subpoena to Kathryn D. Sullivan, the administrator of NOAA, demanding information, including all communications between the agency’s employees about such research.
Last month, Smith sent a similar letter to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker claiming that the agency had rushed the study into publication and that “NOAA employees raised concerns about the timing and integrity of the process but were ignored.” He provided no evidence to support those allegations. If Pritzker did not comply, he wrote, “I will be forced to consider the use of compulsory process.”
In response, the agency has provided the underlying data and followed up with a series of briefings, including one with the lead author of the paper, Thomas R. Karl, the director of the agency’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Ciaran Clayton, a spokeswoman for NOAA, said in response to questions by email that “we have provided all of the information the committee needs to understand this issue.” The findings, she wrote, are not politically motivated, but “are the result of scientists simply doing their job.”
On Tuesday, Smith dropped his request for the scientists’ emails, but he continued to press for those from other NOAA employees and officials.
Scientific organizations have sharply criticized Smith’s tactics. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science, joined with six other groups in sending a letter to Smith stating that while “we recognize the oversight responsibility of Congress,” the inquiry “should not be used as a tool to inhibit the ability of federal scientists to fulfill their agencies’ science missions and of agencies to attract world-class scientific talent.”
Keith Seitter, the executive director of the American Meteorological Society, one of the groups that signed the letter, said science is self-correcting through the process of peer review and subsequent research.
“You should not go after the scientists because you don’t like the results that they are getting,” he said. “The science will show if what they are doing is correct.”
He noted that his group also criticized a Democrat, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona, in March when he demanded emails and information on industry support for research by scientists whose work tends to question the consensus views on climate change. (Grijalva eventually dropped the demand for emails.)
Rush D. Holt, a former House member who is chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said the NOAA paper “certainly wasn’t rushed into print.” It went through two cycles of peer review and took somewhat more time to be completed and published than the average paper, he added.
Kerry A. Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, called Karl “a very, very respected climatologist” and scoffed at the idea that he would engage in scientific misconduct, adding, “I would say that this is just politics, and bad politics.”
As for the increasing drumbeat over the paper as the Paris talks approached, he said, “I don’t think the timing is a coincidence.”
Through a spokesman, Smith defended his inquiry. “As a committee, we have a constitutional right to conduct oversight of government agencies within our jurisdiction,” he said. “When a government employee’s salary is paid by taxpayers, they have an obligation to be transparent.”
Climate scientists, he added, “should welcome outside critiques, which are an integral part of the scientific method.”
“Real scientists never claim certainty and always avoid exaggeration,” Smith continued. “Alarmists, on the other hand, promote a political agenda and dismiss any opposition.”
He declined to elaborate on the information that he said had come from whistle-blowers he was obligated to protect, and he added, “Why is NOAA hiding information paid for by American taxpayers?”
Seitter of the meteorological society said the dispute over the research paper about the hiatus did not change two simple facts: “The Earth is getting warmer, and humans are a significant part of that.”
The paper is not, he added, “wildly inconsistent with research coming from other parts of the world.”
“These pieces are all fitting together to make a coherent picture,” he said.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
