Following criticism from the chairman of the House of Representative’s Committee on Science, Space, and Technology regarding a global warming study published in Science in June, a spokeswoman from the publication recently said the journal did not rush to publish the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) study.
“This paper went through as rigorous a review as it could have received,” Ginger Pinholster, chief of communications for the American Association for Advancement of Science, told The Washington Post. “Any suggestion that the review was ‘rushed’ is baseless and without merit.”
The NOAA study refutes the claim that since 1998 the global temperature has stopped increasing. The study reports global surface temperatures are higher than reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that the rate of warming for the first 15 years of the 21st century is on par with the rate during the last half of the 20th century.
The study came under scrutiny from Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who claimed “whistleblowers” reported the study was rushed “despite concerns and objections of a number of NOAA scientists, ignoring established and standard NOAA scientific processes and potentially violating NOAA’s scientific integrity policies,” Smith writes in a letter.
“More troubling, it appears that NOAA employees raised concerns about the timing and readiness of the study’s release through emails, including several communications just before its publication in April, May and June of 2015,” Smith writes.
“The timing of its release raises concerns that it was expedited to fit the (Obama) administration’s aggressive climate agenda,” Smith writes. Two months after the study’s publication, the Obama administration finalized its Clean Power Plan.
According to The Washington Post, Smith subpoenaed four NOAA officials for internal emails and documents related to the study.
According to Pinholster, the study, which was submitted in December 2014, was reviewed about 50% longer than usual studies, which are reviewed for around 109 days. Further, a senior editor of the journal was assigned for the study’s review. The study was accepted for publication in May.
According to The Hill, NOAA head Kathryn Sullivan, one of the subpoenaed, said “Let me assure you that I am not engaged in or associated with any ‘politically correct agenda.’”
“I and the entire NOAA team take seriously the charge to provide the best environmental science and reliable data to the nation and the world…I have not and will not allow anyone to manipulate the science or coerce the scientists who work for me,” Sullivan added
