Rep. Lamar Smith says his interest in climate study was prompted by whistleblowers

Ars Technica : In a letter sent to US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Science Committee, claims that a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate study was rushed to publication despite the concerns of several NOAA scientists. Last month, Smith subpoenaed internal communications from NOAA regarding the study, about which he has said that “NOAA employees altered temperature data to get politically correct results and then widely publicized their conclusions as refuting the nearly two-decade pause in climate change we have experienced.” In his letter to Pritzker, Smith says the information on which he based his subpoena was provided by whistleblowers. In response to the letter, NOAA says that the study was published in Science after the normal peer-review process and that NOAA has provided all the data, which were already publicly available and should be sufficient to verify the findings.