Thorough, not thoroughly fabricated: The truth about global temperature data

(credit: Scott K. Johnson/Suzanna Soileau-USGS/Hanna-Barbera)

“In June, NOAA employees altered temperature data to get politically correct results.”

At least, that's what Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) alleged in a Washington Post letter to the editor last November. The op-ed was part of Smith's months-long campaign against NOAA climate scientists. Specifically, Smith was unhappy after an update to NOAA’s global surface temperature dataset slightly increased the short-term warming trend since 1998. And being a man of action, Smith proceeded to give an anti-climate change stump speech at the Heartland Institute conference, request access to NOAA's data (which was already publicly available), and subpoena NOAA scientists for their e-mails.

Smith isn't the only politician who questions NOAA's results and integrity. During a recent hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) leveled similar accusations against the entire scientific endeavor of tracking Earth’s temperature.