From the Washington Post:

[Rep. Lamar] Smith, a prominent congressional climate-change skeptic, has for weeks demanded internal documents and e-mails from [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] he says will prove that … scientists manipulated global temperature data to advance President Obama’s climate agenda. [NOAA Administrator Kathryn] Sullivan has refused to turn them over.

Now National Center for Science Education executive director Ann Reid is placing her organization squarely against scientific transparency, as evidenced by her recent post on the efforts by NOAA to withhold documents relevant to the government agency’s claimed manipulation of data on global warming.

Reid:

Last week, I wrote about Congressman Lamar Smith’s (R-Tex and chairman of the House Science Committee) Congressional subpoena for all correspondence related to a paper from this June that yet again debunked the persistent false claim that global warming has been on “pause” since 1998. Congressman Smith rejects the scientific conclusions, preferring instead to believe that NOAA scientists and officials have colluded to change data to further what he calls President Obama’s “climate change agenda” but what is actually, um — how to put this diplomatically? — the scientific reality. There is simply no evidence to substantiate his conspiracy theories, and overwhelming evidence against them.

In an earlier post, the NCSE head lamented the oversight that the committee is exercising over the publicly funded work of scientists employed and contracted by the government. The Washington Post reported on the unwillingness of officials and scientists at the NOAA to comply with a 1998 federal law, which requires that data from federally funded research be available to the public:

“These are government employees who changed data to show more climate change,” [Rep. Lamar Smith] said in a statement to The Washington Post. “Americans deserve to understand why this decision was made. Despite what some critics claim, the subpoena is not only about scientists. Political operatives and other NOAA employees likely played a large role in approving NOAA’s decision to adjust data that allegedly refutes the hiatus in warming.”

Reid finds such accountability and compliance with federal law a threat to science. She insists:

At stake is nothing less than the independence of the U.S. scientific enterprise. This case affects the ability of scientists to carry out their research without fear of persecution and retaliation.

The NOAA data is proposed as the basis for a radical restructuring of our nation’s energy policy. The Congressional committee is doing due diligence by asking government scientists for any records they have of their scientific deliberations.

It would seem that an honest vetting could be quite an education for the American public. It’s ironic that such transparency would be opposed by the National Center for Science Education.

The American public should understand the process by which energy policy is to be radically transformed — a process and a policy paid for by the public. Records of the scientific deliberations, one assumes, would be quite helpful in demonstrating the fundamental soundness of NOAA’s science. Why withhold scientific documents, if they confirm the integrity of the scientific process?

Image: � Igor Mojzes / Dollar Photo Club.