Senate and House Republicans sent a letter Tuesday to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) pressing them over allegations that the Biden Administration has been juking statistics related to climate change with temperature monitoring stations.
The Daily Caller first obtained a copy of the letter, which was spearheaded by Utah Sen. Mike Lee. The NOAA is responsible for taking surface temperature readings across the U.S. These readings have been made artificially high by bad placement of the temperature stations near buildings, in higher-temperature cities and adjacent to heating elements and other warmer infrastructure, the lawmakers write in the letter.
The NOAA readings are also collected by volunteers, not scientists. In 2022, 96 percent of temperature stations were found to be non-compliant with the NOAA’s own standards. In the letter, the lawmakers demand answers on these problems, how much this costs taxpayers and how NOAA plans to fix it.
“The Biden administration is pushing anti-science climate ideology on the American people using juked stats. NOAA temperature monitoring stations have been placed near barbecues, vents, hot rooftops, and other locations that give exactly the ‘warming’ results that politicians use as an excuse to seize more control over our economy and waste billions in taxpayer dollars. Americans deserve reliable, unbiased scientific data, not an extreme agenda imposed by Washington,” Lee told the Caller before sending the letter. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: NOAA Relies On ‘Compromised’ Thermometers That Inflate US Warming Trend)
Here Is What The Lawmakers Ask In The Letter:
- How are your volunteers trained to collect data from your temperature monitoring stations?
- What is your policy to track adherence to your established standards system-wide to ensure consistent and accurate temperature reporting?
- What are the methods used to standardize your data, and how is the margin of error calculated?
- How do you peer review your data, and who peer reviews it?
- Your monitoring stations can detect a change of temperature in seconds. Temporary changes in temperature can be caused by something as simple as a semi-truck blocking the wind. How does your agency account for outliers when computing its daily averages?
- How many executive branch departments cite NOAA’s climate reports to make funding decisions?
- How long have you known your agency has been noncompliant with its own temperature monitoring station siting standards? Can you commit to relocating every temperature monitoring station that does not comply with your siting standards? If so, when will this relocation be completed?
- How much taxpayer money has been spent on these temperature monitoring systems nation-wide?
- Has the manipulation of your temperature data resulted in higher funding levels for NOAA?
READ THE LETTER HERE:
(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers
The Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General just announced Tuesday that it will be conducting an audit of the security of the National Weather Service’s operational technology within the NOAA. (RELATED: Gov’t Study Confirms Weather Stations Are Increasingly Surrounded By Asphalt, Concrete And May Show Too Much Warming)
Lee was joined by Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman in sending the letter.
“Climate alarmists have been making predictions of dire climate change consequences for decades, none of which have ever come true. The American people deserve the truth from their federal agencies instead of government overreach over a largely exaggerated ‘crisis,'” Johnson told the Caller.
“Roughly $45 billion of taxpayer money has been spent by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in pursuit of their crazed climate change projects, expenses they justified through surface temperature monitoring data. Yet now we learn that 96% of their stations violated NOAA’s own siting standards as of 2022,” Hageman told the Caller. “Such a massive noncompliance rate makes the data used by NOAA to justify its climate spending spree highly suspect, and the American people deserve answers on how this data has been manipulated to advance the Biden Administration’s radical green bad deal agenda.”