Who's Afraid of Sound Science?
Posted by Chris Horner · 17 September 2004 · Climate
The
data quality, or information quality, act required OMB and federal agencies to
establish guidelines for the data that they data they disseminate in order to
maximize quality, utility, objectivity and integrity of information. The goal
was to limit the practice of "regulation by publication," or using
the governmental impramatur to, e.g., scare Alar off the shelves, or provide
trial lawyers fodder for the rash of pending "global warming"
lawsuits to require U.S. industry to pay for Third World weather.
Although
every single request for correction has been rejected, as has every appeal,
even the potential threat of information quality guidelines is apparently just
too much for global warming alarmists. See the following e-mail received from
Hill staff in the know. It looks like someone -- whom the author speculates to
be Senator McCain -- has sneakily inserted an exemption for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to make it the only executive agency
excluded (de jure) from informtaion quality requirements.
"We
have just learned of a troubling rider included in the CJSJ appropriations bill
marked up by the Senate Appropriations Committee on September 19. The rider
would exempt NOAA--and climate research--from the sound science requirements of
the data quality act.
The
data quality act has revolutionized the role of science in policy making by
ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity of
scientific information federal agencies use. By exempting NOAA, the lead
federal agency conducting research into the existence and effects of climate
change, this rider prevents an honest evaluation of the science of climate
change from occurring and ensures that future policy decisions are based not on
sound science but rather on junk science.
If
approved, NOAA would be the ONLY executive branch agency exempt from data
quality requirments.
Obviously,
this issue is tremendously important. CJSJ is not expected to come to the
Senate floor in the near future, so we will have to monitor this issue in the
context of the CR and, potentially, an Omni.
The
rider is on page 52 of the .pdf version of the CJSJ approps bill as marked up
9-15-2004. It is included in the NOAA Operation, Research, Facilities and
Systems Acquisitions section of the bill.
Provided
further, That section 515 of Public Law 106-554 and any regulations and
guidelines promulgated under such authority shall not apply on or after the
date of enactment to research and data collection, or information analysis
conducted by or for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
Doesn't
the desire to liberate climate science from the horrors of sound science
requirements say all one needs to know about its proponents' level of
confidence in its utility?