The Competitive Enterprise Institute is suing NASA to release information explaining why the agency revised its global-warming data upward in 2007, after having revised the data downward six weeks earlier. CEI had submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to obtain the information, to no avail. The cover-up may mirror the manipulation of climate-change data by British scientists that came to light last year.
“NASA is accountable to the taxpayers and to the public” a May 27 CEI news release explained, and “should not be free to treat its FOIA obligations with contempt.” While the revisions represent relatively small changes in the temperature record — and the data is only for the continental United States, not the entire world — the revisions are significant because the unrevised data, which was well publicized, showed 1998 as being the hottest year on record in the continental United States, while the little-noticed downward revision showed that the hottest year was actually 1934 — meaning that recent years have not been the hottest years despite global-warming alarmism.
NASA suddenly, and grudgingly, revised temperatures downward in August 2007 after Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre exposed errors in the data. NASA did not want to admit that the hottest year on record in the continental United States was way back in 1934, but had no choice because of McIntyre pointing out problems in the data that NASA could not deny. But six weeks after the data was revised downward, the data was revised upward again, without explanation, to reveal that 1998 was equal to 1934 as the hottest year on record.
The CEI lawsuit charges that NASA has attempted to “reverse engineer” its earlier data in order to make global warming appear faster than the data would otherwise show, and then cover up the reverse engineering process. “NASA has converted the FOIA process— which is intended to provide citizens with prompt and complete disclosure — into a tedious and protracted battle in which documents are produced late, grudgingly, and in an incomplete and haphazard manner.”
Despite repeated CEI Freedom of Information Act requests to find out the reasons why NASA suppressed the global warming changes, NASA continues to treat global-warming analysis with the kind of secrecy usually reserved for military intelligence on the position of Soviet nuclear submarines. The stonewalling has continued under an Obama White House whose website boasts that “government should be transparent.” Obama’s White House website pledges:
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
The ongoing federal government stonewalling comes as the White House is trying to push through a gigantic new environmental legislative initiative, the “cap-and-trade” legislation. President Obama has said last week of the BP oil spill that “this disaster should serve as a wake-up call that it’s time to move forward on this legislation.”
Moreover, the National Research Council (NRC) released three studies less than two weeks ago claiming an urgent need for broad, new federal environmental controls. “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for — and in many cases is already affecting — a broad range of human and natural systems,” the NRC concludes. “Some impacts — such as rising sea levels, disappearing sea ice, and the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events like heavy precipitation and heat waves – are already being observed across the country.”
According to the National Research Council, the reports recommend carbon emission limits be imposed upon Americans and “a single federal entity or program be given the authority and resources to coordinate a national, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at improving both understanding and responses to climate change.” The NRC notes that “meeting the target will require a major departure from ‘business-as-usual’ emission trends.” And the White House seems to be dedicated to ending “business-as-usual” without even having all the facts out in the open.
