A New Strategy to Stop Climate Change Progress
SciLight has written about the group, Protect the Public Trust (PPT), previously. The group is led by Michael Chamberlain, a former Trump administration official and former writer for Franklin News Organization whose affiliates regularly publish climate change denialism. Our prior story on the group focuses on their claim that Department of Interior’s use of Indigenous Knowledge in a decision to cancel oil and gases is not a scientific integrity issue.
The group is claiming that another scientific integrity violation has occurred – this time at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a 15-pg. scientific integrity complaint that was submitted on April 3rd, the group request an investigation into NOAA’s “Billion Dollar Disaster” project.
The project in question estimates costs of weather and climate disasters dating back to 1980, and it has been cited in government policies and reports. When you look at the results of the project to-date it is clear why it’s cited – the project estimates that such events have already cost us over $2.69 trillion and are on the rise. Of course, this isn’t surprising given the swath of research predicting the increase in frequency of extreme weather events as climate change progresses, and the increase in costs from the damages such events incur.
PPT’s scientific integrity violation claims that NOAA’s billion-dollar project might be violating the agency’s scientific integrity policy mostly under issues of transparency. The organization, in coordination with Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., highlights seven different issues in their scientific integrity violation. But, at the heart of violation seems to be an issue of transparency – that NOAA does not fully disclose its methods and data sources for each individual event.
The violation claims that “…the Project does not 1) identify these sources in relation to specific events, 2) explain how the estimates are derived from their sources, or 3) provide the estimates themselves.” Full disclosure, I am no expert in economics, but it does seem that NOAA does transparently disclose their data sources and provides CPI-adjusted estimates for individual events (see screenshot below). The methodology seems to be based on a paper published by Adam Smith in June 2013, which can be found here. There also is a 2021 presentation by Adam Smith that outlines data sources and methods used by the project. The FAQ on the project’s webpage also discloses that not all raw data can be made publicly available for legal reasons.
So, it does seem that NOAA is quite transparent regarding its data sources and methods, to the extent it can be while not doing something illegal. Furthermore, the analyses seem to be based on peer-reviewed research where the data sources and methodologies used were accepted for publication. Given that NOAA’s data and methods have been peer-reviewed, disclosure of raw data is not needed. But, if there are data informing decisions or analyses that can be made publicly available, NOAA should certainly make it so.
This is not a scientific integrity issue
This does not appear to be a scientific integrity issue as it does not seem that NOAA is intentionally hiding data for political purposes. The data and methods used by this project were peer-reviewed and published over a decade ago. NOAA is clear about the data sources it uses and why some data cannot be made available to the public.
If NOAA scientists were instructed by a political official to suppress certain data sources or analyses, then I’d agree that there is a scientific integrity violation. Under NOAA’s policy this is defined as “inappropriate influence” and states: “The attempt to shape or interfere in scientific activities or the production of a scientific product against well-accepted scientific methods and theories or without scientific justification. When the attempt is made for partisan, ideological, or regional advantage, it may be referred to as ‘political interference.’” It is this kind of politicization of science that is dangerous to environmental and public health safeguards – but it just doesn’t seem to be happening in NOAA’s billion-dollar project.
This argument belongs in the scientific literature
If there is indeed publicly available data informing NOAA’s project that can be released – what comes next? According to PPT’s scientific integrity complaint, other scientists, or even the public, could scrutinize NOAA’s estimates. I take a couple of issues with this statement, the first is that non-experts should not be scrutinizing scientific work (this is a Project 2025 strategy to slow down government work that we’ve covered before). While non-expert review may be helpful in raising awareness of scientific evidence and clarifying scientific information, non-expert critique isn’t helpful for validating scientific methods and analyses. That is a matter for experts, as is true in every other field of endeavor.
The second issue is that there is nothing stopping scientists from reviewing NOAA’s project right now. If there are scientists out there who disagree with NOAA’s billion-dollar project methods or data sources, then they should conduct their own research. There is a place where scientists disagree with each other, and it’s called “scientific literature.” If there are economists out there who want to challenge NOAA’s methods or their input data, then they should – this is how science becomes stronger.
But, given PPT’s climate change denialism history, I surmise that this scientific integrity complaint is not about strengthening science. Rather, it’s about casting doubt on climate change science. NOAA isn’t the only producer of science that shows more extreme events are occurring and costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars every year – and that these events are more frequent and intense because of climate change. Climate change is here now, and its fingerprints are on everything - I am certain that attribution studies would illuminate this for each extreme event. Even if NOAA’s billion-dollar project disappeared tomorrow, that would not change the results of hundreds of scientific studies showing that there are extreme weather events that cause billions of dollars in damage each year and that these events are increasing in frequency and intensity because of climate change.