As the planet warms, doubters launch a new attack on a famous climate change study

By Chelsea Harvey

A former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist has reopened a contentious debate over the validity of a key agency climate change study, asserting that procedures for archiving its data were not properly followed by its authors.

The claims by John Bates, first published in the Mail on Sunday and later amplified in a blog post he authored, have prompted Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, to criticize NOAA senior officials for “playing fast and loose with the data in order to meet a politically predetermined conclusion.”

But many scientists, although hesitant to pronounce on the specific charges about data archiving, have pointed out that the research has been independently confirmed by another recent study — and that in any case, none of this raises any significant doubt about human-caused climate change. Meanwhile, the researchers behind the original NOAA paper have disagreed strongly with Bates’s charges, as has at least one scientist who worked with the team.

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