A spokeswoman for the journal that published a government climate study that undercut climate change doubters’ arguments about a global warming pause said the study received more scrutiny than usual.
American Association for the Advancement of Science spokeswoman Ginger Pinholster said the study, which reported that the rate of global warming in the last 15 years has been as fast as the rate of global warming during the latter half of the 20th century, received more rounds of peer review and more study time than most submissions.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science publishes Science, the journal that published the study earlier this year.
That claim undercuts those made by House Science, Space and Technology Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who has targeted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with multiple subpoenas related to the study. Smith, a climate change doubter, wrote in a letter last week he believes the study was rushed.
“This paper went through as rigorous a review as it could have received,” Pinholster said in an interview with the Washington Post. “Any suggestion that the review was ‘rushed’ is baseless and without merit.”
According to Pinholster, the study went through two rounds of peer review and endured 50 percent more review time than the average study submitted to Science.
A senior editor at the journal handled the study because it was a deep look at global temperature data and the journal sent the study back to NOAA scientists twice for revision and clarification, Pinholster told the Post.
In a letter to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker last week, Smith attempted to ramp up the pressure on NOAA for not complying with his subpoenas. Smith is looking for communications among NOAA employees questioning the study’s release.
“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,” he wrote.
NOAA refuses to comply with the subpoenas sent by Smith because the communications show what they classify as confidential scientific discussions.
Smith says the study was published as a tool to justify President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to cut carbon emissions from new and existing power plants. Many climate scientists blame those emissions for driving manmade climate change.
